Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 48

[cahn]

Some awesome historical RPF candyheartsex stories for meeeeee (or by me, in one tiny case) with historical characters! I'm just going to note whom the stories are about here. They are all so good!!

Anne Boleyn/Catherine of Aragorn
Frances Howard and Frances Coke (or: James I's court was basically a HOTBED of scandal, omg)

And two that are also historical RPF but also consistent with the Jude Morgan novel The King's Touch, which is an excellent historical novel narrated by James ("Jemmy") Scott, Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son.

Princess Henrietta of England (Charles II's sister and wife of Philippe I duc d'Orleans)
James of Monmouth/William/Mary

Comments

Duc de Richelieu

[mildred_of_midgard]

Not the Cardinal, the Duke, whom cahn can now tell apart from the Cardinal! :)

The Duc de Richelieu is the subject of my latest French-practice biography, which I'm halfway through, and here's what I've learned so far:

His posthumous memoirs are fake, published during the French Revolution (he died in 1788, aged 92), to discredit him and French nobility in general.

When he was six years old, his widowed father remarried a widow. One of the terms of their marriage contract was that the six-year-old future Duc would marry the widow's daughter from her first marriage, who was about a year older than he was. The future Duc de Richelieu was then forced into this marriage when he was not yet 15. He was super unhappy about it, refused to sleep with her, and did his best to have sex with everyone he knew *except* her. Despite this, she is said to have remained faithful to him. (Quoth the biographer, "Despite the fact that he gave her no reason to.")

When he was 15, Richelieu was locked in the Bastille for over a year. Why? Reasons differ as to who pushed for this (his father or Louis XIV) and why (excessive gambling debts vs. flirting too much with the Dauphine), but he definitely had pissed everyone off, to the point where my guess as to the answer to both "who?" and "why?" is: "Why not both?"

The author, who has his moments of humor, says that Richelieu's father, having gambled away an entire fortune in his youth, should have been more sympathetic, but he had become devout in his old age, and did not hesitate to seek (or agree to, depending on which version of the story you believe) an arrest warrant from the king, i.e. one of the infamous lettres de cachet that meant "I'm the king and I can have you locked up whenever I want, for however long I want, without saying why."

Now, you may recall that life in the Bastille could be rough or could be luxurious, depending on how much money and how much prestige your family had. In Richelieu's case, well...you'd think it would be the latter. And it may well have been. He certainly had a servant. But in his old age, he told a friend that his jailer had orders (presumably from his father and/or the king) to let his wife visit him in hopes that he would be desperate enough to have sex with her, and not to alleviate his prison conditions until "she left satisfied." 

Richelieu was not that desperate, though.

But also he got smallpox shortly after entering, so that may have been part of why he couldn't have sex. His old age story may not be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. (There is a lot of that in this book: "So-and-so said Richelieu did X, but that seems unlikely.")
Richelieu also used the time to improve his education, which had been rather lackluster up to this point. He could at least somewhat read Latin now!

After being released, he goes off to war against Eugene of Savoy, distinguishes himself, and things are looking good, but--oh no! Peace is signed and his regiment is disbanded. Now he has no prospect of glory, and financially he's dependent on his tightfisted father. "Fortunately, if one can call it that, the latter died barely a month later."

I'm not enamoured of this author, but like Asprey, he has his moments of humor.

Then Richelieu gets locked in the Bastille for dueling. This is actually Philippe the Regent being nice to him, because otherwise Richelieu was going to be dragged in front of the Parlement of Paris, and this way Philippe took the matter out of their hands and into his own, where he could be benevolent.

Then he ends up in the Bastille a third time for joining one of the conspiracies to dethrone Philippe the Regent in favor of Philip the Frog. Despite the fact that Philippe had been pretty soft on him about the dueling and you'd think Richelieu would owe him one.

By the age of 23, Richelieu had spent over 2 years in the Bastille.

Then he got out and soon after got into a duel with the Duc de Bourbon, who was upset that the Duc de Richelieu was sleeping with his sister. This despite the fact that dueling had landed Richelieu in the Bastille before.

Most of the book so far is a string of Richelieu's affairs. So. Many. Affairs. I mean, this is basically what he's known for, so I'm not surprised, but also...I was hoping his actual biography would have more interesting material than what I'd osmosed from reading about other people. Every occasionally, Richelieu does something other than fuck, like the time he's appointed ambassador to Vienna. He asks Voltaire to be his secretary, something I had forgotten, but Voltaire declines.

In Vienna, Richelieu gets along reasonably well by pretending to be pious, because Charles VI is so pious. But even there, surprisingly little of interest happens, at least as reported by his biographer, who is eager to get back to recounting his affairs upon his return to France. There is a brief comment by the author that it was surprising that so inexperienced a diplomat would be sent to such a sensitive court...but no mention of how diplomacy was often left up to amateurs on the assumption that it didn't require specialized knowledge.

Oh, one time Richelieu gets to administer a province in France, and he does his best to keep the religious tensions and persecution of Protestants down. And it was he who suggested La Pucelle to Voltaire, apparently. So among his good points is not being a religious fanatic, but I'm definitely getting a frat boy vibe from this guy.

Will report if I learn anything interesting in the second half of the book (assuming I finish it, but it's good French practice, if nothing else. I wish Orieux were available on Kindle, sigh.)

Marie Adelaide of Savoy

[mildred_of_midgard]

The one interesting character the Richelieu bio has introduced me to is Louis XV's mother, Marie Adelaide of Savoy. She is presented as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl type, who is free-spirited and cheers an old and depressed Louis XIV up, and everyone at court loves her (especially her husband). Because this is the 18th century, one of her antics involved having an entire conversation with Louis behind a screen, while her maid slipped under her voluminous skirts and administered an enema. Marie Adelaide carried on the conversation with Louis without batting an eye, and when Louis found out later she'd been receiving an enema while talking to him, he thought that was just *hilarious*.

Also because it's the 18th century, though, she has to make it very clear that just because she's unconventional and boundary-pushing doesn't mean she's unchaste. So when the Duc de Richelieu takes the flirting with her a little too far, she immediately makes it clear to the men of her family that this is a major DNW for her and that she did nothing to encourage it. So he gets in trouble, not her.

The whole episode where he's flirting with her gets even weirder when you realize that she's his godmother. That's Richelieu for you.

