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: Meaning of "von"

[selenak]

You know, when it comes to a portrait of Peter, my own secret hope is that Knobelsdorff did a sketch somewhere and it’s among his papers, just not identified (yet) as Peter von Keith. After all, we know he did the occasional portrait (including the EC liked best of Fritz), and they were friends.

Sketches

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ooh, good call! Maybe so!

I also seem to recall we have what may be the only surviving identified letter from Fritz to Knobelsdorff, thanks to felis? I would still like to get that information out there into the world, which reminds me I was going to contact Dr. Martin Engel now that I've finished the deciphering I'm going to do. He wanted to know what happened to Knobelsdorff's library after Peter died, and wrote, "Unfortunately, not much is known about Lt. Col. von Keith, so the trail of Knobelsdorff's library quickly runs out."

I don't have abundant data, but I have some! And maybe he has information about unidentified Knobelsdorff sketches.

Speaking of sketches, I keep meaning to send a couple to you and Cahn. I don't want to post Knyphausen papers online without their permission, but there are two sketched-out caricatures of Peter's sons: one of Karl Ernst and one of both Peter's sons in 1763. No, I don't know who drew them, but someone held onto them until Karl Ernst died in 1823. Given how little was preserved from the Keith papers, mostly only the official documents, plus correspondence from famous people, I wonder if someone important sketched this!

Can't be Knobelsdorff, as he's dead, but...any guesses?

ETA: Having a closer look, I think the placename is "Gottn", which might be short for Göttingen, which is where the boys went to university 1760-1762. The date seems to be 1763, but close enough. So maybe it was a schoolfriend, not anyone famous--although of all the things to survive 60 years, I'm surprised a random school sketch was one of the few to make the cut. Maybe a schoolfriend became famous!

Anyone famous at university in Göttingen ca. 1763?

Re: Sketches

[mildred_of_midgard]

I should also add that my first reading of that word, going purely on the handwriting, would be Halle, only I have zero evidence either boy ever went there, much less when they were 18 and 20. So I tried really hard to make it Gottn., but that requires a bit of imagination. Without any other evidence for how this person forms their letters, I can't tell an 'e' from an 'n' or an 'a' from an 'o'*...but that is a pretty legit capital H (although as prinzsorgenfrei points out, anything goes with capitals) and no umlaut on the first vowel, and the t's aren't crossed (but then, they don't have to be)...so...Halle would have been my first reading.

It's also worth noting that I'm relying on a very unreliable secondary source for the sons' education (other than I know they went to Göttingen in 1760 because Lehndorff says so), and Halle is not out of the question.

* There are multiple ways of forming 'a'--this would be one of the less common ways, but not unprecedented.

TLDR: Halle or Göttn. take your pick!