cahn | Opera for Beginners (Part 3 of 3)

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Opera for Beginners (Part 3 of 3)

I talked about Opera for Beginners for my family reunion talk and used much of the advice I was given here, thank you! :)

-I brought speakers, because there isn't much use in giving an opera talk if you can't hear the music! The hilarious thing was that I was not the only one who had audio/audiovisual components to my presentation, but I was the only one who had brought speakers. I had been a little bitter about lugging them all around Montana, but less so when they turned out to be broadly useful :) What was more irritating was that after they worked fine when I tried them out in my office, they didn't work at all for a while when I was trying to give the talk. Finally my cousin's teenager, who was acting as unofficial tech support, suggested rebooting as a last resort, and of course that worked. Sigh.

-A couple of people mentioned talking about where one might go looking for opera. My biggest recommendations to a newbie are the following:
1.The Chandos Opera in English CDs, without which I would still hate opera today. I highly highly recommend all the Mozart ones, particularly the da Ponte operas (Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte), and the bel canto comedies (e.g., Barber of Seville, The Elixir of Love), and dis-recommend their Verdi except Don Carlos (for some reason Verdi tends to come out a bit muddled). Their French opera also seems to be very good, and I absolutely adore their Eugene Onegin (which stars Thomas Hampson and Kiri te Kanawa).

2. Met On Demand, which comes with a free 7-day trial. People who know a lot about opera rag on the Met for not being adventurous in its staging and concept, which, fair, but for a beginner, in my opinion, that's exactly what you want, and you can't do better than the Met for gorgeous staging and costumes, great singers, and great videography, which I didn't even know would affect me until I started watching a bunch of these... and... it does actually make a huge difference when watching video. (Watching live is, of course, different.)

-I showed several clips, one of which was a 3-minute clip of Kaufmann/Hampson/Salminen in the auto-da-fe scene from Don Carlo. (Alagna/Keenlyside/Furlanetto is still the whole version of Don Carlo I would recommend, but for auto-da-fe out of context I thought the former was better, not least because it didn't have a giant weeping Jesus in the background.) I explained beforehand the background about how Posa is Prince Carlo's best friend but also has the relationship where he has sworn fealty to King Philip. (I have uploaded the clip here (google drive video clip, ~3 minutes) --

mildredofmidgard, I know music/opera is Not Your Thing but this is the moment in Don Carlo I was talking about, check it out) and my big triumph, as far as I am concerned, is that when the clip ended my cousin cried out, "Oh, that's so sad!" MY WORK HERE IS DONE.

-My other great triumph was that E was curious about what I said about Don Giovanni. Being her, she could not care less about Don G himself -- she was perfectly content with a limited understanding that he was the Bad Guy -- but she was particularly interested in what I said about Don G coming to a sticky end, and asked about it the next day. Once I further explained that there was a singing statue and that in many productions Don G disappeared into flames with the statue at the end, both she and A really wanted to watch it, so that afternoon we all snuggled up on the couch and watched "Don Giovanni, a cenar teco" (this one with Rodney Gilfrey) and they still ask for "the statue opera" on occasion. (That's the only part they have watched or are interested in watching, or that I am interested in playing for them, until they're a lot older. Well, okay, "O statua gentilissima," but that's along the same lines.)

-Since you guys said it was fun for people to recognize music in opera, another short clip I showed was from Thais, because, well, I don't know if it's all Koreans or just my particular family, but all our extended relatives LOOOOOVE Meditation from Thais and all of us cousins who play violin (or piano, if that cousin happened to be near one of the cousins who played violin) have had to play that song approximately six million times, every time a third cousin twice removed came to visit. There was much groaning when the melody was revealed :)

-It turns out my aunt (uncle's wife) really likes opera!!!! We are already making plans to go to Salzburg or Italy sometime and watch opera :D (well, pipe dreams right now... I certainly wouldn't go until my kids are older)

(Part 1 was where I asked for help; Part 2 was an outtake of this post about emoting in opera)

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Friiiiiiitz! :P

Haha, #1 most frequent reaction of contemporaries and posterity to everything he said or did.

I still love you, Fritz. *hugs* But I'm not going to pretend your flaws weren't larger than life too.

