by Stuart Bailey Sun Jun 04, 2017 7:15 pm
J Flower wrote:A idea you may want to consider outside of Swashbuckler.
I the main game I also have on occasion had ambassadors learn local language & customs, once again you need to find & employ a teacher for the purpose, if memory serves it took a year.
Can come in useful for ambassadors to Japan & China. Makes a good impression with the local rulers as well.
Method used by Harry Flashman in the books and by Augustus the Strong in game was to find a girlfriend who speaks the local lingo. Not sure if taking a local mistress makes a good impression on not. Probably only if they are French or Italian.
Since most rulers and nobles in this period were brought up learning several different languages as part of the standard education for a Gentleman. I think its reasonable for characters of a higher social class to know Latin & French as well as their local language to a fair standard. With perhaps a little Greek and Hebrew as well.
I seem to recall that Queen Elizabeth of England and James I of England and VI of Scotland were noted for speaking a lot of languages,I think I read somewhere that Elizabeth could be fluently evasive in at least eight. While the Emperor Charles V was said to speak Spanish to his wife (who was Portugese), German to his horses and dogs and French to diplomats and Whores. He also wrote a lot in Latin and growing up in the low Countries could probably speak Flemish & Walloon.
Perhaps a further point to note here that may European Rulers had very mixed families and relations based much more on class than nationality. So Louis XIV for example had Austrian Mother, a Spanish Wife, Italian first Minister for the first part of his reign and a Anglo-Scots-Italian sister in law and that is before we get onto the Girlfriends though here is does seem to have been fairly Patriotic. Anyone know how many languages Louis XIV, William or Orange or James II speak in 1699?