1740 and All That

Authors: selenak, cahn
Original discussion: https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/200007.html?thread=4252999#cmt4252999

selenak: So, at fail fandom anon, they have this "am I the asshole?" meme where a fictional (usually emotionally clueless) character asks this question in universe. I thought this was made for the Hohenzollern (and many of their social circle), so, here we go:

I, m34, was just trying to look out for my bratty younger sibling, m20 - there's this hot guy, total prick tease, whom the brat is swooning about. I might have said the guy has STD and made fun of his everything, and now the brat isn't talking to me anymore, when I was just being concerned for his health! AITA?

I, f55, always wanted the best for my children, especially when it came to their marriages. Now my oldest daughter looks at me as if I'm a madwoman just because I told her she should treat her new husband like her brother and not have sex with him so we can still annul this wretched marriage she should never have agreed to in the first place! She knows how much this means to me, and yet she betrayed me this way, she should be grateful I'm still talking to her at all! AITA?

I should have known this would happen, but: here I am, making some money on the side while providing heroic beta-reading services and writing my own stuff and defending an unfairly attacked guy against a shitstorm - and what happens? The guy who's been hitting on me for 16 years before I finally agreed to move in with him all of a sudden leads the shitstorm, attacks me while he's at it, burns my latest masterpiece and has me arrested while complaining to all our mutual friends that IATA!!!!!

cahn: Now my oldest daughter looks at me as if I'm a madwoman just because I told her she should treat her new husband like her brother and not have sex with him so we can still annul this wretched marriage she should never have agreed to in the first place!

omg, lol SD! I am going to say, YTABPAC, an acronym I just now made up that means "you're the asshole but possibly also crazy" :) Because when you put it like that...

As for your third one, he got some replies:
(just to be complete, for mildred:
ESH = "Everyone sucks here"
YTA = "You're the asshole"
NTA = "Not the asshole")

RandomRedditAddict
I can't help thinking there are a heck of a lot of missing reasons here. How is that you "should have known" this would happen? It's a little hard to say without more details, but I'm leaning ESH on this one.

MyActualNameIsGreaterThanThis
YTA. RRAddict's post above has a great point, missing reasons galore. Maybe you were really mean and annoying and made fun of this poor guy behind his back, whose only crime was thinking you were amazing?? And, like, are you kidding me, people don't just get arrested for NO REASON. I bet there was totally a reason, like maybe you STOLE his stuff!!

selenak: So here I, m, am, having a long term affair with the love of my life (m), procreating in my marriage (with f), having an affair with a bimbo (f) on the side, and mentoring this guy who has admittedly exciting future job prospects in my non existant spare time - and then that utter bastard first has sex with the bimbo, then, when I complain about it, dumps me as an mentor! I'll never get over it! His mother totally agrees with me, but the jerk still refuses to apologize - I don't need to ask whether AITA, because I know I'm not!

Here I, m64, was, enjoying my retirement as a PRIVATE CITIZEN, mentoring a few promising young people both in my state of residence and state of (former) employement, when it occured to me that takingon one more young fellow as a protegé might result in a general improvement of affairs for a great many people due to the kid's future job prospects. Now I was intensely familiar with people in his future line of work and let me tell you, most of these are jerks, with a lot of people suffering for it. His father was one of the worst. Any improvement there was enough of an incentive to lure me out of my retirement. Now I might have used a few questionable methods at first, but those prostitutes could use the money, so could various male friends in his social circle, and also, the competitition did the same thing. For a while, we seemed to hit it off and he expanded his intellectual horizon by listening to my reading tips, but unfortunately, the combination of other influences and an admittedly ill advised photobombing let to an enstragement. Well, at least I got a golden knob for a walking stick out of it, but when the kid, once on the job, immediately initiated a hostile takeover of the worst type, I couldn't help but wonder: could I have prevented this? was I the asshole there?