(I will say I'm less critical of how he treated his wife than a lot of biographers I've read. There are specific things he said and did to her that I will agrees are no-nos, but there are multiple occasions where some biographer exclaims that such-and-such was unconscionably cruel, and my reaction is, "Okay, but, like, it really wasn't.")

Interesting! All right, spill, what were these things :P

Ha, I thought you might ask. Well, the two that come to mind are that he publicly fat-shamed her at one point, which of course is not cool, and then there was the whole using her as a catspaw to get money to cover his debts and then totally ditching her the moment he was king (I mean, ditching every European court that had ever intervened for him or given or loaned him money while he was prince the moment he became king was totally his MO, there was nothing personal there, but yeah, Fritz, sigh, you again).

Like, I would be totally down with the part where he just ignored his wife and kept her at arm's length his entire life, because he was forced into that marriage, and he did make everyone else treat her respectfully like a Queen, and he gave her a palace and money and avoided her (which I think we can all agree was doing her a favor), and she's super not his type (unintellectual, not a great conversationalist, very pious). So unlike most historians, his total ditching per se I will not even criticize. I will back him 100% on that. But the part where he used her first...yeah, it's a thing that abuse victims do; if you have *any* power in an ongoing abuse situation, you take it just for sheer survival's sake, I get it. But both using her and then ditching her, I'm sympathetic but only up to a point.

Oh, and one of the things that Fritz admitted to being very unforgiving of in his later years was other people being ungrateful for kindnesses he showed them. Which, Fritz, *cough*.

But everyone seems to get really up in arms about him blatantly not inviting her to parties where she should have been invited and making her take second place to people he liked better, and I'm like what is this, SEVENTH GRADE? (I mean, it's European royalty, so, yes, kind of. :P) Of course he didn't invite her to parties, he didn't like her! He didn't ask for this fucking marriage, he was (perhaps just to make a point) throwing around phrases like "I will kill myself if I have to go through with this" when he was 20, and then he let her stay queen and have at least some of the job perks, let him ignore her when he can, sheesh! I mean, yes, ideally divorce, but ideally no forced marriage in the first place, and there were political considerations, and I honestly don't think in the 18th century she would have been better off a divorced woman. I think she got the best outcome she was going to get, given the circumstances. So everyone lay off him a little, I say. :P (I'm infinitely more critical of him forcing political marriages on other people than trying to sidle out of his own.)

And then in the last month or so of his life, when his health was absolutely wretched and he had one foot in the grave, his last letter to her was this two-line note basically saying, "Thanks for your warm wishes regarding my health in your last note; unfortunately, my fever prevents me from replying to you at greater length," and people come DOWN on him for this, and I'm just like "I KEEL YOU, you fucking historians."

Unlike Mitford, I will not cut FW or Fritz slack for beating people up physically or verbally when they were having a bad health day and criticize other people for not giving them enough sympathy, but *even FW* I will cut all the slack in the world for any short but polite replies he may have written Fritz while in the grips of a fever with 18th century medical treatment, sheesh.

Edited 2019-09-16 05:54 (UTC)

So now I want to know more about Elisabeth Christine :P All I know about her is that you have mentioned that she said lots of nice things about Friedrich :) Did she actually like him? Did she think that she got a reasonably good deal? Was she scared of him? Does anyone actually know??

Ask and ye shall receive. :D

Actually, I have very little data, but I'm willing to speculate for hours on the data I have. :P

selenak may have more data points, and if so, I will evaluate each one on its own merits and see if I need to revise my opinion. From the data that's been presented to me, though, my evaluation is that Fritz was not actually abusive to her in the way that he was to people like his brothers and successor-nephew.

The *situation* of living in an absolute monarchy, being married off at 17 for political reasons, and having your entire life be subject to the whims of your husband and his family is a form of institutional abuse, but I distinguish between that and "Fritz was personally awful to her." He was personally awful to a lot of people, not to her in any kind of standout way that I have seen. He belittled her, yes, and knowing him there are other examples like the fat-shaming where I would have to tsk at him, but much of the belittling I've seen was of the sort where I feel like you're allowed to have and express opinions about people you don't like.

