Favourite King of Italy?

[F. Joe Haydn]

I don't know enough about any of these monarchs to answer, as late 19th/early 20th century Europe is out of my purview. But if you asked me about my favorite Duke of Savoy, I'd probably say Victor Amadeus I, the Lion of Susa, because he was relatively pro-French/anti-Habsburg and didn't massacre the Waldensians, which is about as good as can be said for these Savoyard dukes.

[F. Joe Haydn]

I don't know enough about any of these monarchs to answer, as late 19th/early 20th century Europe is out of my purview. But if you asked me about my favorite Duke of Savoy, I'd probably say Victor Amadeus I, the Lion of Susa, because he was relatively pro-French/anti-Habsburg and didn't massacre the Waldensians, which is about as good as can be said for these Savoyard dukes.

You should expand your purview then. And of course if you like pro-France/anti-Habsburg types, then Victor Emmanuel II is definitely your man.

I probably should, but what I'm really ignorant of is ancient history. I know next to nothing about the Greeks and Romans and all that stuff. Someday I imagine I'll read more outside the early modern period, but it will always be my true passion.

My pro-French/anti-Habsburg bias is also more of an early modern thing, and I'm not sure it carries over into the late 19th century. It may sound bad for a left-wing person to say, but the France that I truly love is the Ancien Régime, in all of its great glory and grandness.

[F. Joe Haydn]

My pro-French/anti-Habsburg bias is also more of an early modern thing, and I'm not sure it carries over into the late 19th century. It may sound bad for a left-wing person to say, but the France that I truly love is the Ancien Régime, in all of its great glory and grandness.

Sounds like you're overdue for an appointment with the National Razor, Citizen.

Indeed, M. de Guillotin. But what can I say, the French monarchy is culturally just so much cooler. What composer of the 19th century can match the operas of Lully, what modernist painter can hold a candle to the canvases of Poussin, what architect can build a structure as magnificent as Versailles? There was nowhere for the fine arts to go but down after the exhilarating high of the Baroque, a period which I believe will never be surpassed culturally or aesthetically.

[F. Joe Haydn]

My pro-French/anti-Habsburg bias is also more of an early modern thing, and I'm not sure it carries over into the late 19th century. It may sound bad for a left-wing person to say, but the France that I truly love is the Ancien Régime, in all of its great glory and grandness.

Sounds like you're overdue for an appointment with the National Razor, Citizen.

Indeed, M. de Guillotin. But what can I say, the French monarchy is culturally just so much cooler. What composer of the 19th century can match the operas of Lully, what modernist painter can hold a candle to the canvases of Poussin, what architect can build a structure as magnificent as Versailles? There was nowhere for the fine arts to go but down after the exhilarating high of the Baroque, a period which I believe will never be surpassed culturally or aesthetically.

Eh, as far as painting goes, I'd say David and Delacroix can hold their own. And on a more politico-social note, French history 1789-1914 is one of the coolest and craziest sagas you will find anywhere. You should really give it a look when you have a chance.

David I like, but he's no Watteau. And yeah I'm familiar with the various regimes and revolutions of 1800s France, but to be honest that's just not as interesting to me as the Ancien Regime. Too ideological, or something. Like Henry Adams, I am "a child of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."

My pro-French/anti-Habsburg bias is also more of an early modern thing, and I'm not sure it carries over into the late 19th century. It may sound bad for a left-wing person to say, but the France that I truly love is the Ancien Régime, in all of its great glory and grandness.

Sounds like you're overdue for an appointment with the National Razor, Citizen.

Indeed, M. de Guillotin. But what can I say, the French monarchy is culturally just so much cooler. What composer of the 19th century can match the operas of Lully, what modernist painter can hold a candle to the canvases of Poussin, what architect can build a structure as magnificent as Versailles? There was nowhere for the fine arts to go but down after the exhilarating high of the Baroque, a period which I believe will never be surpassed culturally or aesthetically.

All of which pales in comparison to the beautiful austerity and republican virtue of Revolutionary France.

"He who has not lived in the eighteenth century before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of life." - Talleyrand