Subtle (Spain & Austria)
Madrid, 1 October 1787
My dear Roderich,
My diplomats recently sent me a drama by a German-speaking poet who is apparently from the duchy of Württemberg. While reading it, I inevitably had to think about you: "I press thee to my bosom, and I feel / Thy throbbing heart beat wildly 'gainst mine own. / And now all's well again. In this embrace / My sick, sad heart is comforted. I hang / Upon my Roderigo's neck!" Does this make me Don Carlos? After all, people say I was a little naïve, just like him. In any case, to me, Mr Schiller's version of my Infante Carlos is distinctly more likeable than this capricious, violent child ever was during his lifetime. Given that, it is perhaps not disreputable to identify with his character.
I do not wish to do you too much injustice, however, for as another poet from the Holy Roman Empire wrote: In the end, both of us are deceived deceivers. I am still uncertain if we were separated by the circumstances or by private interest: your own and that of your lords as well as that of Francis and Louis XIV. Now, I do not suspect either of them to be spearheads for a free Flanders. Still, when thinking of your calculating ways, I recognize my Roerich in Carlos' Roderigo: the knight who sacrificed everything for his political aims, including this high ideal of friendship many of your poets advocate as of late.
Think about it.
Your Antonio
Austria lowered the letter. He could only shake his head in disbelief about the fact that there were still countries who deemed Spain naïve. This subtle form of verbal abuse was surely reserved for former allies, forsaken friends, and divorced husbands.
His bad, then, that all three of this applied to Antonio.
Notes:
Good grief, there's a lot to this. (So much, actually, that I didn't want to translate this ficlet to English—I originally wrote it in German, because both of the quotes are from German works of literature. When sithmarauder posted her new story "The Prince's Grace" and placed a quote from Don Karlos in front of it, I decided to translate this at last.) I'm going to confine myself to the most necessary notes; feel free to ask if questions remain.
When I first heard that Austria's human given name was "Roderich", my initial association was the Marquis de Posa from the drama "Don Karlos" (1787) by Friedrich Schiller. (The translation I used is by R. D. Boylan who apparently decided to render "Karlos" as "Carlos" and "Roderich" as "Roderigo".) The more I thought about it, the more I considered it rather fitting on several layers: The way I see him, Austria is quite calculating—not out of slyness, but due to precaution. He also is astute, sharp-tongued, and eloquent in general. That also applies to the Marquis de Posa; think of his speech to "grant us liberty of thought" (Geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit!) in front of King Philip II. If you then deduce Roderich's name from Gothic rojdan "to speak" and reiks "ruler" and somewhat freely render it as "ruler of words"…
The Don Karlos quote is from Act I, Scene 2, and "deceived deceivers" is from Nathan the Wise (Nathan der Weise, 1779) by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (translation by William Taylor of Norwich): "Does each / Love but himself? Ye're all deceived deceivers" is what the judge from Nathan's Ring Parable (Act III, Scene 7) tells the three sons with the three rings. Antonio uses the Lessing quote as an allusion to the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14). To put it simply, the Austrian Habsburg family and the French Bourbon family argued over the heritage of the last Spanish Habsburg ruler Charles II. In the course of the war, a member of the Bourbon family, Philip V, came to the Spanish throne; the Spanish royal family are Bourbons to this very day.
Essentially, the point is that Schiller's Marquis de Posa, whose given name is "Roderich", is an ambivalent figure. Antonio/Spain transfers this to Roderich/Austria and reproaches him for it with regard to the War of the Spanish Succession.
Schiller's Marquis de Posa advocates the liberty of the province Flanders. At the time of the historical Don Carlos (1545-68), Flanders belonged to the Spanish Empire; after the War of the Spanish Succession, it was part of the (Austrian) Habsburg Empire. It's hardly surprising, then, that the personifications of Spain and Austria are, as Tonio puts it, not exactly spearheads for a free Flanders.