(also, lol the third conspirator. Personally I am totally with the third conspirator, though mad respect for Katte.)
You will never catch me being anything but a live dog, but I love me some dead lions in history and fiction. <3
:(((((( I wonder, like you, whether maybe he didn't want to leave Fritz to deal with his dad alone?
I am surprised more authors haven't proposed this. I've only found one so far. (Admittedly, I'm limited to English sources plus online German sources that can be put through Google Translate. But all the major English sources are working from German sources, so...)
But then I'm finding that biographers tend to be critical of Katte in general, at times when I feel like they should be more critical of their sources. Two of our main primary sources for Katte were people who specifically didn't like him or his influence on Friedrich. Emphasis on how bad-looking he is, for instance, in a way that seems far from dispassionate. So modern sources will just refer to him as a "libertine" or "a bad influence" and I'm like...but what does that mean? Because if you mean gay and atheist, then that's very different than if you mean, say, "squandering his inheritance on gambling" or "disappearing into brothels with total abandon." But no one is ever specific. It makes me very suspicious.
He also gets cast as silly, vain, and ambitious, again based on what I think is inadequate evidence. So for example, it seems that when he and Fritz were BFFs, he ran around name-dropping and telling everyone with great excitement that the Crown Prince confided in him. Our contemporary sources report this with great disapproval. And yeah, he clearly contributed to the vast numbers of people who knew about the fatal escape attempt, and that was not the most street-smart thing to do. And sure, courtiers letting royal favor go to their heads is a thing.
But when our same contemporary sources say that the Prince was carrying on about Katte like a lover with his mistress, and an older, sadder, and wiser Katte at his trial is confessing that he let ambition go to his head...I have another possible interpretation for "Fritz is going on about Katte all the time because he's totally besotted, and Katte is going on about Fritz all the time because he's ambitious." If you look at their actions, they were both doing the exact same thing. Katte painting a miniature of Fritz and carrying it around with him until he died, and not being able to get through a conversation without mentioning how excited he is about him...is consistent with the same infatuation that we attribute to Fritz's behavior! NO ONE (that I have seen) has put this idea forward. It's not necessarily better supported by the evidence than the ambition theory, but ambition doesn't explain being willing to go into exile and willing to stick around and face the music together, either. Nor does spending the last few moments of your life trying to make your prince feel better.
So let's think for about two seconds why Katte may have been casting his actions in the light of ambition at a court martial on which he was on trial for his life, in a place and time where sodomy was punishable by death, oh right because maybe he didn't want to admit he was head over heels in love, right. Also the part where he couldn't exactly say, "I felt sorry for the abusive situation my boyfriend was stuck in and sympathetic to his desires to get the hell out of there." Even the horse's mouth is not a reliable source under these circumstances, is what I'm saying!
So while I realize this is fanon, I do think it's at least plausible that Katte was indecisive about whether it was worth the risk of standing by Fritz, as opposed to the motive that's given in the primary source we have and sometimes blindly repeated by moderns: namely that he wasn't going to flee until his fancy French saddle was done being made, because if you're fleeing for your life, you have to do it in style at all costs. Which makes him look irredeemably stupid. (I do think if there's any truth to this story, it was probably indecisive procrastination. But some authors at least have the decency to speculate that maybe he was busy destroying the evidence instead.)
ETA: I'm not saying no one has ever suggested Katte genuinely loved Fritz. Plenty of people assume that and have positive things to say about his love, loyalty, and courage. It's just that the "and also motivated by ambition" tends to be repeated blindly in ways that I think are just too uncritical.
I mean, I can imagine there was other stuff going on as well, but wow. What do you think were the other things going on?
Haha, well, this is going to have to wait, because I have a looooot of opinions about psychology and trauma in general and Fritz's psychology specifically (which are part fanon, part headcanon), and it's almost midnight here and I must go to bed. But rest assured, my opinions will be expressed in great detail at some point, probably soon. :P
Also, RIP Fritz, d. August 17, 1786, age 74. I'm sorry you never got that therapist and ended up perpetuating the cycle of trauma on others instead. I think you would have turned out a lot more like (a much more musically talented) me in my shoes. (And yeah, a huge part of my fascination and sympathy with him more than with his victims is a strong "There but for the grace of not being born in the eighteenth century to an abusive militaristic father with a big army and then given absolute power go I" feeling.)
no subject
You will never catch me being anything but a live dog, but I love me some dead lions in history and fiction. <3
:(((((( I wonder, like you, whether maybe he didn't want to leave Fritz to deal with his dad alone?
