cahn | (no subject)

it is like this amazing virtuoso spontaneous thing and whoa

Awww, thank you! High praise indeed.

One little quibble:

Katte was in the process of destroying 1,500 letters when he got caught

Technically, Sophia Dorothea and Wilhelmina (Fritz's mother and sister, also in on the plot) were destroying the 1,500 letters (and destroying was the easy part; the hard part was rewriting them under the gun to be less incriminating) that Katte had forwarded them. We don't know *what* Katte was doing that kept him from escaping when he had the chance.

a) Waiting for his fancy French saddle to be finished, presumably so he could escape in style? (What a primary source who doesn't like Katte has to say. I and others are highly skeptical.)
b) Destroying/hiding his own incriminating evidence, particularly those valuables Fritz had given him for safekeeping?
c) Hoping that the whole thing would blow over, believing fleeing would confirm his guilt but staying put might allow him to talk his way out of it, on the grounds that he *hadn't* actually deserted, and maybe all the evidence of him conspiring with foreign powers could be destroyed in time? <-- Highly plausible, if you ask me.
d) Not wanting to leave Fritz behind alone without even knowing what was going to happen to him?
e) Terribly indecisive about what the right move was? (I mean, he told Fritz he wouldn't go, tried to talk Fritz out of it, went along with the conspiring anyway, waited to get permission to leave Berlin, wouldn't sneak out without permission, told his interrogators that he would have sneaked out if he'd gotten word the Prince had made it out of Prussia safely, packed and got ready to flee Berlin when he knew his arrest was imminent, did not actually flee Berlin despite plenty of warning. Does not strike me as the most decisive personality in general. Probably a very laid-back kind of guy who got along with people as iron-willed as Fritz precisely because he wasn't constantly clashing with them. See for contrast: iron-willed Voltaire.)
f) Some combination of all of the above?

Fritz decided to use himself as an experimental test subject to see if it was entirely possible to do without sleep via the application of coffee WITH PEPPERCORNS AND MUSTARD

Yes and it's WORSE THAN THAT. The experiment was "can 40 cups of coffee totally obviate the need for sleep?" It was unsuccessful. The "coffee is best taken with mustard and peppercorns" thing was LIFELONG. He liked that shit into his 70s. Or drank it without liking it, no one's sure. I can't decide which would be weirder.

WTF, Fritz.

"rationalized sadism"

I'm not sure if you're using "sadism" in its sexual sense here, but just so your readers are clear, I wasn't. I was using the word in its generalized sense of emotional gratification from inflicting pain on others. I totally think FW was power tripping on making his son suffer and at the prospect of finally breaking his will, do not think he was getting off on it (ewww).

Fritz' sister Wilhemina wrote tell-all memoirs about her totally insane family which I am SUPER going to read now, watch this space

OMMMGGGG, I can't wait! Will be watching this space, you can count on it.

Also, there is apparently some subplot involving Russian fanboys that introduces an entirely new cast of people which I am dying to find out about

Well, I can see that we're going to have to share this with you! :DDDD

Trailer: Russians be crazy. (Including Russians who are actually German because European royal intermarriage was such a thing that your poor Don Carlo had 4 great-grandparents instead of 8.)

I'm so glad you're enjoying all this. My best friend is someone who likes to go on long trips with me and encourage me to ramble about my current favorite things. I always get self-conscious about the unlikelihood of other people being interested in hearing at great length whatever I'm currently most obsessed with, but apparently some people find my story-telling style entertaining and informative? Thank you for being one of them. <3 I'm happy to entertain with the slightest encouragement.

Edited 2019-08-20 19:17 (UTC)

Thank you and

selenak! This is amaaaaaaazing, as you said :)

Technically, Sophia Dorothea and Wilhelmina (Fritz's mother and sister, also in on the plot) were destroying the 1,500 letters (and destroying was the easy part; the hard part was rewriting them under the gun to be less incriminating) that Katte had forwarded them. We don't know *what* Katte was doing that kept him from escaping when he had the chance.

lol, thanks, I have added a note to the post :)

I'm not sure if you're using "sadism" in its sexual sense here, but just so your readers are clear, I wasn't. I was using the word in its generalized sense of emotional gratification from inflicting pain on others. I totally think FW was power tripping on making his son suffer and at the prospect of finally breaking his will, do not think he was getting off on it (ewww).

ewwww no, I am an innocent, that didn't actually occur to me! "Rationalized sadism" is a quote from you (that selenak picked up in a later comment) :P But I guess it is a reasonable conclusion given that "sexual hangups" comes right after it...

I saw the note. :)

Okay, I didn't know if you had misinterpreted my phrasing, and I figured if I couldn't tell, others might not be able to, so I thought I'd clear that up. Glad we're all on the same non-squicky page.

Including Russians who are actually German because European royal intermarriage was such a thing that your poor Don Carlo had 4 great-grandparents instead of 8

On that note, talking about all of this, it occured to me that practically every royal in Europe of note in this story, other than the French royals pre-Marie Antoinette, were either German (for a qualification of German that includes Austrians) or half German. I mean, Farmer George was the first of the Hannovers who spoke English as his first language, George I didn't speak a word, and George II only picked it up later.

...but of course, they all wrote to each other in French. :) (Though I find it touching that Fritz, who usually hated the language, actually wrote German letters to Fredersdorf. The quotes in this article sound adorably awkward and tender, I don't think translation can get across how much precisely because the spelling is bad and the grammar is off: "Ich küsse den Docter, wan er Dihr gesundt macht! (...)ich wollte Dihr so gerne helffen, als das ich das leben habe". Let's see, I'll have a go to come up with something: "I kiss the Docter if he be healthy making you! (…) I wish so much to help you as life I have." But that makes Fritz sounds like Yoda in English, which, err, doesn't fit the personality.

Hmm, you're right. A side effect of there being 1 million German principalities of various kinds?

Aww, Fritz. <3 We see you trying.

That is adorable! No, I get the gist of it.

P.S. My passive command of German is juuuust good enough to follow how bad his German is, but thank you for the translation. :) (I can handle German spelling and syntax, it's the vocab where I fall down.)

While looking through W's memoirs just now to refresh my memory on a point of chronology, I happened upon her description of Katte's saddle, which reminds me that *she* says he was waiting because he needed a saddle that could hide papers and such, which makes iiiiiinfinitely more sense. I still think there has to be another way to escape than waiting for a new saddle to be made, but if you're already torn on what the right move is and probably not thinking clearly anyway, because PANIC, it might contribute to your delay.

Anyway, when I was about Fritz's age, I tried and failed to come up with a plan to escape from my non-absolute-monarch parents, so I am totally sympathetic to Fritz's failure to escape from the efficient and restrictive military state that was Prussia, and am willing to believe it represented a best effort. Katte was 26, yes, but he was much less invested in the escape, and potentially more interested in dragging his feet and hoping it went away than in coming up with the best plan ever.

That is glorious. Thank you for hosting and sharing it!

:D Isn't it?! I am so glad you are enjoying it too :D

Okay, I see you wanted the Russian shenanigans in this post, so here goes. You asked for it!

selenak may have to flesh out some of the details, it's been 20 years since I looked at European history from the Russian perspective.

So, Elizabeth is Tzarina of Russia. She haaaates Fritz's guts, hopes he chokes on his own spite and has an aneurysm and dies. (I'm making the details up, but she does hate him.)

Now she's in an alliance with Austria and France and a half-hearted Sweden*, who have all ganged up on Fritz in a three-and-a-half front war because he's like that guy mouthing off in a bar who's dead set on provoking everyone in sight. (I will spare you the details, but you do not understand how ridiculously improbable this alliance was--Austria and France getting together was called the Diplomatic Revolution because it was *so* revolutionary that they would agree on anything the way they agreed that Fritz needed to be taught a lesson. Okay, the Seven Years' War was not all about Fritz, it was a lot of superpowers clashing over a million things. But let's note that Fritz did nothing to avoid making everyone in Europe mad at him.)

Uncle George (II) in Great Britain, who has also been provoked by Fritz, has balance of power considerations in continental Europe, and huge conflicts with France overseas, decides that it's worth putting up with his nephew the obnoxious little shit in order to kick France's ass. Especially since Fritz is Machiavellian (ask me about Fritz and Machiavelli) enough to be willing to present himself as the savior of the Protestant faith for the sake of propaganda, lol Fritz.