Her "Hot or Not?" portrait, by Saint-Simon, goes like this:

Very well set brown brown hair and eyebrows, the most expressive and beautiful eyes in the world, few teeth and all of them rotten which she was the first to talk about and make fun of, the most beautiful complexion and the most beautiful skin, small but admirable breasts, the neck long with a hint of goiter which did not suit it badly, a gallant, graceful, majestic posture of the head and the same look, the most expressive smile, a long, round, petite figure; easy, perfect figure, a goddess' walk on the clouds; she pleased to the last degree. The Graces themselves arose from all her steps, from all her manners, and from her most common speeches. A simple and natural air always, naive often enough, but seasoned with wit, charmed, with this ease that was in her, to the point of communicating it to everyone who approached her.

Now, you may not recognize her name, but we've encountered her before. She's the one who, when the French royal family fell like dominoes in the 1711-1715 period, got measles, and her husband loved her so much that he insisted on staying with her and nursing her while she was sick, and not wanting to outlive her when she died, just 26. So he got the measles from her and died 6 days after his beloved wife. Then their oldest son, the new dauphin, died of the same measles less than a month later. Then his two-year-old brother, future Louis XV, *also* got the same measles...and was saved by his governess, Madame de Ventadour, barring the nursery doors and not letting any doctors in. Because it's the 18th century and you're better off *not* listening to the recognized medical experts.

Her father was Machiavellian Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, who married his two daughters off to two of Louis XIV's grandsons: Marie Adelaide to Louis the future dauphin, meaning she would have been queen of France if not for the stupid measles, and Marie Louise to Philip the Frog, making her queen of Spain until her own untimely death at the age of 25 from tuberculosis.

So the one thing I have to thank the Richelieu book for is turning her from a statistic into at least somewhat of a person I can imagine.

Re: Marie Adelaide of Savoy

[selenak]

Oh, Marie Adelaide has a big role in Antonia Fraser's Love and Louis XIV (which is basically not just about Louis and his mistresses but Louis and the women in his life he had great affection for, so non-sexual relationships like with his mother, Marie Adelaide and Liselotte are also very present). When I'm back in Munich I'll look up quotes, but right now I'm in Bamberg with the APs for Easter.

Re: Duc de Richelieu

[selenak]

His posthumous memoirs are fake, published during the French Revolution (he died in 1788, aged 92), to discredit him and French nobility in general.

Given the fake celebrity memoirs genre popularity in the entire century, long before the French Revolution (see also Eugene, Madame de Maintenon and Austrian but not Prussian Trenck), I wonder when this trend stopped? Not in the first half of the 19th century, because there are still such things as fake Emma Hamilton memoirs. (And as repeateadly mentioned, when Wilhelmine's memoirs were first published in the early 19th century a good many people tried to dismiss them as yet another of these RPF things, written as anti Prussian propaganda.) But in the later half, I can't think of any celebrity memoirs that were exposed as frauds right now, I mean, where are the fake Bismarck memoirs getting into his university wild days or his affair with a sexy French countess? You'd think his foreign and domestic enemies who surely had some writers at their command would get into that.

But to return to the Duc de Richelieu, I'm slightly baffled why they'd bother as late as the French Revolution. Firstly because he's been dead for a while, secondly because he's not an A List celebrity, so to speak, nor an idol of the royalist cause to be attacked, and thirdly because fake memoirs seem to be almost tame at a time where you get pornographic attacks on the Queen in print.

Richelieu also used the time to improve his education, which had been rather lackluster up to this point. He could at least somewhat read Latin now!

So he wasn't a good student at that elite grammar school young Francois Arouet also visited (and one and a half generations later Camille Desmoulins and Maximilien Robespierre)? BTW, are there any school stories?

By the age of 23, Richelieu had spent over 2 years in the Bastille.

Maybe he gave Voltaire rooming tips....

In Vienna, Richelieu gets along reasonably well by pretending to be pious, because Charles VI is so pious. But even there, surprisingly little of interest happens, at least as reported by his biographer, who is eager to get back to recounting his affairs upon his return to France. There is a brief comment by the author that it was surprising that so inexperienced a diplomat would be sent to such a sensitive court...but no mention of how diplomacy was often left up to amateurs on the assumption that it didn't require specialized knowledge.

Boo in the lack of context. Re: Vienna, on the one hand, isn't that the same time when Lady Mary is passing through en route to Istambul and reports rather every woman having her official gallant (unlike later in MT's day)? On the other hand, if you're a guy from Regency France where the Regent is accused of taking his daughter to orgies, plain old adultery looks boring, I'm sure. Also, given the super piety of Louis XIV's last few years (which wasn't the case any more under Philippe the Regent, but Richelieu had grown up in the Louis Quatorze years, right?), I bet he should have no difficulty faking it with Charles VI.

I'm sorry the book is such a bore. Making a string of affairs interesting is far more difficult than people assume, and to point to the most obvious example, Casanova's memoirs aren't entertaining because he keeps having a lot of sex but because he's interested in people, full stop, and can describe a lot of entertaining ones (female or male), plus he's not afraid of making fun of himself occasionally.

Re: Duc de Richelieu

[mildred_of_midgard]

I wonder when this trend stopped?

No idea!

But to return to the Duc de Richelieu, I'm slightly baffled why they'd bother as late as the French Revolution. Firstly because he's been dead for a while, secondly because he's not an A List celebrity, so to speak, nor an idol of the royalist cause to be attacked, and thirdly because fake memoirs seem to be almost tame at a time where you get pornographic attacks on the Queen in print.

I feel like 2 years isn't a terribly long time, though? And even if he's not A-list, he did have a certain notoriety for specifically being depraved, and if that's what the bourgeoisie wanted to attack the Ancien Regime for, he's a good candidate! Decades of material to work with! And all it takes is one guy with a beef against him; the entire French Revolution doesn't have to vote that this is a priority to use their scarce publication resources on. In short, I'm less surprised if 2 years after he died, someone decided that he was an excellent example of how depraved French aristocrats were.

So he wasn't a good student at that elite grammar school young Francois Arouet also visited (and one and a half generations later Camille Desmoulins and Maximilien Robespierre)? BTW, are there any school stories?

The reader of this book cannot tell he went to school at all. These are the events of his childhood, as recounted by his biographer:

- Miracle child of his parents.
- Astrological forecasts at his birth.
- Mother dies when he's 2.
- Baptism.
- The War of the Spanish Succesion is on.
- "No doubt the little Duke of Fronsac, having passed from women's skirts to the rule of a rather mediocre tutor, heard about these fights and already dreamed much more of military glory than of Latin, because his contemporaries agree that his education was particularly neglected."
- His father remarries when he's 6.
- His father agrees that little 6-year-old future Louis-Armand will marry his stepmother's daughter when he gets old enough.
- Goes to court at age 14.
- Flirts too much with his godmother, Marie-Adelaide of Savoy, at court.
- Forced to marry at age 14, resents and avoids his wife.
- Runs up debts.
- Ends up in the Bastille at age 15.
- Gets a chance to make up some deficiencies in his education, like Virgil translation, in the Bastille.