I keep seeing people observe that he made demeaning comments about her and she never did about him, ergo they dichotomize husband and wife along saint/demon lines. But I'm taking each comment on its own and agreeing or at least sympathizing with some of his, so I refuse to buy into that dichotomy. Nor, as stated above, do I consider social snubbing to be abusive or cruel. (As you know, I myself have cut off my entire birth family one by one and two by two over the years. ;) ) If he were her parent, that would be a completely different matter.

All I know about her is that you have mentioned that she said lots of nice things about Friedrich

So most of what I know about her personally is that she was unassertive/shy, conformist, nice, and warm-hearted. Mostly as queen she was known for keeping a court that observed religious practices with every evidence of real sincerity (she herself wrote religious works) and for engaging in charitable acts. The people who gravitated to her seem to have genuinely liked her. She was politically isolated, but at the center of a social circle that revolved around the Queen and her values and etiquette.

Her court presented itself as something of an alternative to Friedrich's, which was all "mock religion at every opportunity, read lots of secular books and argue about philosophy and science, yay statues and paintings of naked men everywhere, no women allowed." There was a specific class of upper-class educated liberal people, mostly but not exclusively men, to whom that felt awesome and forward-thinking, but to the majority of society, in, say, Berlin, it was still the eighteenth century and you were supposed to be Protestant and heterosexual and not flout so many expectations quite so blatantly. So a lot of people really liked having a queen who behaved herself, as opposed to Mr. "I do what I want, deal with it" at Sanssouci.

With all eyes on Fritz and EC being so isolated, it's hard for me to tell what went on in her head, and I haven't read her correspondence, so the only picture I get of her from here is "willing to be an upstanding eighteenth century woman, conforming to societal expectations and subordinating her own wishes to those of the men in power around her." The role she was forced to adopt may have been fairly ego-syntonic for her, or she may have been silently getting an ulcer, I'm not sure.

Did she think that she got a reasonably good deal?

Reasonably, maybe. Not totally. She was clearly very disappointed at not getting to be a real queen, especially right after Fritz inherited and his first move was "Don't get any ideas, Mom still outranks you socially. (Love you, Mom!) Politically, you're both impotent from here on out. Bye!" Plus I think it's really clear EC wanted a loving marriage, but, also she had married into the Hohenzollerns, so was she aware it could have been way worse? I'm sure she was! I think as time went on she managed to put together an environment that she was reasonably comfortable in and to count her blessings.

I'm not sure how she personally felt about children. She went around saying that Providence had not blessed her marriage with children (aka "I know what you're all thinking, but Fritz TOTALLY slept with me"), but with women being basically receptacles for offspring at the time, of course she would have to say that. It would have looked just as bad for her, maybe worse, if she'd gone around announcing that her husband didn't sleep with her. (Some women would have done it anyway, as part of a battle of wills. She was not the battle of wills type.) Maybe she genuinely wanted babies, maybe society told her she should but she was secretly relieved to have a sexless marriage, maybe she believed society that she wanted babies, maybe some combination of the above, I don't know.

Did she actually like him? Was she scared of him?

I'm going to say, certainly not in the way that SD was afraid of FW. EC was isolated, her position was wholly dependent on the people around her (FW, SD, Fritz), and I think she was very careful not to gratuitously piss anyone off. Plus it must have been impossible to miss how easy that was to do with Fritz. So I think she was, consciously or unconsciously, signalling "I am not a threat to you! I am not a threat to you!" more or less constantly in his direction for fifty-three years. She comes across to me like Sansa among slightly less bloodthirsty Lannisters.

But she also continued to say nice things about Fritz for the ten years after he died. She eulogized him pretty heavily, in fact. Which is not evidence in and of itself: starting in 1740, Fritz proceeded to spend forty-six years doing the bog-standard abuse survivor Stockholm Syndrome thing of talking about how great Dad was and how the abuse wasn't that bad. But if her only concern was placating the absolute monarchs around her...talking up Fritz maaaay not have been the best way to ingratiate herself with his successor. But Fritz took care of her in his will and insisted that everyone had to continue to treat her with the same respect he made them treat her when he was alive, and FW 2 seems to have been more cool with that than with respecting Fritz's wishes about the disposal of his own body, so EC had reason to keep saying nice things about Fritz after his death.

