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

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: Platée

[aella_irene]

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

Re: Platée

[luzula]

Thanks for the context! Even with the unresolved question of which Rohan it was, someone was clearly being a jerk...

Re: Platée

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yeah, this adds to my suspicion that it was a different Rohan; it was a large, powerful family with many, easily confused active members!

Re: Platée

[luzula]

*boggles again at the multiplicity of Rohans*