And it's all Bastilles, duels, and affairs from there.

Re: Vienna, on the one hand, isn't that the same time when Lady Mary is passing through en route to Istambul and reports rather every woman having her official gallant (unlike later in MT's day)? On the other hand, if you're a guy from Regency France where the Regent is accused of taking his daughter to orgies, plain old adultery looks boring, I'm sure.

Lol! Yeah, I could see that. And I'd forgotten this was the same time as Lady Mary's remark about the official gallant (actually, I had misremembered that as not being Vienna, but I checked and you're right), thank you for the reminder.

Richelieu had grown up in the Louis Quatorze years, right?

Yep, he was 19 when Louis died. His once dissolute father had also gotten pious in his old age.

Boo in the lack of context...I'm sorry the book is such a bore.

It definitely had the potential to be much more interesting than this.

Oh, one thing that got tiresome real fast was the repetitive slamming of Madame Graffigny. I know she has a bad rap, but it's not just once, but every time she comes up in this book, an obligatory dig happens. To the point where I started asking what his particular problem with her was.

For now, I've switched to a bio of the Cardinal Dubois by the author of the Philippe d'Orleans bio, which was next on my list after this.

Re: Marie Adelaide of Savoy

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ah, excellent! Always you with the background knowledge. I had no idea who she was, other than the woman who died of measles.

Re: Duc de Richelieu

[selenak]

Oh, one thing that got tiresome real fast was the repetitive slamming of Madame Graffigny.

Sigh. I know a lot of people used to do this, until the last twenty years or so when writers started to say, hang on, she's a woman who got out of an abusive marriage against all the odds, then struggled financially but just about managed to maintain herself, then actually wrote a bestseller which presents a female take on that ""Foreigner describes in letters home writer's own homeland" trope with a heroine who does not want to marry, and DOES NOT, she's cool, too! But I'm not surprised anti Graffigny prejudice lingers in some authors. I mean, even the author of the otherwise fabulous play about Émilie makes her into a stupid rich (!!!) woman interrupting Émilie's and Voltaire's idyll at Cirey, becaus evidently she can't think of another reason why Mme de Graffigny would have clashed with Émilie. (Who was great but did not behave well vis a vis Francoise de Graffigny, who was right to take offense. We're all better off if we can acknowledge our faves are flawed.)

Re: why the Richelieu author attacks her - didn't she work as Richelieu's wife's companion for a while and completely sided with his wife?

Re: Duc de Richelieu

[cahn]

"Despite the fact that he gave her no reason to."

Okay, I snorted.

he told a friend that his jailer had orders (presumably from his father and/or the king) to let his wife visit him in hopes that he would be desperate enough to have sex with her, and not to alleviate his prison conditions until "she left satisfied."

Heh.

Yeah, this sounds less interesting than one might have hoped!

Re: Duc de Richelieu

[cahn]

Maybe he gave Voltaire rooming tips....

Hee!

Re: Marie Adelaide of Savoy

[cahn]

Because this is the 18th century, one of her antics involved having an entire conversation with Louis behind a screen, while her maid slipped under her voluminous skirts and administered an enema.

Well, this is certainly the kind of gossipy sensationalism I come to salon for :P

The whole episode where he's flirting with her gets even weirder when you realize that she's his godmother. That's Richelieu for you.

Ha.

Her "Hot or Not?" portrait, by Saint-Simon, goes like this:

Every time we get one of these I laugh :)

She's the one who, when the French royal family fell like dominoes in the 1711-1715 period, got measles, and her husband loved her so much that he insisted on staying with her and nursing her while she was sick, and not wanting to outlive her when she died, just 26.

Oh, I'd forgotten about this! *shakes fist at bleeding physicians*

Re: Marie Adelaide of Savoy - I

[selenak]

I've now reunited with my Antonia Fraser "Love and Louis XIV" book and reread the (Marie) Adelaide relevant passages to refresh my knowledge of her for salon. Incidentally, Fraser calls her "Adelaide" throughout, so shall I, and her younger sister, who will end up as Philippe the Frog's first wife, is referred to by the family as "Louison", which is more memorable than "Marie Louise", so Louison she shall be.

Speaking of closely related marriages: I had forgotten that Adelaide was in fact Philippe the Gay's biological granddaughter, one of two surviving kids from his first marriage to poor Minette. (The other surviving daughter gets married to Charles the Genetic Wonder of Spain, as a reminder to cahn.) Philippe the Gay being her grandfather causes a etiquette incident when she arrives in France, but more about this in a moment. Anyway, Adelaide's father is Victor Amadeus "Idol of Fritz" of Savoy the side changing Machiavellian. He's currently on the French side when Louis XIV looks for a bride for his oldest surviving grandson, referred to by his title (since he's yet another Louis), Bourgogne. Adelaide is a child bride when showing up in France, ten years (her future groom was just three years older), and an adorable moppet. The parallels and contrasts to two later young princesses (i.e. the Spanish princesss who was married to kid! Louis XV and divorced before she ever made it to puberty, and Marie Antoinette) are fascinating, since evidentally aside from her early death, Adelaide is the role model here and what everyone was hoping for. She shows up when her future Grandfather-in-law needs some serious cheering up. After lording it over Europe for decades, wars have started to go wrong for Louis. His arch enemy William of Orange sits on the British throne, and while Louis was sheltering cousin James II, his wife and son at court, and making much of especially the wife, Mary of Modena, William and Mary showed no signs of getting deposed in GB, meaning Louis now had yet another enemy in possession of the growing British Empire. There are famines in France. His grandson's teacher, Abbé Fénelon, author of Telemache, aka everyone's Favourite How To Be A Great Prince And Choose Your Own Adventure story for two more generations, dares to write barely anonymous pamphlets admonishing Louis to get on Project Peace and focus more on being good to his people than on gloire. Fénelon gets banished, which also leads to a crisis and coolness between Louis and his mistress/secret morganatic wife, Francoise de Maintenon, since he blames her for this uppity priest having been his grandson's teacher. And lo! Turns out an adorable moppet is just the thing to cheer up Louis, to give him and Madame de Maintenon the shared grandchild they never had, and to make most of the court fall in love with her to boot.