My impression is that there's this phenomenon whereby proximity to Fritz and getting along with Fritz are in inverse proportion, and that EC probably benefited from her lack of proximity. He was really easy to hero-worship from a distance. I mean, from the vantage point of 300 years and several thousand miles, I think he's great! It should be pretty clear by now that I wouldn't make friends with him irl. :P

I think, if he was going to be forced into an incompatible marriage, someone like EC without a strong will was probably the best bet; I think her constant projecting of "I am not a threat!" worked; we know he made sure she was treated right by other people and largely left her alone himself while letting her do her own thing; and so I think she always had some positive feelings mixed in with the inevitable disappointment. I don't personally think it was solely fear driving her. I think she really wished they could have a closer relationship, because there were things she genuinely admired.

Haha, religion must have been a big sticking point, but she had a tendency to blame people around him rather than him, so I'm betting she spent most of her time wishing she could "save" him, and a lot of time praying for God to be forgiving of him and to help him see the light. (I'm making the last part up, but it's hard to imagine anything else. Something like how Don Corleone's wife is always praying for his soul, albeit without the lifelong partnership.)

Also, one thing that occurred to me just now: EC married Fritz in 1733, at the tail end of his woobie days, when he was still at his father's mercy and marrying her as his get-out-of-jail-not-exactly-free card. The worst of the stories would have been very recent and definitely floating around (the 1730 escape attempt + Küstrin/Katte affair was a big scandal throughout Europe). Most people who knew him during this period felt sorry for him, and this may have shaped her view of him for life.

This is not to say that she would have blamed the abuse on FW, whom she seems to have gotten along with and been more compatible with than her husband. Based on things she and other people at the time said, I imagine she would have blamed people like Keith and Katte for alienating father and son and felt sorry for them both. She also got to hold court alongside Fritz for several years while he was Crown Prince and doing his own thing as best he could, and he was willing to have enough to do with her to 1) placate Dad 2) get money. It was only once Dad died and left him a ginormous treasury that the infamous visit-the-wife-for-dinner-on-her-birthday tradition began.

So my take is that it's quite likely that EC spent her life trying to keep Fritz--I wrote "happy," but maybe "calm" is more accurate--for the sake of her own well-being, admiring him from a distance, and making excuses for him around the parts she didn't like, which were legion.

Also, thank you for continuing to ask me questions in my fandom. It's been a mental lifesaver through this whole medical process that you know about, where my brain won't let me do much but it'll let me ramble about Fritz on autopilot even when I can't concentrate. I got the notification of this question as I was starting to emerge from Side Effect Land earlier today, and it definitely helped me come out of the bad mood swing place. <3

Edited 2019-09-18 01:38 (UTC)

So now I'm going to ramble ~~for a bit~~ a lot about Katte, just because. That *is* my ship, after all. :D

I wrote about EC above, "I think, if [Fritz] was going to be forced into an incompatible marriage, someone like EC without a strong will was probably the best bet." I was reminded of something I said about Katte early on, namely that I don't have enough data to get a confident sense of his personality, but the way I read him, he may also have been laid back enough to not clash constantly with Fritz, and if so, their relationship probably benefited from this.

Now, I write all these "Katte lives" AU fanfics, and because this is my hurt/comfort fandom, they all end in True Love and Happily Ever After. :D But that's my fandom brain. My historian brain has to wonder how that realistic that would have been in real life. Unknowable, of course. But unknowable answers sometimes still go with interesting questions.

On the one hand, Fritz was notooorious for volatile relationships. Half the time, he got upset and cut off someone he had loved; the other half, people found him too difficult to live with (but often came back for more, sometimes from a distance, because, like I said, he had all those good qualities that made him easy to admire).

On the other hand, pretty much everyone is agreed that watching Katte get executed emotionally fucked him up for life. I haven't seen anyone else mention this, but I personally feel Keith getting sent several hundred miles away because of their relationship at age 16 was like a foreshock before the big earthquake in Fritz's emotional world, and did his chances of passing Interpersonal Relationships 101 no good at all either.

