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Frederick the Great and Other 18th-C Characters, Discussion Post 31
And in this post:
-![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
luzula is going to tell us about the Jacobites and the '45!
-I'm going to finish reading Nancy Goldstone's book about Maria Theresia and (some of) her children Maria Christina, Maria Carolina, and Marie Antoinette, In the Shadow of the Empress, andselenak is going to tell us all the things wrong with the last four chapters (spoiler: in the first twenty chapters there have been many, MANY things wrong)!
-mildred_of_midgard is going to tell us about Charles XII of Sweden and the Great Northern War
(seriously, how did I get so lucky to have all these people Telling Me Things, this is AWESOME)
-oh, and also there will be Yuletide signups :D
-
luzula is going to tell us about the Jacobites and the '45!-I'm going to finish reading Nancy Goldstone's book about Maria Theresia and (some of) her children Maria Christina, Maria Carolina, and Marie Antoinette, In the Shadow of the Empress, and
selenak is going to tell us all the things wrong with the last four chapters (spoiler: in the first twenty chapters there have been many, MANY things wrong)!-
mildred_of_midgard is going to tell us about Charles XII of Sweden and the Great Northern War(seriously, how did I get so lucky to have all these people Telling Me Things, this is AWESOME)
-oh, and also there will be Yuletide signups :D
Re: Königsmarck and Hannovers
Huh, that story about Queen Victoria does rather make it evident how political the whole thing is! Interesting that Melbourne got the job of explaining it to her; makes sense that he'd be the one who could actually do it. But it seems like that would have been a funny conversation between Peel and Melbourne, or whoever convinced him to do it.
Re: Königsmarck and Hannovers
Not on the same scale. I mean, evidently she would have had servants, ladies' maids, dressing women, etc., maybe also readers and musicians, depending on her cultural inclinations, but she would not have had the same kind of representative job a Queen had, and definitely no ladies-in-waiting or ladies of the bedchamber. However, naturally the other noble ladies (and gentlemen) would have made a point of befriending her or at least to win her as a patron so they could win lucrative offices and possibly estates through her. This was an option with a German mistress like Melusine, too, but with someone like Sarah Churchill, you'd have known her and her family and her husband's family for eons, their alliances, their strengths and weaknesses. Melusine von Schulenburg and G1's half sister Sophia von Kielmannsegg were completely new factors, and you had to polish up your French to even talk to them, which evidently not a lot people managed to do well enough to figure out how the later was related to G1.
(With G2's English mistress, remember that at first some people did think of cultivating her with a sigh of relief, whereas Sir Robert Walpole, future PM, was smart enough to bet on the right horse from the beginning, i.e. Caroline, as he could see where G2's affection and trust truly were.)
One thing Horowski keeps pointing out is how relatively monocultural the British nobility was as compared to the continental European nobility who was related across countries and often took jobs and offices across countries as well. The Jacobite exiles being an obvious exception to this rule, hence James Keith first working for the Russians and then for Fritz. However, post-Hannover takeover, another trend started which did not make the British aristocracy very happy: for Britihs princes to marry German princesses. The current Queen's Dad was the first one to marry a British aristocrat since G1 got crowned. And all the rest except for Victoria's son Edward/Bertie who had married a Danish princess married Germans. Wilhelmine's childhood including "how to be a future Queen of England" training (including English language, history) became fairly typical for every female German aristocrat just in case even without SD as a mother throughout the 19th century.
Bedchamber Crisis: see the wiki entry here. I had misremembered a bit; Robert Peel actually refused to form a government if the ladies weren't switched, so Melbourne remained PM for a while longer, but in the subsequent year Victoria married Albert, the next election was pro Tory as well, and this time Victoria did as asked. (Victoria: also marrying a German.) (Without whom you wouldn't celebrate Christmas with nice Christmas trees. *g*)
The Bedchamber Crisis scene from the tv show Victoria, first season: Victoria refuses Sir Robert Peel's request.
Re: Königsmarck and Hannovers
That may have been true, but note that Melusine could at least read and write English by 1720, as evidenced by her correspondence, and Hatton said she "wrote well" in English. I'm not sure about speaking, but Hatton recounts the following anecdote about her and Sophia von Kielmannsegg. The context is "How much English did G1 know, anyway?"
Lady Cowper, in the early portions of her diary from George's reign, invariably quotes the king's remarks in French; but in 1720 she records an English sentence which – it seems to me – must be a straight quote since it has a wrong plural of the kind often employed by Germans then and since. The topic of her conversation with George was the Townshend-Walpole return to the king's ministry and the sentence, a somewhat grumpy one, runs as follows: ‘What did they go away for? it was their own faults’. That faulty plurals of this kind were a common error among contemporary Germans in England is shown by the following, probably apocryphal, story. Melusine and Sophia Charlotte shared a carriage which was stopped by an unfriendly mob. The following exchange then took place. La Schulenburg [that's Melusine,
Hatton says it's probably apocryphal, but the fact that it exists at all means either it was made up by someone who didn't know them at all, or they could speak some English, and the anecdote was made up on the basis of their English mistakes.
Whether Melusine learned any of her English before moving to England, or whether this only came after, I don't know.
Re: Königsmarck and Hannovers
Heee. It's a good story, you can see why people told it even if it wasn't true...
Re: Königsmarck and Hannovers
The TV scene really does bring it across, both how Victoria thought it was a nonsensical request and how Peel was bewildered that Victoria could think it was a nonsensical request.