But mostly George (whose name I'm using metonymically for him and his ministers, he was not nearly as active in foreign policy as some of his neighbors) is interested in his overseas territories, of which Prussia has none, and so he offers Prussia some money and mostly moral support, and some distraction of his neighbors, but isn't fielding an army to fight alongside Prussia, which is on its own in this three-front war. So Fritz 1) got his country into an avoidable three-front war with enemies bigger than he was and 2) won it, barely, which accounts for a great deal of his ambivalent legacy (more on ambivalent legacy later).

* When Sweden eventually made peace with Fritz, he snarked at their ambassadors, "I'm sorry, were you at war with me? Wow, you learn something new every day." (Paraphrased.)

Also, remember that Austria AND France AND GB were all on Fritz's side when he was running away from his dad and tried to get FW to calm down, and FW actually attributed his decision not to kill his son to foreign intervention, and how does Fritz show his gratitude when he comes to power ten years later? "Screw you all, I do what I want. My dad left me an army and a treasury."

So here's Fritz, well into the Seven Years' War, barely hanging in there, swaying around in the bar seeing stars but landing enough punches his opponents are also bleeding out of various orifices. No one understands how he's still on his feet, this was supposed to be over in thirty seconds. "You have got to be kidding me" is the general reaction. But he might finally be about to drop.

Enter...the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg! (Brandenburg is where the Hohenzollerns are from. It's the area around Berlin.)

Elizabeth, who we remember hates Fritz's guts, has been getting progressively sicker. Finally, finally (Fritz has been calling her an "old bitch" for not doing it sooner), she dies.

Her heir is Peter III. He's a German prince who ended up on the throne of Russia because intermarriage.

What happens when he succeeds to the throne?

"Hey, Fritz! ILLLUUUUU! You're my hero! Can I get your autograph? I dress like you and wear my hair like you and I wanna have an army just like you and initiate reforms just like you and I pretend I'm you when I play with my soldiers! *hyperventilates*

"OMG, I'm soooooo sorry about my predecessor making war on you. Women, amirite? Here's my army which was trying to kill you yesterday. My soldiers are totally on your side now and will attack your enemies and defend you with their lives. YOUR CAUSE IS MINE!

"P.S. If you ever come visit, I will totally give you a blow job, you have only to ask."

(Okay, I made up the postscript, there's no evidence for that, but it's in the spirit of things. :P)

Fritz: "Oh thank the Supreme Being that I as a Deist kind of believe in when I'm not sporadically pretending to be a Protestant for the peasants, I might not actually have destroyed my entire country with my ill-thought-out decisions. Comin' at you, Austria and France! It's two on two now! How do you like *them* apples?" *gets a second wind*

Peter: Lasts approximately five minutes (six months, which is like five minutes for a reign) as Tzar before the "Russia is not a province of Prussia" party led by his wife overthrows and probably assassinates him.

His wife and successor, Catherine the soon-to-be-Great: "Fritz is a total asshole, and sucking his dick is not going to be this country's foreign policy. Yes, he's an intelligent asshole and I like some of his reforms, but we are out of this war. Attention, soldiers! Return to Russia at once."

Russian general on site with Fritz in Poland or thereabouts: "Sorry, dude, there was a coup; boss says I have to go home."

Fritz: "Shit. Shit. Enemies approaching now. Okay, Russian guy, I know you can't disobey orders, but it takes time to pack up an army and move it. Can you stick around for, like, two days, arrange your army in battle order, and pretend like you're going to attack, but really just watch, so no one dies and your Empress isn't pissed off? I can work with that."

Russian general: "I guess, yeah."

Austrians or French or both, I forget: "Wow, Fritz sure has a lot of troops on his side. Approach with caution." *battle ensues* "I wonder why the Russians are looking so menacing over there but never actually engaging?" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fritz: "Thank you SO MUCH. You can go home now."

And thus concluded the Russian fanboy shenanigans.

To understand how significant all this was on a major geopolitical scale, you have to realize that Prussia was on the verge of losing. Fritz lost some major battles, partly through very questionable decisions when his generals were yelling at him to do basically anything but what he was doing but Fritz has never listened to anyone in his life except for Voltaire on matters of French literary style, and after having his army destroyed repeatedly, he was on the verge of abdicating and committing suicide. Like, imo, "I've been reading the Stoics" suicide, not "I'm suicidally depressed" suicide, although he was also in a pretty rotten emotional state. (Wilhelmine died on the day of one of his military defeats, it was pretty distressing.)

But he won the war. Three bigger guys set out to teach the scrawny little wiseguy a lesson, and at the end of the day, they're all staggering around punch drunk, and he's ready to come back for more. They all stare at each other in disbelief and head off to the hospital to get their injuries treated, leaving him sitting at the bar wearily drinking that glass of beer he snatched out of someone else's hand that started the whole thing.

Friedrich attributed his victory to the two "Miracles of the House of Brandenburg." The one where Elizabeth finally died and Peter came to power for like 6 whole months, and the one where he had lost a battle catastrophically and had no power to stop his enemies from sacking Berlin and conquering his entire country, but his enemies, like, did some tourism in Prussia and left without capitalizing on their opportunity.

It has been plausibly argued that Friedrich overrated the importance of these "miracles" and that, for once in his life he overestimated his enemies, by underestimating the extent to which, even if they won some key battles, they were losing the war because they didn't have the resources to keep fighting. The one thing Friedrich and FW before him did was make sure their country had a near bottomless pool of resources to keep fighting from.

Regardless. Friedrich said he came within a hairsbreadth of losing and was saved by his enemies, and everyone believed him.

Critically, almost two hundred years later, the Nazis believed him. When they were at the end of WWII and staring a really obvious defeat in the face, they held out without surrendering longer than they otherwise would, on the grounds that they were exactly like Old Fritz in every way possible (*Fritz spinning in his misplaced grave*) and Providence had saved Friedrich with some miracles, so it would save them! This is what Selenak was referring to about Roosevelt dying and all that.

Also, their propagandistic version of their hero Old Fritz who tooootally would have endorsed the Nazi party that was just following in his footsteps...is so OOC character assassination as to be unrecognizable and as deluded as the idea that Truman was going to withdraw America from the war...because...he was such a fan of Hitler???

In conclusion, the Russian fanboy shenanigans perfectly encapsulate how decisive Fritz was both to his contemporaries and to later generations. Reactions ranged from "Kill the bastard" to "I want your autograph" to the middle ground, summarized by the best description of Fritz I've ever seen, which I think is contemporary: "Thinks like a philosopher and acts like a king."

At the time, after the Seven Years' War, Fritz was a big celebrity in Europe, both to Protestants (because defender of the Protestant faith, omg lol) and Germans and liberal thinkers and hero-worshippers and intellectuals and so forth. People named their kids after him and their taverns, and people with money traveled to Potsdam to see Old Fritz toward the end of his life (but he was getting increasingly antisocial and only saw you if he wanted to, so a lot of people walked away disappointed).

In later times, fast forwarding through nineteenth-century German nationalism, Hitler and the Nazis made Old Fritz into their epitome of everything Aryanism was striving for. (That the RL guy would have ended up in a concentration camp wearing a pink triangle is just...the mind boggles.) After the Holocaust, everyone except the neo-Nazis hated Fritz for a long time because they saw him as the predecessor to Hitler and practically a Nazi himself, with all his unprovoked expansionist warfare, absolutism, and glorification of the army. Eventually, everyone calmed down a little, read some books, and decided Fritz should only be held responsible for his own actions, not the ones that later people invoked his name to justify, and his historical context should be taken into account. Current communis opinio is that Fritz's legacy should be handled with caution, but as long as we remember not to be nationalistic and to criticize the conquest of Silesia etc., it's okay to like him and write thousands of words about him in

cahn's comment threads, because he was actually kind of amazing for his time.

Among contemporaries, Joseph II was a middle-grounder. He respected the hell out of Fritz's brain, not so much the repeated betrayal of allies, invasions of states that were minding their own business, and general reneging on agreements. Had some pretty sharp things to say about that, and definitely had political goals of his own that brought him into conflict with Friedrich. But okay, a lot of people feel that way about Fritz.

But what's amazing about Joseph fanboying as much as he did, even if it was significantly less than Peter over in Russia, was that Joseph was the SON and HEIR of Maria Theresia, whose country Fritz had INVADED within months of coming to power, meaning Fritz had conquered part of JOSEPH'S future territory, DURING Joseph's lifetime! (I just checked the dates, and Fritz began the invasion scarce months before Joseph was born, and made war on Joseph's country for the first five years of his life, then again for seven years when Joseph was a teenager and young man.) And yet that portrait of Joseph looking at Fritz like he can barely stand to be in the presence of so much awesomeness. Omg, the date of that meeting, it's 6 years after Fritz has just finished a super-bloody war (1 million casualties worldwide, since Britain and France brought in their colonial possessions) to confirm that Austria did not get to kidnap what he had rightfully stolen (to quote from Princess Bride).

