December meme: a historical figure who interests me
There are still quite a few open days if you want to ask me something.
Today's prompt, from sallymn, asked for a historical figure I find especially interesting. It was hard to choose just one. On the whole I'm less interested in the personalities of history than in social, cultural, and economic history, but I'm nevertheless intrigued by Alexander the Great; Thomas More; Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey; James I; Edward Carpenter; T. E. Lawrence; Michael Collins (the IRA leader during the Irish war of independence, not the astronaut); and others. (Yes, this list is all men. They're almost all English. Most of them were some shade of queer.)
My answer is not a favorite historical figure, not the one I necessarily think is most interesting overall (how could one judge?), certainly not one I think is admirable. Rather, he's the answer to the question: if I had access to a bunch of good biographies of historical figures, which one would I pick up first right now?
Kaiser Wilhelm II, ruler of Germany from 1888 until he was deposed at the end of the First World War. Imperialist, militarist, reactionary, anti-semite. Arrogant, ineffectual, neurotic, undependable.
I think it's a mistake to put much of the blame for the First World War on Germany--everybody gets a share--but Wilhelm's personality and policies certainly didn't help. His attitude towards the British Empire, which was simultaneously envious, aggressive, and contemptuous, especially interests me. He was a grandson of Queen Victoria (his mother, Vicky, was very close to her mother Victoria), he spent time with the British royal family as a boy and a young man, and as he came to power he rejected his mother with what seems to have been both personal vehemence and deliberate anti-British policy. Yet he always seems to have wanted personal and political recognition from Victoria and especially from her successor Edward VII, his uncle.
His private life was a similar bundle of contradictions. He made a proper royal marriage and had occasional mistresses, but the most emotionally intimate relationship of his life was probably with Philip, Prince of Eulenberg. Their love for each other was so intense that it drew comment, and Wilhelm's happiest times seem to have been spent with Eulenberg, including at regular all-male gatherings and some very wild parties. Eulenberg, although married and the father of eight children, seems to have been what we would now call gay. Wilhelm distanced himself when Eulenberg was caught up in a tremendous politically-motivated gay scandal in 1907, but nobody seems to have been particularly fooled. Except a lot of modern biographers, who think they either have to "defend" Wilhelm against "accusations" of being gay or bisexual, or else say that he was and describe his sexuality as either a symptom or the cause of his emotional problems.
I must close this and get to work, so I'll conclude by saying that if anybody knows of a good biography of Wilhelm, which definition includes but is not limited to not being homophobic, I'd be glad to know about it.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.
Today's prompt, from sallymn, asked for a historical figure I find especially interesting. It was hard to choose just one. On the whole I'm less interested in the personalities of history than in social, cultural, and economic history, but I'm nevertheless intrigued by Alexander the Great; Thomas More; Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey; James I; Edward Carpenter; T. E. Lawrence; Michael Collins (the IRA leader during the Irish war of independence, not the astronaut); and others. (Yes, this list is all men. They're almost all English. Most of them were some shade of queer.)
My answer is not a favorite historical figure, not the one I necessarily think is most interesting overall (how could one judge?), certainly not one I think is admirable. Rather, he's the answer to the question: if I had access to a bunch of good biographies of historical figures, which one would I pick up first right now?
Kaiser Wilhelm II, ruler of Germany from 1888 until he was deposed at the end of the First World War. Imperialist, militarist, reactionary, anti-semite. Arrogant, ineffectual, neurotic, undependable.
I think it's a mistake to put much of the blame for the First World War on Germany--everybody gets a share--but Wilhelm's personality and policies certainly didn't help. His attitude towards the British Empire, which was simultaneously envious, aggressive, and contemptuous, especially interests me. He was a grandson of Queen Victoria (his mother, Vicky, was very close to her mother Victoria), he spent time with the British royal family as a boy and a young man, and as he came to power he rejected his mother with what seems to have been both personal vehemence and deliberate anti-British policy. Yet he always seems to have wanted personal and political recognition from Victoria and especially from her successor Edward VII, his uncle.
His private life was a similar bundle of contradictions. He made a proper royal marriage and had occasional mistresses, but the most emotionally intimate relationship of his life was probably with Philip, Prince of Eulenberg. Their love for each other was so intense that it drew comment, and Wilhelm's happiest times seem to have been spent with Eulenberg, including at regular all-male gatherings and some very wild parties. Eulenberg, although married and the father of eight children, seems to have been what we would now call gay. Wilhelm distanced himself when Eulenberg was caught up in a tremendous politically-motivated gay scandal in 1907, but nobody seems to have been particularly fooled. Except a lot of modern biographers, who think they either have to "defend" Wilhelm against "accusations" of being gay or bisexual, or else say that he was and describe his sexuality as either a symptom or the cause of his emotional problems.
I must close this and get to work, so I'll conclude by saying that if anybody knows of a good biography of Wilhelm, which definition includes but is not limited to not being homophobic, I'd be glad to know about it.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.