I, m, am a good looking career guy who used to be a in a steady relationship with someone in the same profession. Okay, my superior, but not the ultimate boss. (Could have had him, too, back in the day, if I'd wanted.) Now, maybe I was a bit high-handed when treating most of my s.o.'s hangers-on as the parasites they were, but I was just looking out for him! I mean, we've been through years of a high stress situation together, and now that's over, he's dumping me for some younger bit of fluff? Am I supposed to take that lying down?!!!! Of course I raised holy hell, I mean, who wouldn't, and okay, maybe hitting on his wife wasn't the best tactic, but I know he's been wanting to divorce her for eons. Anyway, the point is: I've been transferred to the back of beyond while the himbo got a gorgeous estate, and I still don't know how that happened. AITA?

I, m, really want everyone to be happy, and can't help it if many of them hit on me. I also want a steady job. Somehow, this evolved into a situation where this woman whom I had pay my travelling expenses thinks we'll live together while the guy in whose house I lived is having a fit because I had dinner with her on my last evening in town. But did either of them get me the job I wanted? They did not! So what's to complain about? AITA?

Some years ago I, m, and my long term companion, f, agreed to put our relationship on a non-sexual footing. AT the time, I thought it was a good idea, what with me being often ill and also way older. Since then, however, I discovered that I still can enjoy sex with a different woman. This doesn't impact on my relationship with my long-term companion, right? I mean, since we agreed to go platonic anyway, and I'm still as attracted as ever by her mind? It's just, there's this good looking younger guy hitting on her these days, and it looks like she's attracted to him, and I can't see that going anywhere good, so I said so, and we had an almighty row, especially after she found out about my other relationship. Okay, maybe I shouldn't have said "it's not like we're married" or "ditch the he-man, he's just after your money", but was that a reason for calling me a love rat and an overrated hack?!? AITA?

I, m41, am a loving family man with a strong work ethic and good Christian values. All I want is for my family to share those, especially my oldest son. To that end, I appointed him the best teachers, ensured he's always supervised and thus does not feel neglected, and spared him the awful stupid lessons I had to endure as a kid. Like Latin and ancient history. All I want in return is for him to be exactly like me, is this too much to ask? But no. He keeps grimacing when I'm around, ridicules all I hold dear, keeps lying to me, gets into debts and in general shows every sign of becoming the kind of lazy slob bound to ruin my life's work! So naturally I took counter measures. Some of them might have been drastic, like sending bad influences away and dragging him in front of two armies, but they were for his own good! Anyone could see that! And now the kid has humilated me in front of Europe by trying to run away, even conspiring with my own employes in order to do so. I might have overreacted when telling his mother he was dead, slapping his sister and telling him his mother doesn't care anymore, but I don't think so. It's just, my other kid, who's usually good as gold, now doesn't want to join my favourite profession anymore. AITA?

cahn:

DerAlteD
NTA. Kid should be more grateful. Maybe the problem is that he doesn't really see how much you do for him. I bet more family time would help, bring him to your nights out with the guys or whatever you do for fun. Or find him a nice girl! That's what he needs. Bonus is that your other kid will see all this and realize that the male authority figures really do know best.

pastorb
Depends on what you mean by "bad influences" -- I hope you're not trying to totally cut him off from his friends, that would be YTA territory for sure.

BearsAreNotTheAnswer
YTA. I just feel like if someone wants to run away, then that's your answer right there, you know?

selenak asked what would have happened if Maria Theresia had taken up Fritz's offer of Silesia in return for defence of her realm against the rest of Europe. In the course of some lengthy speculation, we ended up writing down a lot of what actually did happen. Here are the notes on the factual parts. See the thread linked to for the speculative parts.

mildred_of_midgard: Part of the reason MT was able to come off so well, holding on to everything apart from Silesia, was the same reason Prussia was able to survive the Seven Years' War: Having four enemies doesn't mean they're all super into supporting each others' land grabs. Fritz specifically wanted to keep France, Bavaria, and Saxony from getting too powerful in Germany. Or as Macaulay put it, "He had no wish to raise France to supreme power on the continent, at the expense of the house of Hapsburg. His first object was to rob the Queen of Hungary. His second was that, if possible, nobody should rob her but himself."