Fritz had some nice things to say about Joseph after that meeting, and how bright the future looked with young people like this ready to take the helm, and Voltaire was pretty skeptical. "Dude, you're saying that because you're his hero and he's modeling himself after you. Come back when you can get an objective opinion."

And in conclusion, one of the most entertaining summaries of Fritz's ambivalent legacy is from a tumblr post I linked to somewhere in another post, the one called: "Should You Fight Them? The Prussian Monarch Edition."

"Frederick the Great: on the one hand, his father and the Seven Years' War already did. On the other, he’s an absolute warmongering asshole. Probably could beat you through some sneaky maneuver. Proceed with caution and maybe an Italian greyhound to win him over."

What I love most about that post is not only the ambivalence, but that, of all the Prussian monarchs, he's the only one predicted to win against a random internet reader! I guess that's why he's the only one in the list with an epithet instead of a regnal number.

And I'll stop there, but more later in reply to one of your other comments, omg.

Reactions ranged from "Kill the bastard" to "I want your autograph" to the middle ground, summarized by the best description of Fritz I've ever seen, which I think is contemporary: "Thinks like a philosopher and acts like a king."

I might add that Voltaire managed to encompass all of these reactions during the course of his life, and possibly all at the same time. :P

It was like a very, very messy divorce where they eventually reconciled enough to be long-distance pen pals again.

Oh, Voltaire *also* wrote some ~~character assassination~~ memoirs (which he denied and claimed someone was impersonating him and pretended to be outraged, but I think historians have decided it was really him wanting deniability?) during the period of *his* ~~messy divorce~~ estrangement from Fritz, all about how Fritz is terrible in all possible ways, and definitely homosexual and not only that, but impotent so he has to settle for being a *bottom*, HAHAHA, TAKE THAT, FRITZ.

Fritz: *eyeroll* You all know he's saying that because of our falling out, right?

Fritz: *puts another statue of a naked guy in the yard outside his bedroom window*

His heir, upon his death: *removes statue immediately*

Nineteenth century Germans: our beloved hyper-masculine general hero? NO HOMO.

Twenty-first (late twentieth?) century: *puts statue back*

Voltaire/Fritz is one of the most quotable frenemies 'ships ever, isn't it? Just for kicks, here's Boswell's transcript from meeting Voltaire when he (Boswell) was grandtouring Europe. Building up to a perfect punchline:

VOLTAIRE: Shakespeare has often two good lines, never six. A madman, by G-d, a buffoon at Bartholommew Fair. No play of his own, all old stories.
Chess. “I shall lose, by G-d, by all the saints in Paradise. Ah, here I am risind on a black ram, like a whore as I am. –
Falstaff from the Spaniards.
BOSWELL: I’ll tell you why we admire Shakespeare.
VOLTAIRE: Because you have no taste.
BOSWELL: But, Sir –
VOLTAIRE: Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos – all Europe is against you. So you are wrong.
BOSWELL: But this is because we have the most grand imagination.
VOLTAIRE: The most wild.
(…)
BOSWELL: What do you think of our comedy?
VOLTAIRE: A great deal of wit, a great deal of plot, and a great deal of bawdy-houses. (…)
BOSWELL: Johnson is a most orthodox man, but very learned; has much genius and much worth.
VOLTAIRE: He is then a dog. A superstitious dog. No worthy man was ever superstitious.
BOSWELL: He said the King of Prussia wrote like your footboy.
VOLTAIRE. He is a sensible man.

*dead* Officially dead.

Gotta love Boswell immediately taking notes after meeting a celebrity. :) (BTW, he did try to meet Fritz as well, but that was the one time his powers of crashing any party failed.) Good old Bozzy is my own problematic 18th century fave, as detailed in this post a couple of years back.

I did know he tried and failed to meet Fritz (had him in mind when I talked about celebrity hunters walking away disappointed), did not know about the Voltaire dialogue. Will check out your post, thanks!

All of this is made of awesome. I am just saying.

how decisive Fritz was both to his contemporaries

Ugh, I can't edit it now because I replied, but that should read "divisive." Though he was also decisive (unlike poor Katte), strikingly so.

This is a perfect and wonderful summary. *applauds*

re: Catherine: among so many other things, what happens if the wife in an unhappy royal marriage isn't an Elisabeth Christine (accepting her lot in exiled life) or a Sophia Dorothea (fighting a marital war, but via the kids mostly), but a politically ambitious woman (with, famously, her own lovers) and one of the best survivalists of the era. Considering Fritz actually had been pushing for her marriage to Peter (as Catherine was born Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst - her dad had been one of his generals, and whether or not that was responsible for her not hero worshipping attitude towards him, I'll leave to you), there's additional irony here.

re: Nazis and their Fridericus Cult: just to illustrate a bit of how pervasive that one was even before 1945 and Hitler expecting a fanboy letter from Truman any time soon: there was a whole series of Fritz movies, most, though not all starring Otto Gebühr, who made a career out of playing Friedrich II. Said series started in the Weimar Republic, but really picked up later. Now, Stalingrad happens, and even your hardcore Nazi has an inkling this is REALLY BAD NEWS and invading Russia might not have been such a bright idea after all. At first, Goebbels declares all German soldiers died at Stalingrad so he can sell it as some kind of heroic death scenario. Then, it becomes undeniable that General Paullus surrendered. Goebbels' propaganda solution? MAKE A NEW FRITZ MOVIE. Which takes up considerable resources. Bear in mind by now there are bombings of German cities, and really, do you want to devote a lot of money, petrol and people to making a movie, so that Veit Harlan can shoot realistic battle Scenes with real soldiers, I kid you not, and over 5000 horses? In the middle of WWII? Sure. Because hey, you have Otto Gebühr as Fritz in a key scene, an argument between Friedrich and his younger brother Heinrich (also a general, and, historians today argue, a better one than big bro) in which movie!Fritz gets to say it would have been the duty of the regiment who ran at the battle of Kunersdorf to stay and get slaughtered - "to build a shield wall with their dead bodies" is the phrasing - which is absolutely chilling to watch today even if you are not aware of the Stalingrad subtext. Talk About the dark side of historical fiction and fannishness.

Oooh, I knew about the Fritz movies, but not all that context. Thank you so much, that's fascinating.

And Fritz's constant RL scapegoating :/. I actually have psychoanalytic opinions about that, but yeah.

there's additional irony here.
Oh, yeah, Catherine and Fritz had a whooole history that I didn't even go into (but I put on my list of potential talking points for future comments) because I was already joking to my wife that it took me 7 years to summarize the 7 years war. (Running joke because when I came home from my first day of first grade, my mom told me "Tell me everything you did today, honey!" and she realized it was going to take me as long to tell her everything I remembered from school as it did for me to live it, and she quickly learned to say, "Skip to the high points!" My instinct in life is always "What even is this word 'summary' you refer to? Surely everything is equally important!")

ahahaha, yay Catherine!

...wow.

And yet that portrait of Joseph looking at Fritz like he can barely stand to be in the presence of so much awesomeness.

Well, to be fair, it was painted by a Prussian painter who never saw either party in their life, commissioned by a Prussian Institution. Also, the historical context is important: Menzel painted it in 1855. He already had drawn the very same scene as an Illustration for Kugel's "History of Frederick the Great" which was published in 1840, mind; it evidently meant a lot to him beyond the commission. But still, you have to consider: by 1855, the Holy Roman German Empire had been over for half a century. The big debate in the German states was: if there was to be a unified Germany, a second Empire, would it be a) one uniting all the German speaking states under Habsburg leadership, or b) one which was excluding the Austrians and led by Prussia instead? (This, obviously, was the solution Prussia favoured.) So a painting in which a Habsburg Emperor openly adores the most famous Prussian King there was has, shall we say, a very political message in this context.

But that meeting did happen, and it was Joseph's idea. I always imagine him reasoning with Maria Theresia on the notes of "I can totally see your point, Mom, and don't worry, he won't get any concessions from me, but HE'S JUST SO COOL". (MT: Fine. Guess I'll go and have another date with his favourite sister.)

Mind you, the other monarch Joseph admired was Peter the Great of Russia, and that usually gets blamed for him travelling a lot. As in, A LOT. He was the European ruler who travelled the most of his time; people into statistics claim that if you put all his travels together, it equals one and a half time around the globe, and six years of his life. He was a big believer in learning from travelling (including learning about the people), and checking out your country's most important foe yourself instead of relying solely on ambassadors makes sense from that pov.