I am surprised more authors haven't proposed this. I've only found one so far. (Admittedly, I'm limited to English sources plus online German sources that can be put through Google Translate. But all the major English sources are working from German sources, so...)
But then I'm finding that biographers tend to be critical of Katte in general, at times when I feel like they should be more critical of their sources. Two of our main primary sources for Katte were people who specifically didn't like him or his influence on Friedrich. Emphasis on how bad-looking he is, for instance, in a way that seems far from dispassionate. So modern sources will just refer to him as a "libertine" or "a bad influence" and I'm like...but what does that mean? Because if you mean gay and atheist, then that's very different than if you mean, say, "squandering his inheritance on gambling" or "disappearing into brothels with total abandon." But no one is ever specific. It makes me very suspicious.
He also gets cast as silly, vain, and ambitious, again based on what I think is inadequate evidence. So for example, it seems that when he and Fritz were BFFs, he ran around name-dropping and telling everyone with great excitement that the Crown Prince confided in him. Our contemporary sources report this with great disapproval. And yeah, he clearly contributed to the vast numbers of people who knew about the fatal escape attempt, and that was not the most street-smart thing to do. And sure, courtiers letting royal favor go to their heads is a thing.
But when our same contemporary sources say that the Prince was carrying on about Katte like a lover with his mistress, and an older, sadder, and wiser Katte at his trial is confessing that he let ambition go to his head...I have another possible interpretation for "Fritz is going on about Katte all the time because he's totally besotted, and Katte is going on about Fritz all the time because he's ambitious." If you look at their actions, they were both doing the exact same thing. Katte painting a miniature of Fritz and carrying it around with him until he died, and not being able to get through a conversation without mentioning how excited he is about him...is consistent with the same infatuation that we attribute to Fritz's behavior! NO ONE (that I have seen) has put this idea forward. It's not necessarily better supported by the evidence than the ambition theory, but ambition doesn't explain being willing to go into exile and willing to stick around and face the music together, either. Nor does spending the last few moments of your life trying to make your prince feel better.
So let's think for about two seconds why Katte may have been casting his actions in the light of ambition at a court martial on which he was on trial for his life, in a place and time where sodomy was punishable by death, oh right because maybe he didn't want to admit he was head over heels in love, right. Also the part where he couldn't exactly say, "I felt sorry for the abusive situation my boyfriend was stuck in and sympathetic to his desires to get the hell out of there." Even the horse's mouth is not a reliable source under these circumstances, is what I'm saying!
So while I realize this is fanon, I do think it's at least plausible that Katte was indecisive about whether it was worth the risk of standing by Fritz, as opposed to the motive that's given in the primary source we have and sometimes blindly repeated by moderns: namely that he wasn't going to flee until his fancy French saddle was done being made, because if you're fleeing for your life, you have to do it in style at all costs. Which makes him look irredeemably stupid. (I do think if there's any truth to this story, it was probably indecisive procrastination. But some authors at least have the decency to speculate that maybe he was busy destroying the evidence instead.)
ETA: I'm not saying no one has ever suggested Katte genuinely loved Fritz. Plenty of people assume that and have positive things to say about his love, loyalty, and courage. It's just that the "and also motivated by ambition" tends to be repeated blindly in ways that I think are just too uncritical.
I mean, I can imagine there was other stuff going on as well, but wow. What do you think were the other things going on?
Haha, well, this is going to have to wait, because I have a looooot of opinions about psychology and trauma in general and Fritz's psychology specifically (which are part fanon, part headcanon), and it's almost midnight here and I must go to bed. But rest assured, my opinions will be expressed in great detail at some point, probably soon. :P
Also, RIP Fritz, d. August 17, 1786, age 74. I'm sorry you never got that therapist and ended up perpetuating the cycle of trauma on others instead. I think you would have turned out a lot more like (a much more musically talented) me in my shoes. (And yeah, a huge part of my fascination and sympathy with him more than with his victims is a strong "There but for the grace of not being born in the eighteenth century to an abusive militaristic father with a big army and then given absolute power go I" feeling.)