Adelaide, like after her the other moppets, will show up only to get undressed and redressed in French clothing and forced to leave everything Savoyard behind in the official border crossing ceremony. (Incidentally: while nationalist 19th century French historian Michelet suspects her of having secret Savoy over France sympathies later on, her letters to her grandmother home in Savoy show her utterly loyal to France and just said whenever Dad is at war with same.) The kerfuffle happens when Philippe the Gay, seeing as this is his and Minette's oldest granddaughter, wants to greet her first, and finds that his nephew the Dauphin, Louis XIV's son who will be Adelaide's new father-in-law, claims and is given precedent. Ellbows are exchanged, but the Dauphin outranks Monsieur. (He's so passive usually it's rare to see him want anything.) Seems everyone wants to greet the adorable moppet, especially the King, Louis XIV, who after being told by her this is the greatest moment of her life (she's been schooled well) is utterly charmed by her. Because she's still very small for her age, doll-sized, the impression, memoirist Saint-Simon writes, is that he carries her in his pocket. Saint-Simon, who of course was born in Louis' reign and never consciously knew the King as a young man, thinks Adelaide is the only person Louis really deeply truly loved. Antonia Fraser thinks he loved her and his mother most in his life and more than his mistresses and wives. She manages to end the period of crisis between him and Madame de Maintenon immediately and solves the problem of how to address the King's official mistress and unofficial second wife by addressing her as "Tante" (i.e. aunt), which manages to be respectful and intimate without using a title at all, or implying a definite form of relation, since "Auntie" is and was as general a term then for older female person close to the family as it is now. (For a contrast, think of the teenage Marie Antoinette versus Madame Dubarry showdown.) Adelaide is cheerful and joking and charming and, going by everyone's memoirs and her own correspondence back home, utterly focused on Louis XIV and not on her future husband Bourgogne. (Who is a pious shy teen. Foreshadowing of Louis XVI?) They will eventually have a surprisingly succeessful marriage, but while they are kids and teens, they don't spend much time in each other's company, while Adelaide enlivens the entire court (who picks up that the King likes her and accordingly swoons over her. Liselotte comments a bit tartly that"everyone is busy becoming a child again". She herself likes the adorable moppet at first but then thinks she's a bit of a spoiled brat until coming around to her again when Adelaide is nearing thirty, just in time to be crushed at her death. But back to proper chronology. When Adelaide mentions missing her Savoyard dolls, Louis orders the most beautiful dolls being brought from Paris (since any French doll will automatically be superior), and Adelaide either is or is clever enough to be delighted. Adelaide is allowed to skip and dance through tihe stately gardens of Versailles, to "rumple" the King and Madame de Maintenon while she's chattering away at them, she even "sledges" through the polished corridors. When she's twelve, the marriage to Bourgogne takes place, complete with ballet in which young Bourgogne dances Apollo and Adelaide dances a Muse. Antonia Frasers notes these are the exact same roles in the same ballet young Louis XIV danced decades earlier - with young Minette as the Muse. Young Bourgogne didn't have a passion for ballet, he only danced it because it was Granddad's thing, but Adelaide is described as being as graceful a dancer as her grandmother had been. Did Louis think of Bourgogne and Adelaide as the "might have been"/second chance of himself and Minette? Who knows. Teen Adelaide continues to be thought as adorable and even gets away with being nosy and reading through the King's and Madame de Maintenon's papers. (Madame de Maintenon, who started out, lest we forget, as the governess of the King's illegitimate children with Madame de Montespan, has an educational way of putting an end to this. She leaves a letter in which a high ranking noble has lots of vicious biting things to say about Adelaide's current flirt (more about this later), which reduces Adelaide to tears but means she leaves Madame de Maintenon's papers alone. (Not those of the King, though.)

Anyway, the next important thing is that Charles "The Genetic Wonder" of Spain dies and Louis takes the chance to pomote Bourgogne's younger brother Anjou to become Philipp the Frog. Thereby ensuring war for years and years to come, aka The War of the Spanish Succession. Meaning politically, things continue to get worse for France. Now that she's married and post puberty, Adelaide is supposed to reproduce (and when she's 15, in the year 1700, starts already getting pointed gifts in the form of babies made of coral because it hasn't happened yet). But Bourgogne seems to have had at least an idea of how to do the job (unlike Louis XVI decades later), because in 1702, Adelaide gets pregnant for the first time and miscarries, and in 1704, at age eighteen, she produces her first living son. Everyone is ecstatic. But alas, the kid only lives for a year. (Liselotte, proving not for the first time she's the most sensible member of the royal family, blames the doctors. Adelaide's gaity now is interrupted by brief bouts of depression. They are brief because her main purpose at this court, especially before producing a living child again, is still to amuse Louis XiV. She still drives her little cart through the gardens of Versailles, climbs like a cat over the rocks of Fontainebleau and whirls through the corridors, but sometimes it feels forced. She laments getting old in 1702 (i.e. at age 17!), and she's expected to reproduce for France, but she also is expected to remain the adorable moppet, the joy of Louis XIV later years, the endlessly funny child he fell in love with. It's interesting which pranks he let her get away wiith and which not: planting firecrackers underneath the stool of a grand dame while a page fastened that unfortunate lady's skirts and sleeves to it was cool, grimacing at the ugliness of one particular musketeer was not, earning her a sharp reproof as Louis said he found the man to be one of the kingdom's best looking because he was one of the bravest.

There are a couple of deaths: her maternal grandfather, Monsieur, Philippe the Gay, and the exiled James II (which is important because Louis recognizes the never to be James III aka "the Pretender", and if England had needed another reason to side with Austria in the Spanish situation, well...) Adelaide's father, Victor Amadeus, switches sides and teams up with his cousin Eugene (who currently proves himself a brilliant general for Team Habsburg), but Louis doesn't let this influence his regard for Victor Amadeus' daughter, his fave. Adelaide is very aware she's not allowed to show distress to Louis, but she shows it to "Tante", Madame de Maintenon, and in her correspondance with younger sister Louison, wife of Philippe the not yet Frog, Queen of Spain, via that same Princesse de Ursins/Orsini who will get unceremoniously fired by Philippe the Frog's second wife, Isabella. She also had three flirtations. Her husband, Bourgogne, was currently busy being sent on campaign in the war, and at any rate she wasn't yet in love with him. According to Saint Simon the memoirist, Adelaide had three flirtations serious enough for him to note down (and none with young Richelieu), but Antonia Fraser doesn't think any of the three got physical. Why not? Because Liselotte, Our Woman In Verssailles and reliable source for spicy gossip, doesn't mention any of the three. And Liselotte was at that point no longer charmed by the no longer moppet, so if Adelaide had had actual affairs, one assumes she'd have mentioned them in her letters. Anyway, the three guys were: the Marquis the Nangis, born the same year as Bourgogne, with a "pleasant enough countenance". He already had an offisical mistress of his own, but that didn't stop him from flirting wiht Adelaide, especially when he returned from the wars a wounded man and was admired as a hero. Then there was the Marquis the Maulévrier, ten years older than Adelaide and a more dangerous man, and emotionally unbalanced. He was violently jealous of Nanges and committed suicide at Easter 1706. And finally, ther was a hot priest, the Abbé Melchior de Po9lignac, at forty-five the oldest of her beaus, a sophisticated man with an interest in the sciences. Adelaide's husband Bourgogne, when he was at home, as a pious young man liked the Abbé's company, tool. Louis and Madame de Maintenon seem to have regarded Polignac as dangerous enough to dispatch him to Rome. When Nangis, too, was returned to the front after his wounds were healed, Adelaide's filirts had all come to an end. She also became pregnant again, with yet another boy born in 1707. This one showed good signs to living. Maternal love, though, was not how Adelaide grew up. She was a noble woman of her time and had few actual interactions with any of her children after giving birth. In a letter home to her grandmother in Savoy, she critisizes the governess, Madame de Ventadour (future heroine), for spoiling this latest child, but also admits: "I only go and see my son very rarely in order not to be too attached to him." (Given all her other babies had died, and she's still in her 20s, can you blame her?)