Well, to be fair, it was painted by a Prussian painter who never saw either party in their life, commissioned by a Prussian Institution.

Well, yes, it's not a photograph. I'm only saying it's using hyperbole to communicate something real that is highly surprising, much like me saying Peter III was metaphorically offering Fritz a blow job. :P

Interesting statistics! I was not familiar with those. Fritz did a lot of traveling *within* Prussia for the sake of micromanaging everything that happened within it, and a bit of sightseeing outside his country (attempted incognito, which, we'll just say he was no Odysseus in terms of the quality of his disguises), but he probably would have benefited greatly from more of a "check out your neighbors in person" approach, or maybe "talk to their envoys for more than 5 minutes at the beginning and end of their visits" or "don't physically throw them out" or something.

(MT: Fine. Guess I'll go and have another date with his favourite sister.)

Haha! That would have been an awesome comeback. If only Wilhelmine was still alive at this point.

don't worry, he won't get any concessions from me

Yeah, he def had a mind of his own.

If only Wilhelmine was still alive at this point.

Alas yes. I suppose Maria Theresia could have met Amalie instead, via Trenck arranging it?

And speaking of Sisters: however Joseph's meeting with Fritz went down, I bet he (Joseph) preferred it as memory to his visit in Paris where he had to fix his kid sister's marital sex life. The difference between 18th and 19th century conversation about sexuality is never so glaring as when you read Joseph's letters home to Austria from that trip, describing in detail what the Louis/Marie Antoinette problem was: Louis would get a proper erection, but then would just put it in and pull it out again after a few minutes without coming (or moving)). Leading Joseph to comment: "Maybe somebody should whip him, so that he’d ejaculate out of anger, like the donkeys do’."

OH GOD I REMEMBER THAT. Thank you for the reminder!

I... have no words. I am totally DYING here. OMG.

Bear in mind that Louis and Marie Antoinette not being able to procreate was a serious political, not just private issue. Traditionally, such things led to marriages getting annulled, and the Austria/France alliance was pretty new and revolutionary, as Mildred explained above; there was a lot riding on it. Still, poor Antoinette who'd been 15 when marrying Louis, I think, and thus was only in her early 20s at the point where her mother must have decided she couldn't make heads or tails out of the ambassador's reports as to what the hell the problem was and needed to send brother Joseph to sort everyone out.

Which Joseph did, incidentally. (Not least because he realised there might be a medical issue and had a doctor perform an operation on Louis' penis.) Complete penetration, ejaculation, and subsequent procreation ensued. The other thing Joseph's visit to Paris was memorable for was leaving a Memorandum in which he told both his brother-in-law and his little sister that they needed to get some reforms going or else there was a road to disaster. This, famously, they did not listen to.

...so was the operation or sex training, or both, what was needed?

The other thing Joseph's visit to Paris was memorable for was leaving a Memorandum in which he told both his brother-in-law and his little sister that they needed to get some reforms going or else there was a road to disaster. This, famously, they did not listen to.

I don't know why this made the comment 1000% more awesome, but it totally did.

As far as I recall, both, as in, there had been a medical problem, but also Louis didn't have a clue. Which, yes,is ironic given his grandfather (Louis XV) was one of the most infamous "screws everything which moves" types, and you'd think it didn't Joseph as the Dr. Ruth of Rokoko times to instruct a Frenchman in lovemaking, but evidently, national clichés notwithstanding….

I mean. I get what you say about it all being important for the succession etc. but I have this image in my head of the guy in Amadeus instructing his brother-in-law in how to have sex and I'm just totally dying here.

Such was my sinister intention. :) The Amadeus version would have had Mozart to back him up (in theory), though; remember, Mozart has an argument with a bunch of Italian composers in front of Joseph about love being a German virtue (Italians, saracastic: yeah, sure, we Italians know nothing about love! Mozart: No, you don't!). (Which might even be based on something Mozart actually said or wrote in a letter, because I recall something along that line from a childern's book about Mozart which I read as a kid a decade before Peter Shaffer wrote Amadeus. (Shaffer is one of those writers taking great liberties who still clearly did their research; note that Joseph in his few scenes in the movie is wearing modelled-on-Fritz simple uniform, for example.)

On a less hilarious note, Joseph in the end was a tragic figure, because his reforms were deeply unpopular, and his self composed epitaph read "here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he wanted to do"; then, when he was succeeded by his younger brother who was one of the most reactionary Habsburgs ever, Joseph post mortem became "the people's Emperor" (Volkskaiser), anecdotes from his travels and endeavours abounded, and retrospectively he became beloved. He was certainly hands down the brightest of Maria Theresia's kids. (That memorandum to Little sis and her husband about reforms they should understake in France was over thirty hand written pages. If they'd taken him as seriously about that as they did about sex...)

In your opinion, were those suggestions practicable? Because my French Revolution-fu is weak, and I'm not saying Louis was especially good at leadership, but my hazy memories are that every time Louis did try to change something, he got stymied by the nobility.

My own impression was that Louis mostly paid for his predecessor's sins and yes, he did try some things, but was Joseph was reccommending was, among other things, austerity in life style, and that at least would have helped with the public perception problem which Marie Antoinette had even before the Revolution started. And the whole memorandum actually does contain the sentence: "»Ich zittere jetzt für Dich, denn so kann es nicht weitergehen; la révolution sera cruelle si vous ne la préparez.« - "I tremble now for you, because it can't continue like this; the revolution will be cruel if you don't prepare yourself".

Oh, Marie Antoinette's PR was the one thing I thought about mentioning when this whole discussion about France and reforms started. I grant you that would have been an A+ move.

Well spotted, Joseph.

Just checked his death date: 1790. Wow.

omg, ahahahaha, this is so GREAT.

(Seriously, you do not know what a huge grin I get on my face reading all this stuff you guys are giving me. History, WTF!)

Fritz: "Shit. Shit. Enemies approaching now. Okay, Russian guy, I know you can't disobey orders, but it takes time to pack up an army and move it. Can you stick around for, like, two days, arrange your army in battle order, and pretend like you're going to attack, but really just watch, so no one dies and your Empress isn't pissed off? I can work with that."

omg. Fritz is unbelievable!

omg. Fritz is unbelievable!

Seriously, for good or for bad or for both, every time he opens his mouth, you're like, "Say what?"

"Screw you all, I do what I want. My dad left me an army and a treasury".

From beyond the grave, I can hear Old Fritz: "I EARNED that army and that treasury!"

LOL. Fritz and FW have always reminded me of Alexander and Philip II. in this regard. In both cases, people didn't doubt who the genius was in that Father/son combo, but also in both cases, it couldn't be denied that the genius son would not have been able to accomplish what he did if not for what the merely talented father had managed to create first, and that irked the the sons long beyond the fathers' deaths. (Especially since in both cases, personal relationships had been catastrophic.) (Seriously though, both the Macedons and the Prussians pre Philip and FW respectively would not have provided a basis for becoming a superpower, and while undoubtedly the sons would have accomplished military success anyway, it would not have been possible to that extent.)

OMG, I have OPINIONS about the huge Philip/Alexander parallels, don't even get me started! (18th century history was just a side reading hobby for me, Classics is what I actually have a formal background in).

To me, the key difference is that Alexander would have gone for patricide way before Küstrin. Guess having Olympias instead of Sophia Dorothea for a mother makes all the difference. Meanwhile, I don't think Fritz would have killed Kleitus for making the "you'd have been nothing without your dad" crack, but he would have made his life spectacularly unpleasant.

DING DING DING we have a winner! I agree with every word in this. (I also think 18th century makes a difference.)

I will avoid enumerating all the similarities and eerie parallels between the two, because I need to do more work today and less talking about Fritz than yesterday, however much fun the latter may be. ;)

One of the major differences between them, imo, is that in the deterioration of relations in the Philip/Olympias/Alexander case, I think responsibility was divided more equally among the three than in the FW/Sophia Dorothea/Fritz case, where I feel like FW was more single-handedly awful and SD and Fritz reacting more than acting. You're right that both AtG and Fritz turned into a weird mashup of both their parents, and how much of the final output was due to their respective mothers is an interesting and unsolvable question.

This leads me to one of my unconventional opinions. To save time, I'll refrain from elaborating on my reasoning, but here's the opinion.