So in a universe without the Katte execution...I wonder. Maybe Fritz is still difficult but less impossible. Maybe he still wants what he wants and wants it now, but he's less likely to jump all over other people for the least thing (or nothing).

Historically, Fritz has a reputation as emotionally cold and aloof, but that's based a lot on the fact that he died alone, after long outliving the people he was getting along with when they died. ETA: it's also based on how coldly he treated people he *didn't* like, plus his deep need for privacy, unusual for an 18th-century monarch. None of which is directly relevant to his chances of a successful relationship with Katte.

I would say that part of him was definitely holding back a lot of the time, and protecting himself, especially later in life, but he simultaneously had a huge and not-to-be-underestimated drive to seek emotional intimacy and get deeply, passionately involved with other people. He expressed more than once his belief that friendship (18th-century passionate friendship, not the modern Western kind acceptable between men) was necessary to make life worth living, and he actively distrusted "lone wolves" like me. :P

So, of course this depends on the exact nature of the AU, but it's possible that in at least some scenarios, he and Katte do end up with a long-term, stable, non-volatile relationship, especially if Katte is as willing to go along with his wishes as I perceive him. Obviously Katte suffered from a severe case of divided loyalties IRL, but if he'd lived to see Fritz king, almost all of that would have resolved immediately in Fritz's favor. Plus we know Fritz did have *some* stable close relationships, they didn't all end in implosions. Admittedly, every time I mention one, I ask myself to what extent the person in question, like perhaps Katte, died before an inevitable implosion. There's a certain amount of blind chance to the timing of implosion vs. death.

But here's an interesting thought I've been having: some of Fritz's implosions were clearly 100% on him, but not all were. Voltaire is only the most notorious example. A lot of Fritz's unstable relationship history may have been due, not just to him being personally difficult to live with, but with the types of people he chose to get involved with, and the dynamics he ended up in.

And here's where I'm going to view Fritz through the lens of my own brain where I think it's relevant to understanding him: his life displays a pattern that I recognize from my own. We are both people who come across to others as very intense, goal-driven, and definite about what we want. We're also both driven by intellectual hunger. And I think Fritz did exactly what I do, which is instinctively be drawn to relationships that feel stimulating and exciting. Relationships with people we intellectually admire, who are also intense, goal-driven, and definite about what they want.

And I was in my early twenties when I realized that these relationships usually escalate into competitiveness, one-upmanship, and generally never being able to let down my guard for one second. I realized that the people I was most likely to get into long-term, stable, emotionally satisfying relationships with were the ones I looked up to less, and could be more chill around. The people I would previously, as a teenager, have made belittling remarks about and shunned. We still have to have enough in common to be able to talk about intellectual interests (no EC for me either). But if I don't want a relationship of constant friction, I have to go against the grain of seeking out the people whose work I most admire for my closest emotional relationships. (You know, as close as it ever gets for me, which is not very. My lack of investment is also why I get massively less upset about the ones that don't work out than did Fritz, who neeeeeded these relationships.)

Critically, I don't think Could-Not-Chill Fritz ever figured that one out. I think he just watched relationship after relationship implode, and got more and more misanthropic about how other people were letting him down and the human species was terrible. Relatedly, Fritz and I also have the same workaholic tendencies; he rationalized his, while I consciously toned mine down with great effort. I *like* workaholism, but I do my best to accept the brain I have, not the brain I wish I had, and it works out better for me. (Fritz was not a happy person. Again and again, I see him trying and failing. Trying to name his palace Sanssouci, deciding he can only be "sans souci" when he's dead. Trying to treat relationships as the most important thing in the world, not succeeding at most of them.) Perhaps relatedly, FW was a workaholic; my parents had good work ethics but were distinctly not workaholics and did not understand my drive.