She was still the King's favourite person, while he got constant reminders of his mortality. Two of his most important mistresses, Athenais de Montespan and Louise de la Valliere, died. When Louis got the Montespan news, he returned from the hunt to his own room and told the courtiers he wanted to be left alone. They could hear him pace through the night. But when Adelaide - the only one who dared - asked him the next morning whether there was to be mourning for Madame de Montespan, Louis replied that hte Marquise de Montespan had been dead to him ever since she had left Versailles. (Apropos the Affair of the Poisons.) And here's a dark story illustrating what it could mean to be the King's favourite person and how decades of being fawned upon as the centre of the universe had warped Louis: when in 1708 Adelaide was pregnant again (with little Bretagne, her surviving kid, a year old)), and her ladies wanted her to stay at home, Louis ordered her to be with him at Marly (basically the more relaxed home away from home for the royal family at this point). "Then, as he was feeding the carp in his fish pond after Masss, awaiting Adelaide in order to go on to Fontainebleau, a message was whispered in his ear: the Duchesse de Bourgogne was 'injured' (the contemporary euphemism for a miscarriage). After a short pause, the King made a brief announcement as to whaqt had happened. Then a group of genttlemen with mor etemerity than tact made noises to the effect that this was 'the greatest misfortune in the world', since the Duchesse had already experienced such dififculty in bearing chldren and might now not be able to have any more. The King exploded. "What do I care about who succeeds me? Even if the Duchesse de Bourgogne never has another child, the Duc de Berry is of an age to have children? As to the miscarriage, since it was going to happen, thank God it is over! I shall no longer be n agged by doctors and old women! I shall come an dgo at my pleasure and be left in peace.'" Saint-Simon says you could have heard an ant walk after this appalling outburst. Antonia Fraser points out Louis wanted Adelaide simultanously to remain the perfect little girl who had so charmed him and could be relied upon to cheer him up whenever he called her, with no physical problems and to produce heirs for France, and consider himself the injured party if she failed to achieve both at the same time.

Re: Marie Adelaide of Savoy - II

[selenak]

Then, Adelaide in a most unexpected turn of events fell in love with her husband via becoming protective of him in his darkest hour (so far). We're now deep in the War of Spanish Succession. Bourgogne is sent to Flanders to serve with Vendome (who is a descendant of one of Henri IV's bastards and thus a cousin). But whicih of them outranks the other, which of them is in charge? And which of them is to be blamed when the French army gets handed its third colossal defeat at the hands of Marlborough and Eugene in a row, at Oudenarde on July 11? (This btw is the battle where young future G2 is present on the Allies side, gets praised in rhyme as "young Hannover brave" and reminds everyone of this for the rest of his life.) Vendome is very popular in France and an experienced general, so the court decides it clearly must have been Bourgogne's fault. Vendome says it was, and that Bourgogne failed to follow his commands. Six thousand French are dead, seven thousand wounded or prisoners. Bourgogne is seen as a coward who prevented what surely would have been a great French victory otherwise. The only person taking his side and fiercely defending him is... Adelaide. She's never shown as much interest in her husband as she does now. Before his return, she prays for him, she defends him in conversation, she denigrates Vendome. (Louis doesn't stop her from this, but whens she cries in public, he is displeased and chides her for for "displaiiing ill-humour and chargrin". (Remember, she's supposed to be cheerful and adorable, non-stop.) But Adelaide continues to fight verbally for her husband and against Vendome, and with the backing of "Tante", Madame de Maintenon, achieves victory in that Vendome after one visit gets excluded from any future family gatherings at Marly, and at Meudon (that's the Dauphin's palace, and the Dauphin, her almost invisitable father-in-law, is after all Bourgogne's father). Everyone takes notice of Adelaide's attitude re: her husband - Saint-Simon writes re: Vendome "one saw thqat huge monster blown over by the breath of a brave young princess", Liselotte writes that post 1708, Adelaide was in love with her husband, and the grateful Bourgogne nicknames her Draco (not after a dragon, after the severe Athenian legislator with his "Draconian" code, and writes to her: "Draco, how sweeit is is to be your slave..." As Adelaide is determined not to have her husband presented as a bad general again, she makes it her business to study military tactics with him. One sees them poring over maps and reading books on the subject together. Everyone concludes that while Bourgogne might make a bit of a weak King, he'll have a strong Queen at his side to make up for it.