Unanimously among commentators I have seen, both historians and casual observers, there is this opinion that without Küstrin, and FW's single-minded campaign in general to break Fritz's will between the ages of 6 and 28, Fritz would have stayed home and played the flute when he became king. No Silesia, no Seven Years' War, no Partition of Poland, none of it. Depending on who's talking, opinions vary on whether this would have been an improvement or whether we should be grateful FW turned his "effeminate" son into Frederick the Great, but everyone is agreed that FW's parenting techniques get the credit or blame for the outcome.

Unconventional opinion: partly because of the Philip/Alexander parallel, and partly because of the way I analyze Fritz's psychology based on his behavior his entire life, my own unconfirmable guess is that with an equally militaristic but less abusive father, left that same treasury and that same army, a non-traumatized Fritz would have been in Silesia in 1740, with Katte as his Hephaistion. Given a non-militaristic father and 2 Sophia Dorotheas to raise him, maybe not. But if FW had calmed the fuck down, trained his son to be a king, set an example of what he wanted (ETA: I mean spending most of your time with the army, not invading other countries--we don't have to change FW's personality even that much), maybe employed a leading European philosopher to educate his son (haha, Voltaire), and not forced the army down his son's throat at the cost of everything Fritz cared about, you might actually have seen a more militarily enthusiastic Fritz at a younger age. Lol, you might have seen Voltaire writing similar letters to Aristotle's to his pupil, going, in essence, "I raised you better than that!"

Even more unconventional opinion: Fritz might actually have been a better general without this trauma. In particular, he might have been more willing to not underestimate his opponents, to not alienate so many allies, and to learn from his mistakes instead of scapegoating. This is a guess, and could easily be wrong (hell, I can't even say for sure how *I* turn out in a parallel universe with different parents), but I have put a lot of thought into a rationale for it.

Edited 2019-08-21 14:18 (UTC)

Boringly, I agree with all of this. The only scenario for Peaceful!Fritz I can see is one where he goes into exile and never gets any funds from anyone for taking the throne.

...but you know, I'm really curious as to how Olympias would have fared as Queen of a European principality in the eighteenth century. Would she have gone Catherine or still put all her ambition into her son?

And never mind Voltaire as Aristotle - what if the lightside Version of FW picks Rousseau to teach his son? The original Mr. "do as I say, not as I did"?

I honestly think he could have shown up in Prussia, especially with his mother there, and taken the throne with just local support, a lot more than the Stuarts had. Interesting question: whose side does Heinrich take in this scenario? (Of course, whether it matters depends on the date, because Heinrich was so much younger.)

Excellent question about Olympias, I wonder the same. She strikes me as more of a Catherine than not.

Haha, well, based on what Fritz had to say about Rousseau (Fritz's eyerolly letter is *hilarious*) and how he reacted to his father trying to get him to do anything he didn't want to do, I can't imagine Rousseau having much influence. But even if we assume a non-freethinking lightside FW who doesn't believe in philosophy and is still dragging his family to Pietist church, I just think the key was not to force anything down Fritz's throat.

Edited 2019-08-21 14:32 (UTC)

Interesting question: whose side does Heinrich take in this scenario? (Of course, whether it matters depends on the date, because Heinrich was so much younger.

True. BTW, should we tell

cahn about the younger sibs, or at least about the Heinrich Situation? Anyway, as you say if Fritz returns as long as Heinrich is still a kid, the point is academic, but if FW holds on to life long enough, I'm thinking Heinrich goes with Augustus Wilhelm, who was his favourite brother in Rl anyway, plus given the age gap between him (Heinrich) and Fritz, he wouldn't have had many memories of him, let alone those inclined to make him take Friedrich's side.

Wiki reminds me that Heinrich had contact with Hamilton and was under discussion for ruling the new US of A; now that would have been an AU...

Yes, we're going to talk about Heinrich, it's on my list. Rn I'm in a waiting room on my phone, but feel free to start, if you're free.

Disagree that he automatically goes with AW for those reasons, but elaboration will have to wait.

Advantages exiled!Fritz would have over the Stuarts:

1. Smarter.
2. More strong-willed.
3. Willing to pretend to be Protestant (this is easier when you're an atheist than when you're Catholic and almost all your support is coming from Catholics).
4. Born and raised in Prussia, known by the locals, disinherited at age 18 for not wanting to be abused, as opposed to "My father/grandfather was kicked out for some really questionable politics, and y'all don't know me from Adam, but I still think that makes me king."
5. Mother and sister present. If FW has persecuted them to the point where they don't have the opportunity to form an actual party, that means even more local sympathies. Otherwise, rival party.

Heinrich:

"given the age gap between him (Heinrich) and Fritz, he wouldn't have had many memories of him, let alone those inclined to make him take Friedrich's side

Au contraire! I think the fewer memories he has of Fritz, the *more* likely he is to take Fritz's side! Why did Heinrich hate Fritz so much in RL? Because he had all those memories of Fritz treating him and Augustus Wilhelm like total shit! By the time Fritz died, Heinrich had accumulated so many grudges he needed an obelisk to contain them all.

But consider, AU Fritz has never been in a position of power, and he's the poor woobie who ran away from abusive Dad because he wanted to play the flute but kept getting beaten up. Meanwhile, Sophia Dorothea and Wilhelmine are left behind. They make Fritz into a TOTAL TRAGIC HERO. The message Heinrich gets is "Your poor brother is *just like you*, and that's why you never got to know him, it's so sad."

It's veeeery easy to idealize your tragic hero older brother whom you *never met*. And, as you know, a large part of why Heinrich and Friedrich didn't get along was because they had so much in common that I like to call Heinrich "Friedrich Lite", and of course because Fritz kind of used him as an emotional punching bag to roleplay his traumas from the other side.

Only possible way I see this not happening: FW comes down on Sophia Dorothea and Wilhelmine so hard that they're isolated from the rest of the family. But even then, Fritz managed to get letters to his mother and sister even when he wasn't supposed to, even at Küstrin! I think even if FW takes over Heinrich's upbringing and keeps him away from the women to prevent a Fritz repeat, look what happened every time FW tried to get someone to teach Fritz the error of his ways: the vast majority of people who were supposed to abuse him by proxy were gay/educated/cultured/not totally batshit. Fritz actually (before the Katte tragedy) wrote that prison wasn't as bad as living with his father, because his jailers actually had some sympathy for him.

In conclusion, I think Heinrich comes away with a pretty positive opinion of exiled!Fritz with nothing to contradict it. Then fairness and primogeniture come into play, and maybe Heinrich thinks that peaceful, flute-playing brother would make a better king than Dad-pleasing, uniform-wearing brother.

THEN Fritz comes to the throne, and THEN Heinrich starts to regret his choice, as, as you put it about Wilhelmine, "Thereafter, my moments of WTF, Fritz? Keep increasing." Actually, Fritz with a successful escape attempt, no Küstrin, no forced marriage, and Katte and Keith at his side is maybe less of an all-out asshole to his family, but still not the nicest of people and still needs that therapist.

They make Fritz into a TOTAL TRAGIC HERO.

Wilhelmine composes an OPERA about her brother the tragic hero, thus anticipating Verdi by some hundred and thirty-ish years. :P

So would have. Mind you, if she gets married off to Bayreuth in this AU, too, she doesn't have the chance to influence Heinrich much. (Though her mother still would have.) Though I concede you're totally right in general - an absent Fritz could have looked like a hero to identify with to Heinrich!

Warning: Fritz is not going to show at his best in this discussion. I'll have to say something nice about him in another comment.

The brothers, Friedrich and Heinrich:
- 14 years apart in age
- Both Francophiles
- Both educated and patrons of the arts
- Both proficient generals
- Both extremely gay

In recent historiography, there's been increasing emphasis on how Heinrich, living all these years in Friedrich's shadow, might actually have been the better tactician. He waited to engage until he was sure he would win the battle, and then proceeded to win it. Fritz was more prone to winning when he should have lost and losing when he should have won. As discussed above, Fritz got them into the Seven Years' War and then won it through sheer bloody-minded determination and a bunch of non-tactical skills; everyone is agreed Heinrich would have done neither. (I sometimes wonder if Heinrich having absolute power would have changed his tolerance for risk at all, but that's very academic. Heinrich as we know him would have done neither.)

Surprisingly, Fritz had some nice things to say about Heinrich's tactical acumen. He didn't have many nice things to say to Heinrich, though. Or his other brother. Or his other, other brother. Hohenzollerns, man. Heinrich resented the hell out of the way all three of them were treated and said so at every opportunity.

He never had anything nice to say about Fritz. Henry wished his oldest brother had never been born and spent Fritz's entire later life waiting eagerly for Fritz to drop dead, then being glad when he did. Because it meant he got to build a memorial for everyone he credited with winning the war that Fritz had started and then mishandled beginning to end, "about whom he says nothing in his fucking memoirs," beginning with dear older brother Augustus Wilhelm.