So, if my reading of Katte is accurate, and if Fritz never gets quite as badly scarred in some AU, maybe they have the kind of successful relationship I've been writing. In a totally fanon but also psychologically insightful way, I've been using my best friend to inspire some of Katte's personality in these fics, specifically the "I'm happy not sweating the small stuff" and "I'm very intellectually curious but not at all driven" traits that I can't relate to myself but can translate from observation of my friend into fic. ;) And while I'm not romantically inclined toward this guy, he's the only person other than my wife I can imagine living with. Before I got engaged and moved across the country, he and I were talking about moving in together as soon as his roommate's financial situation was sorted, and I'm still trying to make something work where he can come be my chauffeur and my "listener". ;)

And so that's my Fritz/Katte ship. :)

Coda: Part of the reason I parse Fritz/Fredersdorf as queerplatonic and Fritz/Algarotti as acted-on-at-least-once (this is wild fanon speculation on my part, I hasten to add!), is that I parse Fredersdorf as one of his most comparatively chill relationships* and Algarotti as one of his more stimulating relationships. And for a possibly asexual gay man trying to figure out his sexuality, the latter might have been more motivating to try. Algarotti is also much more likely, imo, to have reciprocated and been open to same-sex relationships. Against this is the fact that Fredersdorf got in much earlier (1731 vs. 1739). Algarotti may have missed the experimentation window, if there was one.

* It still ended badly! Partly Fritz's fault (the usual "You can't marry a WOMAN, you're married to ME!"), partly (apparently) Fredersdorf's fault, if the embezzlement was real and not something Fritz accused him of unfairly.

Fritz: "Yes, all of you. All of you at Sanssouci are married to ME. Deal with it."

I should clarify that he *let* his friends like Fredersdorf get married, just not without consequences. Like "You're dead to me."

Tooootally unrelated soap opera anecdote: Katte's two half brothers (his mother died young and his father remarried; he was apparently close to his stepmother), who were small children when he was executed, ended up dying in their twenties from a duel they had fought over the same woman. I gotta wonder what went on in *that* family. Fortunately (!), both their parents were dead by this point and didn't have to watch. (Both outlived our poor Hans Hermann.) Actually, I wonder if Mom dying when they were so young contributed to their willingness to kill each other over a woman. I swear Tuchman was onto something with "everyone in the past was traumatized and traumatizing all the time."

Edited (Sorry for all the edits ;)) 2019-09-18 04:20 (UTC)

We are both people who come across to others as very intense, goal-driven, and definite about what we want. We're also both driven by intellectual hunger.

Oh, LOL, I just remembered this anecdote from high school. I was writing an essay for a scholarship or college or some such application, and getting it reviewed by a couple of my teachers. After reading the draft, my US history teacher said gently, "

mildred_of_midgard, there are many fine things about this essay, but I recommend you channel more George Washington, less Frederick the Great."

Me: "How so?" (Thinking, "I haven't invaded any provinces lately.")

Mr. D: "Less arrogance, more humility. I like you the way you are [he really did], but it'll come across better to the committee."

Me: "What? No! Frederick is the best! I won't pretend to be someone I'm not."

I'm laughing so hard right now, you have no idea.

1) I was obsessed with Fritz even back then, to the point where I have multiple memories of talking about him with other people, like even my sister who fricking hated history and learning and everything. She actually knew stuff about him, like how he avoided his wife, because I would never shut up about my interests at any given time.

2) I am not making up the part about having personality overlap with Fritz. At least one knowledgeable-about-history person spontaneously observed the same!

3) I remember thinking at the time, Mr. D picked the wrong example if he wanted to convince me. I can see why he did it, but if he had sat me down and talked about presenting myself to the committee without references to historical figures, or even picked one I was less emotionally invested in, he would have had a better chance of getting me to tone it down a little. Even at the time, I knew he had a point, but he accidentally pushed my fandom buttons and got my dander up. "Fritz is MINE! *grabby*"

Oh, god, I can't believe I'd forgotten this story. I can't stop laughing. It's SO on-brand in every possible way.

Heeeee! Yes :P

*nods* I think this is a very common thing, for people who are intellectually driven to be drawn to relationships that are stimulating and exciting -- I feel like I read somewhere that this is a known relationship pitfall for Asperger's-type-A-ish people (and even if you are not on the spectrum, you certainly have some traits!)