Macaulay actually said that before Fritz invaded, it was looking like Europe would respect the Pragmatic Sanction, and that there wouldn't have been a war of the Austrian Succession without him. I was skeptical at the time, but now having dug more into the internal politics of each country, I'm less skeptical. Saxony and France each have reasons not to go to war over Habsburg territory. Bavaria's unlikely to act alone. Spain would have gone to war regardless, but only in Italy. Russia was in support of Austria and the Pragmatic Sanction (and, like, genuinely, not reluctantly),

selenak: One reason why MT - who, it‘s always worth pointing out, was the first female Habsburg to rule not as a regent for a male monarch but as a monarch in her own right - managed to have her authority accepted in her own realms was that nobility and people alike could see she didn‘t fold, that she didn‘t flee, that she wasn‘t dominated by a favourite and/or her husband. As Rillinger points out, the caricatures during the first two Silesian Wars show the changing public perception - at first you have the misogynistic ones, some even with rape imagery (not disapproving of the rapists), and she’s a damsel crying for help, whereas later you have her wearing the proverbial pants instead. I‘m also thinking of all the envoy reports by Podewils between Silesian Wars saying MT is now bossing everyone around and thus showing what‘s under the „attacked woman“ mask. (Meaning she acts like any other male monarch, I suppose.) Would people have let themselves be ordered if she hadn‘t stood up to Fritz? Female rulers perceived as „weak“ usually don‘t end up ruling long.

( Saxony )
( France )
( More France notes )
( Spain )

Bonus Fleury quote describing Fritz during this period:

I confess that the king of Prussia, who is not in this situation [of not being rich or powerful enough for a land grab, like Bavaria], disquiets me more than any other. He has no order in his disposition: he listens to no counsel and takes his resolutions thoughtlessly, without having previously prepared measures suitable for success. Good faith and sincerity are not his favourite virtues and he is false in everything, even in his caresses. I even doubt whether he is sure in his alliances, because he has for guiding principle only his own interest. He will wish to govern and to have his own way without any concert with us, and he is detested throughout Europe.

Write-up by selenak:

Trying to get to meet Voltaire was a must for European travellers not just in his old age, but pretty much since his thirties. It was easier once he had settled down in exile near Geneva, though. If the would be visitor in question was a young unknown like James Boswell, you got encounters such as this one; if, on the other hand, the other party was an 18th century superstar himself, well, then you get volume 15th of Casanova's memoirs. Background the first: Casanova's encounter with Voltaire takes place in 1760 (though he gets Voltaire's age wrong); at this point, Casanova is moderately famous for having managed to escape the The Leads, the notorious Venetian state prison, but he's by no means as universally known as he is today, as his memoirs have not yet been written. Some might even know him as a con man of the Saint Germain and Cagliostro type from his adventures in France. He's decades younger than Voltaire, true, but hitting middle age himself, and about to feel it soon. Voltaire, on the other hand, has been the most famous (French) writer of the age for good while, despite competition; his claim to literary fame is unquestioned, nor is his ability to piss off governments and authorities all over Europe (which is why he has ended up in Switzerland). Background the second: Also worth keeping in mind: by the time old Casanova writes his memoirs, stuck in a dead-end job as a librarian in Bohemia, Voltaire has died decades ago (being controversial even in death, due to the church's unwillingness to bury him in Paris), and the French Revolution has happened, irrevocably changing the world they had both known. For which Voltaire got, depending from your pov, some credit/blame.

On to the first encounter, which has Voltaire doing that thing people still do today, which is meeting someone from a place and automatically assuming they must know someone else from the same place. In other words, Voltaire is playing Six Degrees of Algarotti. To understand Casanova's attitude, bear in mind that while Casanova is, uncontestedly, the most famous 18th Century Venetian now, back then he wasn't; it was none other than, you guessed it, Francesco Algarotti.