Now, homosexuality. Heinrich had a serious sex drive and was not shy about having affairs and one-night stands all over the place. Fritz resented this about as much as FW had resented Fritz's love life in his turn. It was not pretty. In addition to general verbal snark and emotional abuse, Fritz engaged in some real abuses of power.

Most notably: "Remember when Dad held me in prison until Wilhelmine and I agreed to get married to people we didn't want to marry? Yeah, now I'm king and it's your turn. Marry or else. No, I know you're homosexual and you're not going to sleep with her. That's fine, I only see my wife for dinner once a year. This is a power trip for me, not some unrealistic expectation that you're going to produce heirs or anything.

"Unlike our other brother Augustus Wilhelm, whom you love but I think is a terrible general, meaning I will humiliate him in front of everyone (hi, Dad, hope you're watching, wherever you are), and dismiss him from service by telling him to go forth and multiply, because that's all he's good for. You're a decent general, so once he dies, please don't grieve him so much it gets in the way of you helping me win my three-front war. Got it? Thanks, kisses, bye."

Way to carry on all those family traditions, Fritz.

Funny story: Friedrich and Heinrich both were lusting after the same hot young piece of male ass once. My secondary sources differ on who got the guy in the end, but both quote Fritz as telling his brother (paraphrased), "Eh, he may have a pretty face, but the body is nothing to write home about, plus he's got an STD." (I still have this theory that Fritz liked looking more than he liked fucking, and we're all pretty clear on the fact that Heinrich liked fucking a great deal.)

Fritz's general attitude toward marriage was that his siblings had to marry who he said, because politics, but none of his friends were allowed to get married. If they did, he'd stop inviting them to parties, because, sheesh, don't you know no one in their right mind would get married by choice??? That's like a personal betrayal of me and my ~~women don't exist, my dogs bark when they see a woman because they don't know what that is~~ homosocial court.

On a related note, my *favorite* Fritz fic so far is a modern AU where he gets an actual therapist (because they exist) instead of treating his family as his involuntarily conscripted therapists, and it's a lovely fic that makes me cry (because Katte) and part of a huge Hamilton/18th century/19th century historical RPF modern AU series which I am greatly enjoying.

Haha, no, it's good you're not always just saying good things about him :P And selenak's TV-show post had introduced me to a lot of this stuff, though not in this great detail about Friedrich :P

...that fic looks Highly Relevant To My Interests :D

Oh, right, the TV show post!

It's an awesome fic in the midst of an awesome series. I found the million characters confusing at first, but the more installments I read, the more I started to be able to keep track of who was who and to have at least ten favorite characters. ;)

That's why I predicted that ca. season 3 or 4, the fans not able to stomach Friedrich's arc from Woobie to Magnificent Bastard would switch their loyalties to Heinrich as their new woobie.:)

See, I have this problem where I have this strict code of ethics and a belief in political freedom and stuff in real life, but the moment the context is fictional or remote enough in historical time that I feel comfortable treating it like fiction, I have this deep emotional love for trickster figures, magnificent bastards, generals, and autocrats, and always have.

This is why my other favorite historical figures are people like Diocletian and Alcibiades, and my favorite fictional characters are people like Denethor and Odysseus. It's horribly hypocritical, but if you can impress me enough with your bastardy, I will overlook any amount of misbehavior that I won't condone in real life and will harshly criticize in anyone else in history or fiction.

And unlike these hypothetical TV show fans, long before I knew about any Woobie Fritz, I was in love with Magnificent Bastard Fritz. Anyone who could write the Anti-Machiavel in 1739 and invade Silesia in 1740 was catnip to my 15-yo self.

cahn: Crown Prince Friedrich, Enlightenment prince and flute-playing woobie, wrote this political pamphlet all about how Machiavelli was wrong and princes should be honorable and all that. Enlightenment thinkers throughout Europe were all eager to see him ascend the throne and begin a new age.

Three months after its publication in 1740, King Friedrich II was already violating agreements and invading his minding-their-own-business neighbors for the sake of capturing their resources for his own poorer country (thus forcing him to later get defensive about the Anti-Machiavel and write about how that was a nice ideal for crown princes, but when you're king, realpolitik was a much more important thing).

People were OUTRAGED.

Now, it's immediately obvious to everyone that this is exactly what Machiavelli would have recommended he do. Voltaire snarked that Fritz wasn't smart enough to understand that, and that he had just genuinely reneged on his principles once he got a taste of power. 15-yo

mildred_of_midgard was CONVINCED everyone was wrong and it was all deliberate magnificent bastardy on Fritz's part, and immediately decided that he was her ultimate historical fave, because why would you have a fave that wasn't problematic. (Seriously, I'm not sure I've ever had a fave that was *less* problematic than this until 3 years ago, and that came as a great surprise and says more about surprising authorial choices than about my tastes. ETA: no, that's not true, there was Alan Turing. But that's because 20th century is too recent to be treated as fiction.)

35-yo me is reluctantly compelled to concede that, yeah, it doesn't look all that deliberate, and Fritz actually was more like if Gandalf had taken the Ring of Power, and that's why I don't believe in autocracy as a system of government. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that. None of that stops 35-yo me from wanting to fly back to Germany so I can spit on FW's grave, pay more respects at my still-ultimate-historical-fave Fritz's, possibly put a potato on Katte's because they should have something to link them, and shrug at Heinrich's and tell him he has to find his own defender, because, "Sorry, I'm taken, and I'm only here at Rheinsberg in the first place because Fritz used to live here and I need to check out the grounds as part of fic research."

But at least I recognize that my fandom is a place where I get to be unfair, and that if I'm summarizing events for other people, I have to acknowledge that, while the cycle of abuse is a thing, you have to blame perpetrators and not victims for their actions.

(35-yo me also needs to reread the Anti-Machiavel, because the last time I read it, at 16 or 17 or so, I had read The Prince, but not the majority of Machiavelli's work, and certainly not a fair bit of modern Machiavelli scholarship, and I now consider myself qualified to have opinions not only about Machiavelli but about other people's opinions about Machiavelli, and I strongly suspect Fritz was shortchanging M's actual thinking, because almost everyone does.)

(To my embarrassment, 15-yo me, once I learned about Woobie Fritz, could not understand why you would faint when watching someone else get beheaded, and had remarkably little sympathy for that part. 15-yo me also could not read novels with realistic characterization, because I did not understand humans, not even a little bit. 35-yo me still sometimes feels like a Martian anthropologist who slowly came to understand humans through the medium of books, study, and conscious thought rather than through similarity of psychology.)

Ha, I'll see your Friedrich and raise you a Federico when it comes to historical Magnificent Bastards. Mine is the Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Stupor mundi, Renaissance type in the middle ages and definitely one impressive bastard. No, but seriously, I'm fond of my share, both fictional and real, as long as they are safely separated from me by either fiction or time.

(Icon displaying my favourite fictional MB in all tv world, Arvin Sloane in Alias)

But at nearly 50 years of age, I've seen a lot of fandoms. Hence my observation about the prospect of loyalty switching among a sizable amount once it's clear where Fritz is headed. Not least because imo, a lot of fans are conservative in that they're stuck on initial impressions. It's also why fanfiction sometimes feels weirdly AU without intending to be so if it's based on first season characterisation while show and characters have moved on in a completely different direction. (Of course, if one is lucky, there are also new fans who came on board later, write with the later season characterisations and are a bit bewildered why character X still bursts into tears at the drop of a hat in other people's stories when they know X mostly as the guy reducing Y and Z to jelly. :)

ETA: sorry for all the edits, I haven't been able to figure out how to disable the autocorrect on this computer yet, and it keeps capitalizing words!

Edited 2019-08-22 17:04 (UTC)

I'm fond of my share, both fictional and real, as long as they are safely separated from me by either fiction or time.

See, you understand me. :D Yay.

It's also why fanfiction sometimes feels weirdly AU without intending to be so if it's based on first season characterisation while show and characters have moved on in a completely different direction.

HAHAHA, been there and done that. Sort of in reverse of your example, because Lucius Malfoy, despite being a Nazi analogue, was fictional enough that I could latch onto his Magnificent Bastardy in books 2 and 3, and then when later books came along, I started complaining to my partner. "Did he become evil?" she asked. "No, it's worse than that! *outrage* He became a wuss! (He was already evil, sheesh.)" :P

ETA: sorry for all the edits

No worries, I edit like mad whenever I think of a better way to phrase something. I've accumulated like 10 edits I would make to the Seven Years' War summary if there weren't already replies. :P

...this subthread is making me feel better about all the hilarity I feel about all these comments and Wilhemine's memoirs. Which occasionally I'm like "wow, these were real people who had really awful lives" and I feel bad for them, but a lot of time I'm just enjoying WTFing at the whole thing.