As the war continues, French victories fail to happen and after the coldest winter in anyone's memory further crushes the French population, Louis is at his most unpopular. There's a satiric pamphlet that goes "Our father that art in Versailles/Thy name is no longer hallowed/ Thy Kingdom is no longer so great/ Thy will is no longer done either on earth or sea/Give us our daily bread which we can no longer obtain/Forgive our enemies who have beaten us..." Adelaide's job of being the embodiment of cheer in Versailles grows correspondingly trickier and also more important. In 1710, she produces another living boy (that 's future Louis XV). And then, in 1711, her father-in-law the Dauphin dies, which makes her husband Bourgogne the new Dauphin and herself the official Second Lady of France. (The Dauphin as described by Saint-Simon: He had been "without vice, virtue, knowledge or understanding" , and "Nature fashioned him as a ball to be rolled hither and thither". ) Adelaide rises to the occasion even when her cousin the Duchesse de Berry (that's the daughter of Philippe the future Regent whom he was gossipped to have an incesteous relationship with) deliberately waited to hand her her chemise at the morning ceremony and left her standing basically in the nude. (The Duchesse was miffed because until the Dauphin's death, she and Adelaide had been more or less of the same rank.) But she still peformed her pranks and jokes that had won her Louis' favour, and that's when the enema story comes in. According to Antonia Fraser, Adelaide loved to get the confidential servant Nanon to give her a "lavement" (enema) before a theatrical performance; she then spent the whole performance in a state of wicked g lee at the thought of her secret condition before Nanon attended to her relief. Talking to Louis XIV through getting a lavement was nothing in comparison. She also once grabbed the arms of Saint-Simon's wife and that of another court lady, pointed at the Duchesse de Berry and Madame de Conti (another very high born lady) who'd just scoffed at her diverting the King by pretending to chatter in a dozen different, made- up languages to amuse him, and, according to Saint-Simon, she began to laugh and sing: Ha-Ha! I can laugh at them because I will be their queen. I need not to mind them now or ever, but they will have to reckon with me, for I shall be their queen", and she shouted and sang and hoopped an dlaugh as high as loud as she dared. When the two ladies tried to hush her in case the princesses heard, she only skipped and sang the more: "What do I care for them? I'm going to be their queen."

Alas.

The first serious health problem had nothing to do with why she would never be queen. She'd always had bad teeth, as was noticed even when the child Adelaide arrived in France, but by Januar 1712, they were well and truly black and hurt terribly. Her face was so swollen she had to play cards with the King in a hood. And she was pregnant again. So her immune system had to cope with rotting teeth, and a pregnancy, when the measles struck in February. The King, Madame the Maintenon and Bourgogne were with her near constantly. On Thursday February 11 the King asked publicly for the aide of St. Geneviève, patron saint of Paris. The coffin containing the saint's remains was to be uncovered at daybreak for the faithful implore her protection. This was usually only done in times of the most extreme national emergencies and hadn't, for example, been done after any of the lost battles, but Louis ordered it to happen now for Adelaide. The doctors were worse than useless and bled her five extensive times all in all. Because the Kings of France were not supposed to be present at death other than their own, Louis left a few minutes before she died, but until then, he was there along with his grandson. When Adelaide was asked why she didn't speak to Louis, she said she was afraid of crying and would not upset the King, her training to never, ever displease him holding up even now. Madame de Maintenon remained till the end, and was the last person to talk to her: "Madame, you go to God." "Yes, Tante, I go to God." And thus she died, to be followed by her entire family except for the two years old child Madame de Ventadour locked herself up with so doctors could not come near him. For what remained of Louis XIV's reign, supposedly no one laughed at Versailles again.

Nikolaikirche

[mildred_of_midgard]

Swamped at work but keeping up my Kurrent-reading quotas, and briefly:

I have an answer to how Peter and his younger son Friedrich Ludwig ended up in the crypt they did in the Nikolaikirche! In 1812, Karl Ernst requested to be buried in the same vault with his father, his brother, and various maternal relatives. So there were Knyphausens there! Oriane only ended up in the Parochialkirche because she was a great governess to the queen.

What I don't have an answer to is why Karl Ernst ended up next to his mother in the Parochialkirche instead in 1822. I suspect I'm staring at the answer in a postscript, but his executor's handwriting is...not exactly bad, but he forms certain characters differently than I'm used to, and he's doing a bit of scrawling. I've bookmarked this letter to come back to and sift through character by character, sudoku-style, with the intent of deciphering the postscript properly.

Other instructions: Open his testament immediately. Leave his body lying in bed 24 hours, then 8 days above ground if at all possible (meaning if the weather wouldn't make it decompose at an alarmingly pestilent rate) before being buried. Bury him early in the morning or late in the evening, without ceremony. (Um, I'm remembering that I read through the description of his funeral procession, and I seem to recall there was some ceremony. Ghost!Fritz waves sadly.) No written notification of his death in the newspaper or anywhere else.

Re: Marie Adelaide of Savoy - I

[cahn]

This is such an interesting story! (I'm always interested when you tell the stories :D )

Abbé Fénelon, author of Telemache, aka everyone's Favourite How To Be A Great Prince And Choose Your Own Adventure story for two more generations

I remember reading about this somewhere... but I don't think I actually know that much about Telemache (I mean, the book, not the character from the Odyssey) and this was tantalizing -- more? :)

Antonia Fraser thinks he loved her and his mother most in his life and more than his mistresses and wives.

Yeah, idk about "truly," given the massively awful things you report he said to/about her, but more than his mistresses and wives, I would buy that.

She manages to end the period of crisis between him and Madame de Maintenon immediately

How did she do that?

and solves the problem of how to address the King's official mistress and unofficial second wife by addressing her as "Tante" (i.e. aunt)

Ha, that is a good solution!

(For a contrast, think of the teenage Marie Antoinette versus Madame Dubarry showdown.)

Why did Adelaide do so much better? Natural talent, and/or was she coached extremely well? And if the latter, by whom and why wasn't Toinette coached like that?

Did Louis think of Bourgogne and Adelaide as the "might have been"/second chance of himself and Minette? Who knows.

Ohhhhh, oof. I could see that.

Liselotte, proving not for the first time she's the most sensible member of the royal family, blames the doctors.

She really is intensely sensible! :PP

Saint-Simon says you could have heard an ant walk after this appalling outburst.

...at least everyone else realized how awful this was :P :(

Antonia Fraser points out Louis wanted Adelaide simultanously to remain the perfect little girl who had so charmed him and could be relied upon to cheer him up whenever he called her, with no physical problems and to produce heirs for France, and consider himself the injured party if she failed to achieve both at the same time.

:(

Re: Marie Adelaide of Savoy - II

[cahn]

the grateful Bourgogne nicknames her Draco (not after a dragon, after the severe Athenian legislator with his "Draconian" code, and writes to her: "Draco, how sweeit is is to be your slave..."

Aw, that's really cute. (And I feel like there needs to be some sort of HP crossover fic about it...)

So her immune system had to cope with rotting teeth, and a pregnancy, when the measles struck in February.

:(

The doctors were worse than useless and bled her five extensive times all in all.

Honestly, it's a miracle when anyone survives the freaking doctors!

When Adelaide was asked why she didn't speak to Louis, she said she was afraid of crying and would not upset the King, her training to never, ever displease him holding up even now.

That's... that seems terrible to me (even after factoring in the terribleness that she was about to die).

Thank you -- you've really made Adelaide come alive. (And thank you to Mildred for introducing me!)