( So did Casanova know Algarotti, and if so, how well did he know him? )

( Which is when a discussion of Italian literature becomes mutual show-off in declaiming by heart: Voltaire vs Casanova, it's on! )

(This gets Casanova an invitation to stay for three days chez Voltaire. Sidenote re: Ariosto: given Voltaire uses a simile from Orlando Furioso, from which they've just quoted, in his memoirs when talking about his hate/love relationship with Frederick the Great - who gets called "my Frederick-Alcina", casting Friedrich as the sorceress bewitching men into staying at her palace, I'm completely willing to believe he warmed up to Ariosto. As for everyone's tears, that was the custom of the day. 18th Century: when everyone, especially the men, cried a lot. Bless.)

( Voltaire advises budding author Casanova on booksellers )

(Sidenote: Voltaire was indeed one of the few writers with independent wealth. Which he had not inherited. As a young man, he'd decided that while money without talent was stupid, talent without money was a drag, and thus contrived by various deals, some of which shady, some legal, to make himself a fortune. More about where his income came from - indeed not from his writings - here.)

Casanova finds the time in between Voltaire audiences to have an adventure with three ladies, because of course he does. Then he tries his charm on Madame Denis, about whom he has a far more positive impression than your average 18th century memoir writer:

( Wherein we learn how Madame Denis feels about Frederick the Great and that Voltaire doesn't like losing at backgammon )

Casanova then has more adventures with the three ladies, and proceeds to spend the last of his three days with Voltaire. Alas, though, first they disagree about a book Casanova lent Voltaire, and then they argue politics. Specifically, whether or not humanity is ready for liberty, and what liberty means anyway. Three guesses as to who takes which attitude....

( Game on, Voltaire! )

And thus ended the meeting between two of the most famous pre-French Revolution people of the 18th century.

Author: selenak
Original discussion: https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/166113.html?thread=1700321#cmt1700321

( Ficlet )

This is a write-up by selenak of Isabel Grundy's biography Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment.

( Main write-up )

( Supplements )

Okay, here's the Algarotti summary! His life and his interactions with Fritz, as gleaned from a dissertation plus their correspondence. With apologies to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who is much cooler than she comes across as in Algarotti's story.

Based largely on a dissertation about Algarotti, which is the only monograph-length English work on him, and almost the only monograph-length work about him, period.

( Algarotti )

One thing to keep in mind about all this is that the dissertation in question is specifically about networking techniques in the intellectual sphere in eighteenth-century Europe, with Algarotti as the case study. It's not a bio of Algarotti. So the whole focus is his job search. Aside from that love triangle with Hervey and Wortley Montagu, which the author depicts as a ruthless endeavor solely motivated by the need to get a good-paying position in London, you get no sense of Algarotti's personal life. So if Fritz was ever more than a paycheck to him, you're not going to get it out of this dissertation.

Another interesting point: Algarotti seems to get up to relatively little after 1753, compared to his extremely detailed and eventful career up to that point. Both the dissertation writer and various Fritz biographers are like, "Well, maybe he was as sick as he said he was. You know, he did die 11 years later. But actually we think he was just trying to get away from Fritz."

But not only does he stay the hell out of Prussia (which, granted, I'm sure his decision to be sick in Italy instead of in Potsdam was motivated by the whole Voltaire/Fritz implosion plus general Fritz-ness), but his output and activity seem to decline, and what he does produce does seem to correlate with gaps in his complaints about his health. That can't be all Fritz.

Poor everybody. /o\

---

( Some post-writeup discussion )

Context for the prism metaphor: optics (Newtonian optics specifically) was one of Algarotti's main interests, and one of his main accomplishments was reproducing the experiments that backed Newton's findings and publicizing his results. He was the first person in Italy to be able to reproduce Newton's results. Other people had failed and concluded Newton was wrong. Algarotti got his hands on some really high-quality prisms and reproduced the results.

( On Algarotti and polymathy )

More pictures of Algarotti's tomb:

For scale
The corridor
The courtyard of the cemetery