IKR? I feel bad for everyone when I stop to think about them as real people. When I'm in fandom mode, I only feel bad for the ones I like. :-P

*is writing fix-it fic for the ones I like as we speak*

ETA: In conclusion, like I said, it's not just history, it's also fandom! Enjoy your WTFery like it's a TV show written by selenak. ;)

Edited 2019-08-23 03:22 (UTC)

Speaking of that fic, I've been working my way through the series, and I just ran into this (non-Fritz) anecdote in an author's note that I thought you might find as delightfully charming as I did:

"The real Lafayette and Adrienne's families wanted to arrange a marriage between them, but they were concerned that their children might rebel at being forced into it. So instead, from early childhood onwards, they arranged casual meetings and and various 'whoops, hey, look who that is?' encounters. Without ever telling them. By their teens, the two of them were determined to get married NO MATTER WHAT ANYONE SAID. I like to think the parents went: 'Oh no. Well, if you must.' Then drank champagne."

OMG it's good parenting OMG!

Edited (Nested quotes) 2019-08-24 23:13 (UTC)

Wow, good parenting, how odd and delightful!! <3

Because it meant he got to build a memorial for everyone he credited with winning the war that Fritz had started and then mishandled beginning to end, "about whom he says nothing in his fucking memoirs," beginning with dear older brother Augustus Wilhelm.

cahn, you have to check out Heinrich's "Fuck You, Fritz!" monument to truly get the full flavour of fraternal feeling here, aka the obelisk with all those names of people Heinrich felt were wronged by Fritz: Here it is.

re: other brother Augustus Wilhelm, loved by Heinrich and loathed & humiliated by Fritz, we should also mention he was FW's favourite kid (no. 11 of 14, thus also much younger than Fritz) and the only one FW was sort of decent to. Which evidently had much to do with Friedrich's Feelings. (I mean, what's worse, having an abusive parent who can't be other than abusive, or one who can and just isn't towards YOU?)

Yeah, AW was the kid who was willing to go along with what Dad wanted and agree that the army was cool.

Fritz's take on this was "NO, you're WRONG. Dad's army wasn't cool at all. Only MY army is cool. And you and your oldest son [future Friedrich Wilhelm II] are going to get in major trouble for not adequately respecting the cool factor of MY army."

FW 2, who also got mistreated by Fritz, was the one who, the moment Fritz was safely dead, was like, "Fuck you and your dogs and your burial at Sanssouci like a Roman philosopher, Uncle Fritz, you're getting buried in a CHURCH. With POMP and CIRCUMSTANCE. Next to your DAD!"

No, unless Selenak knows something I don't, I don't think he specifically did this to spite Fritz's atheistic principles and to rub in the part about abusive Dad, I suspect his thinking was that that's what you do with kings and Grandpa was a pretty great king himself, but still. Fritz's last wishes definitely took second place to doing things the Right Way. (Mind you, this was another of those awesome family traditions: Fritz had ignored *his* father's wishes about the disposal of his remains, albeit I think less blatantly.)

Also FW 2: "Shit, we gotta do something about all that homoeroticism at Sanssouci too, that's embarrassing. Plus he didn't like me being ultra-het, so there. Karma is a bitch, Fritz."

So that statue I referred to earlier that FW2 made off with, is one of those Greco-Roman statues of a naked young man, of which various copies were made. No one really knows who or what it's supposed to depict, afaik, but one of the names it's been called by, including in Fritz's time, was Antinous.

Now, Antinous was the boyfriend of the Roman emperor Hadrian. Antinous died under mysterious circumstances when he was still young and beautiful. Hadrian was devastated and deified him and commemorated him all over the place. Among the possible explanations for his mysterious death was that he was a human sacrifice as part of some religious ritual meant to prolong Hadrian's life.

It has been speculated that "naked statue of guy who died young and may have sacrificed himself in order to save his boyfriend the emperor," placed near Fritz's selected future grave site and in view of his bedroom/study window (yes, his grave is quite near his bedroom/study, memento mori I guess), was Fritz's silent tribute to one Hans Hermann von Katte.

I WANT TO BELIEVE.

The statue is now called "Praying Boy" (it having been acknowledged by responsible art historians that it actually predates Antinous), and a copy is back at Fritz's grave, the original being in a Berlin museum. I super wish I had known this when I was in that museum, dammit! (Or when I was at his grave.)

Mostly I was excited, though, about finding the Velletri Pallas (Athena) bust acquired by Fritz (Velletri Pallas being my all-time favorite work of art, and I had a plaster copy in my own study until it began to disintegrate; I'm still angry about that and planning on finding a more durable one once my disability situation sorts itself out and I can afford it again), because Athena is one avatar of this Mary Sue character I've had in my head all my life, and in my mental Mary Sue bio, there's one whole volume devoted to her and Fritz, because if you think Athena would not have been ALL OVER Frederick the Great, you should reread the Odyssey. ;)

lol, hilariously enough the only reason I know anything about Hadrian and his boyfriend (and I don't know very much, just that they exist) is that some modern composer made an opera out of it last year? starring Thomas Hampson (who played Posa in that original clip I showed you). Which I have not watched because as far as I know there is no recording, boooooo.

Opera is educational! It can even be like taking an entire history class if you watch the right opera and post about it in the right place. :P

Booo, I want you to see this opera! Do you know if they went with the "ritual sacrifice" story?

ahahaha, I did not realize my opera habit was going to be so historically educational!

...poooossibly? I am having trouble finding a good synopsis, grr.

It's been educational for me too! Operatically and historically.

Let me know if you find out. My inner Classicist is interested.

Heh, I am also familiar with Antinous's story via Thomas Hampson (did I recc this to you, cahn?), and I'm here with this review of Rufus Wainwright's Hadrian! More a review of the music than the plot, but it should give you a sense of the storyline: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/arts/music/hadrian-opera-review-rufus-wainwright.html

Haha, I think

esteven recced it :D Ahh, that's an interesting article, thanks!

Given Fritz gave him (FW 2) hell about his mistress (of a life time) Wilhelmine Enke and wrote in his memoirs that FW2's wife cheating on him was solely FW's fault and he liked the wife better anyway (!), I'm suspecting you're right about those thoughts.

Fun fact: one of the more popular 20th century German historical novels is about this Wilhelmine, not to be confused with Fritz' sister, called Die schöne Wilhelmine" by Ernst von Salomon. I read this when I was ca. 12 or 13. At which point I was already familiar with the tragic tale of Young Fritz and Katte, but it took me a moment or two to realise that Snarky Old Uncle Fritz at the start of this novel was the same guy. He's not a villain by any means, btw, and Salomon lets him encounter Casanova ("you're a good looking man", observes Fritz) and flirt a bit in between being sarcastic towards his nephew. Said nephew is not the brightest but well-meaning; Wilhelmine, Berlin street child determined to make it to the top and stay there, is the heroine in whose pov we mostly remain.

he liked the wife better anyway (!)

Omg. ULTIMATE INSULT.

Casanova ("you're a good looking man", observes Fritz)

Historically accurate opinion of Fritz's after their meeting, iirc?

ULTIMATE INSULT.

I know, right? It's also, shall we say, an iiiinteresting comment given his own marital circumstances. Quoth Fritz, in his memoirs:

"The husband, young and without manners, was daily unfaithful to his wife. (…) The princess who was at the prime of her beauty was insulted by the lack of attention paid to her charms, and was provoked to avenge the injustice done to her."

(German Version of quote which I had looked up: "„Der Ehemann, jung und ohne Sitten, […] brach seiner Frau täglich die Treue. […] Die Prinzessin, die in der Blüte ihrer Schönheit stand, fand sich von der geringen Aufmerksamkeit, die man ihren Reizen zollte, beleidigt, fühlte sich angestachelt, sich für das Unrecht, das man ihr angetan hatte, zu rächen.“ )

Now, future FW2 had managed to get a divorce because his wife was pregnant with a kid that really could not have been his (as they didn't have sex with each other, only with other people), so Fritz HAD to give his okay for said divorce they both wanted, or allow an obvious non-Hohenzollern into the succession, but he was extremely disgruntled about having to do this and immediately insisted on FW2 marrying another princess. What really slays me is the the Feminist Fritz pose here. I mean… do you really want to talk Princes not paying attention to the charms of their wives, Fritz? Really?