Re: Nikolaikirche

[cahn]

Oh cool! I await the deciphering of the postscript :D

Re: Nikolaikirche

[selenak]

Sounds like Karl Ernst was afraid of being buried alive? I empathize; as a child, ever since I read my first Edgar Allen Poe story on that subject, I spend a couple of years being afraid to wake up in my own coffin...

Um, I'm remembering that I read through the description of his funeral procession, and I seem to recall there was some ceremony. Ghost!Fritz waves sadly.

And Karl Ernst didn't even have the chance to be an abusive uncle to his nephew. Poor guy. Otoh, he also didn't get the funeral he wanted some centuries later, so there's that.

Re: Marie Adelaide of Savoy - I

[selenak]

Telemaque: It, and Fénelon, came up repeatedly before. Sophie Charlotte loved the book and had excerpts read to son FW. (It didn't take.) Sophie Dorothea, Fritz and Wilhelmine loved this book. Leopold Mozart loved this book so much that during the first continental concert tour, which, I'll remind you, the Mozarts had to pay for themselves, because back then musicians not working for some prince summoning them had to, he made a detour to some obscure place in France where Fénelon is buried just so he could lay flowers on his grave. The fannish heart wants what it want! Other fans include Thomas Jefferson. This book was even read in the Ottoman Empire. Basically, it takes that portion of the Odyssey when Telemachus is questing for news of Dad to flesh out, and to have Mentor/Athena deliver some lectures of all Louis XIV does wrong, err, why war's bad, spending all your money on creating the perfect palace while the peasants starve is awful, and autocratic rule of one single monarch and no one else sucks, and we should totally have a constitutional monarchy in France, err, Ithaca. The wiki entry is here. In the German two parter "Der Thronfolger", the first part has Fritz and Wilhelmine reading as kids from this book transition to them reading it as teenagers to each other with the adult actors, but that's the only excerpt I'm familiar with, I haven't read it myself.

Yeah, idk about "truly," given the massively awful things you report he said to/about her, but more than his mistresses and wives, I would buy that.

To be fair, he usually praised her and indulged her from the moment he met her (when he wrote to Madame de Maintenon, who wasn't there because of the stress factor in their relationship right then, how wonderful this new princess was), hence the "you could have heard an ant walk" outburst standing out so much. Also, one can always quote Citizen Kane on this subject. (Charles Foster Kane has A LOT in common with Louis XIV.) What I'm thinking of is this bit of dialogue in a key scene between our antihero (Orson Welles) and his disillusioned slashy bff (Joseph Cotten) when they're both already middle aged:

Jed: It's all about you. You want to persuade people you love them so they ought to love you back. Love on your own terms.

CFK *raises glass*: To love on my own terms then, Jedediah. Which are the only terms anyone ever knows. Their own.

She manages to end the period of crisis between him and Madame de Maintenon immediately

How did she do that?

Just by being herself. As mentioned, Louis wrote an enthusiastic letter about her to his mistress/secret wife, and when they all were back at Versailles and Adelaide greeted "Tante", they found they could raise and spoil this adorable little girl together. Basically, it's the "child to save the marriage" principle, only with "grandchild", and it actually worked.

Why did Adelaide do so much better? Natural talent, and/or was she coached extremely well? And if the latter, by whom and why wasn't Toinette coached like that?

Adelaide had been coached by her paternal grandmother, who was Jeanne-Baptiste de Savoie-Nemours, herself a descendent of Henri IV and born in Paris, and a big life long influence and correspondent for Adelaide, and of course her mother, daughter of Minette and Philippe the Gay, Anne-Marie d'Orleans, who had of lived in Versailles until she (Anne-Marie, that is) was fourteen and so knew all things Versailles first hand. Since Victor Amadeus the Machiavellian had official mistresses as well, their existence wouldn't have struck little Adelaide as unusual.

As for Toinette, she had been coached as well, and had the Austrian Ambassador (Mercy, remember him, he shows up a lot in her biographies) at her side to remind her of this and deliver letters from Mom urging her to let the matter be and talk to the woman already, but of course there were some key differences:

1) Adelaide was ten, MA was fourteen when they arrived in France. A teenager is more headstrong.

2) Toinette had the bad luck of getting into an already existing feud and being used in it. Remember, Louis XV's unmarried daughters, who HATED Dubarry, were the ones telling her how she as the daughter of the Empress should not talk to the ex prostitute and kept encouraging her in this. No such influence existed on young Adelaide.

3) Madame de Maintenon had her share of enemies (Liselotte waves an enthusiastic hand), and there were no lack of snobbish remarks on her having been the widow of a playwright and an ex Huguenot (who turned into a hardcore Catholic fundamentalist post conversion) to boot, BUT she was of minor nobility by birth, and if she ever had sex with anyone other than her first husband and Louis XIV (whom she did marry in a morganatic marriage), no one found out about it. The Marquise Dubarry wasn't just a born commoner, she really had been a prostitute, no ifs, no buts about it. Toinette had just come from her mother's court where extramarital sex was frowned on and prostitutes currently were facing law penalities. The "Aunts", i.e. Louis XV's daughters, wouldn't have found it difficult to make her believe she was doing the right and moral thing to scorn this woman.


...at least everyone else realized how awful this was :P :(

Quite. I mean, no one would have said anything out loud, but imagine a lot of silent thunderstruck courtiers standing around.

Re: Marie Adelaide of Savoy - II

[selenak]

Honestly, it's a miracle when anyone survives the freaking doctors!

No kidding. When I read in the Duc de Croy's diaries of how the doctors repeatedly bled Marie Antoinette during her labour with her first baby (her daughter) and "saved her life" this way, I thought that clearly, this means MA must have inherited MT's iron constitution if she survived that one.

That's... that seems terrible to me (even after factoring in the terribleness that she was about to die).

I know, that's why I included it. If something summons up the artificiality of life at Versailles and the warpendness of living in an absolute monarchy in devastating way...

I checked my edition of Liselotte's letters and it turns out the letter where she writes to her aunt Sophie (of Hannover) about Adelaide's death is the very same she congratulates her to the birth of grandson Fritz. I hadn't thought about it, but it fits. Fritz was born on January 24, 1712, Adelaide died on February 12th, 1712, and Liselotte writes this letter on February 14th. (From Marly.)

We're all very sad here because two days ago in the evening around a quarter to nine, Madame la Dauphine has died. I am so convinced the doctors murdered this poor princess that I'm telling Your Grace this. They've given her some medicine and a lot of rubbish, and she started sweating, and then they didn't have the patience to outwait the sweating; in the middle of all the sweating, when she was red and the measles were all over her skin, she was put into warm water and bled for the fourth time (....). Now it's all over. I can't look at the King without getting tears into my eyes; he's in such a sad state that a stone would feel pity.

