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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: Charles II and Sophia
Anyway: My own assessment back then was based on Beuys' very brief summary. The whole thing is somewhat more detailed in Sophie's memoirs, which I read later. I had gotten wrong that it was getting the creditors off his back when it was about getting money from Lord Craven, BUT unless Hatton as another source than Sophia herself, there "her pride was deeply hurt" is completely personal speculation, plus she presents herself as sceptical of Charles' intentions from the start, and concluding that as nice as he was in person, he must be after the money from her mother's patron, something that then gets confirmed to her from other sources. The passage in the memoirs sounds amused. Could she have been faking amusement decades later (when writing) to hide hurt pride felt at the time? Sure. But, like I said: if Hatton's sole source for the entire episode are Sophie's memoirs, then she's making that speculation up.
(There is also a compare and contrast to how Sophie writes about the oldest Hannover brother, Georg Wilhelm, the one who after getting engaged to her first fobs her off to younger brother Ernst August, swears he won't marry (in writing) and later falls in love with SD the older's mother, producing SD the older. There, you do have a noticable element of pique (hence her including such details as the STD gained from a courtesan in Venice, the entire letter in which Georg Wilhem swears to remain single, and the fact that once she was married to Ernst August, he - Georg Wilhelm - suddenly pounced on her and tried to seduce her. Whereas she's very shoulder shrugging about the early Charles interlude.)
Re: Charles II and Sophia
(hence her including such details as the STD gained from a courtesan in Venice
Oh, one thing Hatton says that does come from a letter is this:
Sophia's amour-propre had been damaged by Georg Wilhelm's rejection but she was given to understand--or convinced herself--that he had contracted syphilis in Venice and was now 'unfit for marriage'.7
7 For her later realization that Karl Ludwig had been told this of Georg Wilhelm to make him consent to the substitution of bridegrooms, see Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 8 April 1666.
I found the volume, and the quote reads:
Je ne sache aussi personne qui ait jamais doute de la vigueur de Georg Wilhelm ; ce qu'on vous a dit n'a este que pour vous faire consentir a mon mariage.
I also don't know anyone who ever doubted the vigor of Georg Wilhelm; what you have been told was only to make you consent to my marriage.