Smol Re-enactment Events At -20 Something Degrees Celsius Are Very Fun, I Can Attest.

Smol re-enactment events at -20 something degrees Celsius are very fun, I can attest. 🤭

At least, the scenery was magnificent! I love snowy winters with all my heart.

A magical sight indeed. ❄️

Maria Theresa’s contemporaries already praised (...) her “manliness of soul,” her virilità d’anima. Some even called her a “Grand-Homme”; “in the attractive body of a queen” she was “fully a king, in the most glorious, all-encompassing sense of the word.” Later historians reprised the theme, describing her as a “man filled with insight and vigor.” That a masculine soul could reside in a female body had long been a commonplace, albeit one used less to elevate women than to cast shame on men. Praising a woman for her manly bravery or resolution, her masculine courage or spirit, served above all as an indirect criticism of men (…) When a woman is said to be the better man, this casts a devastating judgment on all her male peers. The key point is that calling an exceptional woman like Maria Theresa a “real man” consolidates the sexual hierarchy rather than calling it into question. Such praise assumes that masculinity is a compliment and that the male sex is and remains superior.

For the eighteenth century, a period when the dynastic principle still largely held sway throughout Europe, there was nothing especially unusual about a female head of state. While a woman on the throne was perceived even then as less desirable, she was not yet a contradiction; the spheres of the public and the private, politics and the family were not yet categorically distinct. Maria Theresa’s contemporaries already found it remarkable that a representative of the lesser sex could wield such power. But they did not regard her rule as entirely anomalous: she was “a woman, and a mother to her country, just as a prince can be a man and father to his country.” Her rule proved that “the greatest of all the arts, that of governing kingdoms, is not beyond the soul of a lady.” What was extraordinary, in the eighteenth-century context, was less the fact that a woman held the scepter of power than that a monarch, whether male or female, took the task of government so seriously. Princes came in many forms—patrons of the arts, skirt-chasers, war heroes, family fathers, scholars, philosophers—and each prince could shape his everyday life as he saw fit. Very few approached the task of rule with the single-minded dedication of a Maria Theresa. She met the criteria of a conscientious ruler to a remarkable degree, far more than most other sovereigns of the time.

Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara (2020). Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in her Time (translation by Robert Savage)

chuckling giggling hehing cause these two separately and unconnectedly drawn pictures look like:

"you're just a little hater"

"and?"

put together

Metternich: Remember when you said you weren’t going to interfere with my love life?

Wellington, after setting up a date for Metternich and Schwarzenberg: Nope, doesn’t sound like me at all.

Always so interesting to me when I come across a historical figure who was noted to be constantly "in poor health" or "of a weak constitution" or some other shorthand for "they were always falling ill, even when others weren't and there was no obvious trigger for it." it really makes me wonder--how many of those people had what we'd today consider a chronic illness, and how many of them were just suffering from subpar sanitation in the past? how many of them had what could reasonably be considered a disability as opposed to just living in a time without modern medicine, and the people around them just couldn't diagnose them because the diagnosis didn't exist yet? this is something that I think about constantly btw

Can’t resist an urge to temporally act as that annoying individual who wants to intervene just because “what about 19th century men depicted in the exact same manner and are there even any at all” ?

It seems especially relevant after our recent visit to the State Historical Museum, where we were lucky enough to locate a portrait which suits the theme of “an empire-styled person with the harp” perfectly. ✨

It’s a portrait of a young gentleman drawn in 1801 by the Austrian portraitist Ludwig Guttenbrunn (1750 - 1819).

One of their many protégés, he worked for a while for the most prominent Hungarian dynasty in the Habsburg’s monarchy, Esterházy de Galántha, then travelled and studied a lot in Italy and England, until in 1795, on the recommendation of the Russian envoy in London, he moved to Saint Petersburg and later to Moscow.

Through years he was able to depict a fair amount of Russian noblemen and women, including this charming young man, Nikolay Mikhailovich Gusyatnikov, who originated from a wealthy family of merchants, highly regarded in Moscow, and lately became the first one in his family to be elevated to the noble dignity thanks to his military service.

Women playing the harp during the Napoleonic era, early 19th century