I compliment Your Grace on the happy arrival of your grandson, the Crown Prince of Prussia. May God give this prince many long years to live! The King in Prussia must be doubly pleased, firstly to have a new grandson, and secondly for having a new opportunity to organize a grand ceremony, for the baptism won't fail to provide this. I marvel of how different events can go in the world; while everyone is full of happiness in Berlin, everything is loneliness and sadness over here. (...) The Crown Princess didn't have to suffer long in her labours; three and a half hours, it could hardly have been less, especially since the outcome was such a happy one. Of course one can't be sure about anything, who wouldn't have bet on Madame la Dauphine, and now she is gone. Monsieur le Dauphin is completely devastated, but he is young, in time he can marry again and heal his wound, whereas the loss to Madame de Savoy* is eternal, as is the one to the King, for she had been raised entirely to please him, she was his comfort and his joy, and of such a merry disposition that she could always cheer him up.


*Madame de Savoy: Adelaide's mother, Liselotte's stepdaughter, whom, lest we forget, she has raised, since Anne Louise d'Orleans was still in her diapers when Minette died. (Minette's older daughter, married to the genetic wonder later, was 8 when Minette died and thus old enough to remember her. Liselotte and both of her stepdaughters got on well, and remained in contact when they were married off abroad.)

Platée

[luzula]

Hello salon, yesterday I watched Platée at the Gothenburg Opera House, which is an opera first performed to celebrate the wedding of Louis, Dauphin of France, son of King Louis XV, to the Infanta María Teresa Rafaela of Spain in 1745 (according to Wikipedia). While I have watched operas before, it is not a genre that I am used to. Thus while I enjoyed the music and the spectacle, I thought the plot dragged agonizingly slow. Voltaire didn't like it, also according to Wikipedia.

Selena, do you have any background for this? The thing that really makes me wonder is that the main character of the opera is an ugly swamp nymph who thinks she's going to get married to Jupiter. And apparently the RL bride was not supposed to be very good looking? How on earth did the writer dare to do such a thing?

Re: Platée

[selenak]

Agonizingly slow plots aren‘t that unusual for Baroque or early Rokoko opera. (One reason why Lorenzo da Ponte was such an innovative libretto writer was that he used comedia de‘ll arte as a pattern for opera plots instead, and that means there‘s actually lots of witty banter and action going on.) However, while I‘m not familiar with the opera as such, the plot sounds incredibly mean spirited and also tactless as hell, given not who gets married to whom. It‘s not just that the Infanta according to her own entry is looked down on for her red hair, looks wise. It‘s that this marriage is supposed to reconcile the Spanish Bourbon cousins after teenage Louis XV had insulted them mightily years earlier when sending the Infanta‘s older sister, aka his first wife, the adorable moppet, Rokoko edition, back. Him marrying his son to Philippe the Frog‘s younger daughter is supposed to make up for that. So an opera where Jupiter just fakes being in love with an ugly nymph, what the hell?

However. According to wiki, the guy in charge of the wedding festivities was none other than the Cardinal de Rohan. Aka the guy who in the early 1770s as ambassador to Vienna incurred MT‘s intense dislike, since despite being a prince of the church he made no secret of his affairs, and then Marie Antoinette loathed him as well, and then later he was vain enough to get conned by Jeanne de la Motte in the infamous Diamond Necklace affair. (Reminder, de la Motte made him believe MA would be be into him if he bought the necklace for her in secret, faked some love letters from the Queen, arranged for a prostitute doppelganger to meet Rohan in the night in the park, got the necklace, and then Rohan, being very surprised MA still ignored him in public in Versailles, demanded the goods, so to speak, whereupon the whole thing exploded into the big scandal which ruined MA‘s reputation for good when she really had not been at fault.) Basically: Rohan was a jerk, and I‘m completely willing to believe he‘d order such an opera and consider it funny.

Re: Platée

[mildred_of_midgard]

Darth Real Life prevents me from fully commenting in salon (hopefully this weekend), but I saw something about Cardinal Rohan officiating at a wedding and ordering operas in 1745, immediately thought he would have been too young, and wondered if maybe he was being confused by Wikipedia with another of the many, many Rohans. So I checked the Cardinal's own Wikipedia article and see that he was born in 1734. I know they liked giving children offices and titles in Ancien Regime France, but something seems off here...

Re: Marie Adelaide of Savoy - II

[aella_irene]

Duchesse de Berry (that's the daughter of Philippe the future Regent whom he was gossipped to have an incesteous relationship with) deliberately waited to hand her her chemise at the morning ceremony and left her standing basically in the nude. (The Duchesse was miffed because until the Dauphin's death, she and Adelaide had been more or less of the same rank)

How old was the Duchesse at this point? And do you get a sense of whether the incest accusation was political, or if there was something behind it?

(She has long been on my list of people who, were I a time traveller, I would tactfully introduce to contraception.)

Thank you for all this on Adelaide, the poor manic pixie dream girl.

Re: Platée

[aella_irene]

I have the mental image of him standing on a box to conduct the wedding.

Marie Louise Elisabeth d'Orleans, Duchesse de Berry

[selenak]

Re: Incest, it's always worth pointing out that we're talking about social circles who hardly see their kids because other people do the day to do day raising. Philippe the Regent was regarded as a freak already for actually nursing this daughter when she got sick as a child (as in, child, pre puberty), and when he continued to be close to her and spending much time with her post puberty, and simultanously became the most powerful man in France, well, voila rumours. That he indulged her and let her do and say whatever she wanted didn't help. (Rumours aside, it also really wasn't good for her, and I don't mean the casual sex. From what I've read, a case can be made she literally drank and ate herself to death.) Her mother - who was Louis XIV's illegitimate daughter from his affair with Athenais de Montespan - had ignored her throughout her childhood as much as Philippe the future Regent indulged her; when the teenage Duchesse de Berry was fastly becoming notorious, Louis XIV talked to his daughter about this, asked whether she couldn't advise her daughter to show more restrait, and she replied "I don't her any better than you do, Sire, as I took care never to interfere in the raising of my children." (You can see why Philippe the future Regent overcompensated.)

Otoh: this is also a society where you get the impression everyone tried out everything. I mean, Liselotte - who re: other people had that memorable quote about how one guy boasted of having had sex with literally anything that moved, including toads - thought it was all evil rumours by Philippe's enemies, but then these were her son and granddaughter, she would want to believe these were just rumours. In conclusion, I have no idea whether there was any truth to it or not.

Re: age - she was fifteen when marrying the Duc de Berry, sixteen when the Dauphin died, and seventeen when Adelaide died.