I didn't fall into that particular hole too much (then again, I'm not a super workaholic type, so maybe I had less of a tendency anyway) in large part, I feel, because my mom is a fairly overbearing individual, so it took me one serious boyfriend to figure out I wanted someone who was Not Competing With Me. Now, I did fall... every single time... into the "go for the smartest boy in the room" trap (as my best friend, who is also susceptible to this trap, once put it)... I guess I ended up marrying one of those smartest boys, as well. But I actually super lucked out that D is both the smartest guy in the room and extraordinarily chill about it. (Of course, that comes with other disadvantages, but I was willing to live with those. Huh, I wonder whether your friend and D are similar in some ways. D also spent... many... years in grad school, quite happily. Though he also got a heavy dose of Protestant work ethic growing up, so he understood the need of actually getting a reasonable job after that. He would also not have been happy as your listener :P :) )

I can totally see Fritz falling in love with Katte because, well, adolescent, and Katte just happening to be the right sort of person for him (whereas as an adult, and with more choices, he might have gravitated towards the "unhealthy" Voltaire-like relationships :)

I feel like I read somewhere that this is a known relationship pitfall for Asperger's-type-A-ish people

Interesting! That does not surprise me at all. And now I'm wondering if there's any reason to parse Fritz as on the spectrum. My first guess is no, but deeeefinitely type A, like, named his palace "I would like to have a type B moment from time to time but idk how, HALP." :P

even if you are not on the spectrum, you certainly have some traits!

Indeed, to the point where I used to wonder if I was on the spectrum. Fritz and I probably have in common the fact that we're not on the spectrum but have a few overlapping traits. (I feel like I might have more than he did, but I'll have to keep that in mind and see if I come up with more examples for him.)

Huh, I wonder whether your friend and D are similar in some ways. D also spent... many... years in grad school, quite happily.

17+? Because that's what we're up to with my friend. :P He's actually dropped out and gotten a full-time job, but he's still "working on the dissertation."

It occurred to me when writing that comment the other day that both my wife and my best friend made it as far as working on their dissertations before dropping out of their PhD program. That may be the sweet spot for me with between someone who's got enough interests and intellectual curiosity in common with me for us to connect, and yet is laid back enough that our drives don't start either coming into conflict or leading us in opposite directions.

I can totally see Fritz falling in love with Katte because, well, adolescent, and Katte just happening to be the right sort of person for him (whereas as an adult, and with more choices, he might have gravitated towards the "unhealthy" Voltaire-like relationships :)

This is really interesting and makes a lot of sense! Poor Fritz. My own engagement with Fritz and Katte in my fiction has been that they may not have been Right for Each Other (whatever that means) from the start, but once Katte demonstrated his total devotion in such an unignorable way, Fritz is much more committed to making the relationship work and much less likely to blame Katte for random shit. This is especially true in my a) reincarnation AU, where Fritz remembers Katte dying for him, and b) imprisonment AU, where Fritz inherits and pardons Katte after 10 years in prison.

She comes across to me like Sansa among slightly less bloodthirsty Lannisters.

I was thinking when I wrote this that Fritz is obviously no Joffrey, but then I remembered this exchange between her and Tyrion:

“My father was a traitor,” Sansa said at once. “And my brother and lady mother are traitors as well.” That reflex she had learned quickly. “I am loyal to my beloved Joffrey.”

“No doubt. As loyal as a deer surrounded by wolves.”

“Lions,” she whispered, without thinking.

Fritz as Jerkass Woobie Tyrion, intelligent and ruthless and abused by Dad, hmmmm! And Tywin "I turned my father's bankrupt joke into a well-respected kingdom" with his favorite soldier son, and the unfavorite one whose wife he had gang-raped in front of said teenage son (and even made him participate). Lannisters, Hohenzollerns, potayto, potahto. :P

Ask and ye shall receive. :D

Alternatively, be careful what you ask for, because you may get it--and a bunch of other things to boot!

I wrote this paragraph last night (and then didn't finish the comment until now): So, uh, this is probably going to be an unpopular opinion in this thread, but now I kind of want ALL the fic about EC and how she felt and how she navigated all of this. *deletes part of the comment about Yuletide, because this has now been covered in spades :D *

I really like your headcanon! And of course I know very much less than either of you, but it does strike me as a reasonable extrapolation given the people I know in RL who embody those qualities. And I also like that it sounds like she was reasonably happy, at least as happy as people got in the 18thC :P (Although I definitely get you about saving him! I am absolutely sure that given how you have described her, as pious and sincerely religious (and Protestant -- my understanding is that Catholicism is a bit different on this point, theologically) that it was something she must have worried about a lot.)

Honestly, from my perspective I'm getting the best deal here: I ask simple questions from a point of total ignorance and suddenly I have this whole flood of anecdotes about totally wacko people. I am LOVING this SO MUCH. I am glad it is helpful for you!

So, uh, this is probably going to be an unpopular opinion in this thread, but now I kind of want ALL the fic about EC and how she felt and how she navigated all of this.

I mean, she's definitely not my favorite historical figure. In Fritz's shoes, I would have behaved toward her almost exactly as he did. BUT. Her situation is interesting enough, and I've read enough well-written fics about characters, pairings, and scenarios that didn't initially appeal to me and ended up absolutely loved the fics, and in fact had my whole perspective on the person/ship/scenario changed, that I could easily imagine a fic about her that I would love! (You may notice I also did my best to do her justice in the description, and to be sympathetic to her difficult position despite my personal indifference to her. Both she and Fritz got dealt undeniably shitty hands--like you said, not many people were really happy in the 18th century.) And a take on her where she made the most of her situation and was relieved not to be forced into repeated child-bearing would be a reasonably happy ending. Like you, I'd prefer that to reading about how she was silently getting an ulcer. And on the subject of repeated child-bearing, it's worth mentioning that she lived to be 81, which was pretty damn old for a woman of her time.

I ask simple questions from a point of total ignorance and suddenly I have this whole flood of anecdotes about totally wacko people.

HAHAHAHAAAAA this is true!

You: "What was Elisabeth Christine like?"

Me, 3,000 words later: "And did you know Katte's brothers shot each other fatally in a duel?" :PPP

Well, part of me always responds to people wanting to hear about my obscure interests with a half-disbelieving feeling that it's all too good to be true, but since you're enjoying it, I have to say...

selenak and I sure are delivering!

So I think one of my interests is how women navigated a system where they were essentially powerless :) Elisabeth Christine isn't like me at all and I know very well that in RL I might like her but wouldn't find her particularly interesting (in fact, the way you describe her, she reminds me of some people I know at church that I like quite a lot but we aren't exactly friends because we don't have much to say to one another), but her situation seems very interesting to me.

You may notice I also did my best to do her justice in the description, and to be sympathetic to her difficult position despite my personal indifference to her.

Yes, thank you! :D

Well, part of me always responds to people wanting to hear about my obscure interests with a half-disbelieving feeling that it's all too good to be true, but since you're enjoying it, I have to say...[personal profile] selenak and I sure are delivering!

So I think it makes a huge difference that it's history, which is sort of intrinsically interesting because they were real people, if that makes sense. I would probably not be nearly as interested in obscure other fandoms :D Also they are all TOTALLY NUTS! (And it helps that both you and selenak do wildly entertaining synopses!)

So I think it makes a huge difference that it's history, which is sort of intrinsically interesting because they were real people, if that makes sense. I would probably not be nearly as interested in obscure other fandoms :D

That does make sense!

Also they are all TOTALLY NUTS! (And it helps that both you and selenak do wildly entertaining synopses!)

Well, there's a certain amount of selection bias in that we're here to tell you about the totally nuts parts! (And thank you, we try!)

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Opera for Beginners (Part 3 of 3)

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

Elisabeth Christine?

Re: Elisabeth Christine?

Katte and Fritz (and mildred_of_midgard) psychology

Re: Katte and Fritz (and mildred_of_midgard) psychology

Re: Katte and Fritz (and mildred_of_midgard) psychology

Re: Katte and Fritz (and mildred_of_midgard) psychology

Re: Katte and Fritz (and mildred_of_midgard) psychology

Re: Elisabeth Christine?

Re: Elisabeth Christine?

Re: Elisabeth Christine?

Re: Elisabeth Christine?

Re: Elisabeth Christine?

Re: Elisabeth Christine?