(Still not FW2 made Uncle Fritz officially recognize Wilhelmine Encke as his Maitresse en titre, though, officially, in 1777. With a yearly rent paid by the crown and a house in Charlottenburg. This was probably the most impressive battle he ever won in his life.)

I mean… do you really want to talk Princes not paying attention to the charms of their wives, Fritz? Really?

Fritz: *wins Olympic gold for mental gymnastics*

This was probably the most impressive battle he ever won in his life.

Making Fritz do anything definitely warrants an entry in the history books, that's for sure!

I think he finally caved because he'd had Wilhelmine Encke under spy surveillance for years and concluded that she actually was no one's tool and if he kept insisting that future FW2 got rid of the one stable relationship in his life, it could result in him being influenced by all the other women he'd have sex with who could be in the pay of *insert other power here*. Thus Wilhelmine E. became the first Maitresse en titre in Prussia since F1's day.

(FW2 didn't remain physically faithful to her, but not least since it was all the younger mistresses who threw jealous fits and kept handing out ultimatums, while Wilhelmine kept her cool, she remained his firm fave (and also nursed him when he got sick etc.) until his death. His son was horrid to her and had her exiled and confiscated her money, blaming her for his father's unfaithfulness to his mother. Enter Napoleon, who as mentioned in that Hohenzollern post you linked to me kicked FW3's ass, and among many other things ended Wilhelmine Encke's exile and had her money restored. So she died in comfort and in Berlin, but then had bad luck again as the part where her grave was became part of the death zone once the Berlin wall went up. German history and the enterprising Berlin girl: a trial.

it could result in him being influenced by all the other women he'd have sex with

Ooooh, that makes sense, that's exactly how he thought. Did Wilhelmine have political agendas of her own? Because I'm pretty sure Fritz would have been opposed to those other mistresses having minds of their own as well, even if they were in no one's pay.

Fritz: Louis XV's mistresses have too much influence over him, which is why women shouldn't be allowed to have power.

Fritz: Catherine II's lovers have too much influence over her, which is why women shouldn't be allowed to have power.

Me: Aristotle probably agrees with your conclusions, Fritz, but I don't think he's giving you high marks for the strength of your logic.

Quite, not to mention that Catherine's lovers would rather have complained about their Little influence. (It's been while, but I seem to recall the only one with actual political clout was Potemkin?)

And re: Wilhelmine having a political agenda of her own - she always denied it. ("I was not a Prussian Madame de Pompadour." Meanwhile, her nickname on the Streets: The Prussian Pompadour." ) She was hands down the most influential art patron of her day, though. (Oh, and her father had been a musician at the Berlin opera. Whether that was a plus or minus in Fritz' eyes...)

Just be aware that I have been reading all these over the last couple of days and boggling at how insane this family is over all these generations :P

Historically accurate opinion of Fritz's after their meeting, iirc?

Indeed. I mean, they mostly talked about taxes and the lottery, but he did make that comment according to Casanova. Incidentally, if you visit Sanssouci in the summer months today, you can experience a restaging of that encounter: Voila.

holy cow

selenak I am like 5 pages in:

the two favorites of the prince royal... had no difficulty in corrupting the herat of a young prince... The Prince of Anhalt... feared lest [the prince's wife] might obtain possession of the heart of her consort. To prevent this, he attempted to sow the seeds of discord between them

Welp HI THERE ALVA AND DOMINGO

mildred_of_midgard, in Schiller there are two characters, the Duke of Alva and the priest Domingo, who are the king's councilors and basically keep goading him into distrust and jealousy of his wife and also his son (as they correctly understand that both Elisabeth and Carlos are progressives, and they are not).

the princess royal presented her royal husband with a daughter, who was very unfavorably received, because the ardent wishes of all had been for a prince. I was the child who met with that ungracious reception.

Aw Wilhelmina!

Alva and Domingo indeed. BTW, one of the duo, Grumbkow, also shows up in the Maria Theresia series I linked you two as Prussia's main representative at the Austrian court.

And yep, Wilhelmine wasn't projecting with how her birth was received. (Though she shared that fate, alas, with most princesses of her time, though the others didn't have as neurotic parents…)

Didn't FW say something about all the daughters his wife was presenting him with along the lines of "Can we just drown them like kittens? There's no way they're all going to find husbands, after all."

OK, question for you guys: were Anhalt and Grumbkow actually as horrible as they are portrayed in Wilhelmine's memoirs? The intro said that one of them (I forget whom) interceded for Fritz after the Katte Incident and prevented FW from killing him outright (I haven't got to this point in the memoirs yet), and that seems incongruous with Wilhelmine's assertion that they plotted to kill FW and Fritz.

I'm going to defer to

selenak on this one, because I've seen so many contradictory portrayals in passing, without any good in-depth dive into either one, that I've been wondering the same thing.

Will have to look up Anhalt again, but Grumpkow was both very competent (in Administration) and famously corrupt. As in, he took money from both the French and the Austrians, which was one reason why he was against the Hannover marriages for Fritz & Wilhelmine, though not the only one, and actively schemed against it. (His reports to the Austrians on the Prussian Royals still exist, which is how we know he missed a trick because he code-named FW "Jupiter" and Sophia Dorothea "Olympia" - should have been Philip and Olympias, Grumpkow!) Now I doubt he ever wanted any Prussian Royal dead, and Wilhelmine was biased due to him being co-responsible for making her life miserable for a good long while, but then again, she wasn't the only one to despise Grumpkow as a person - the Saxon amabassador loathed him as well and describes him as a vile character. (Again, he's the Prussian in the Maria Theresia series who after Prinz Eugen is of no more use to him leaves the old guy breaking down on the floor and ensures no footmen will enter the room to help Eugen.)

OTOH: he did mediate between Fritz and FW post-Katte. (He also ensured Fritz, who was deeply in debt, would get bribe money from the Austrian court, from the very same Eugen mentioned above. Not that this stopped Fritz invading later, but hey.) And he was extremely helpful to FW in restructuring Prussia and giving it a modern Administration. Presumably, he thought that nearly killing your successor is a really bad idea and not good for the state, and did recognize Fritz might make a good monarch?

He also ensured Fritz, who was deeply in debt

Context: Teenaged and twenty-something bookworm Fritz had to buy his own books (and art and music and such), and no sooner did he buy them than his father found out and got rid of them. (Advanced readers may know that it's more complicated, but this is the entertainment version of history.)

What collateral do you have when you're a penniless crown prince who's not in good graces with the reigning king, trying to borrow from other courts? Well, you have "When I'm king, I'll remember your country with the same gratitude that I remember every other country in Europe that I'm currently using this line on, which will primarily be called the War of the Austrian Succession and then the Seven Years' War, 'cause by then I'll have that treasury of Dad's that I've currently got my eye on, but as long as I only feed you all the first part of this sentence for now, it's all good, right?"

He used to pull this on his wife, too. "Look, I didn't ask to have you or my dad in my life, but I need books to live, and *you're* in his good graces, so *you* get your hands on some money and pass it on to me, k?"

ah, thank you! this makes rather more sense than Wilhelmine's tale of aborted regicide :)

some subplot involving Russian fanboys

I like your choice of the word "subplot". It's not just history, it's a fandom!

Honestly in my head it's basically that TV show about Frederick the Great that both you and selenak linked me to (at different times) :D

Hahaha, I was telling my partner yesterday, "History: it's just tabloids that happened in the past!" Which is funny, because I wouldn't be caught dead reading a modern tabloid, but the 18th century show called "Our Insane Family" is fascinating.

Oh, haha, speaking of, there's a tumblr tag called "Keeping up with the Hohenzollerns" where a couple people do fanart. It's got a couple Friedrich+Heinrich hate pieces relevant to our discussion today, as well as some Katte. https://prinzsorgenfrei.tumblr.com/tagged/keeping+up+with+the+hohenzollerns
https://littleartistthings.tumblr.com/tagged/keeping+up+with+the+hohenzollerns
https://citizen-zero.tumblr.com/post/157825003220 (That's Katte, from the musical. T. Fontane is Theodor Fontane, a nineteenth century German guy who wrote extensively about Katte, that I think selenak and I have mentioned.)

Also, I just want to say that Fritz living to be 74 + being active 19 hours a day + incredibly prolific (we have 46 volumes of political correspondence plus 30 volumes of assorted "works" from his pen) + being incredibly opinionated about everything on the planet + always following the beat of his own highly idiosyncratic drummer + being incredibly controversial among contemporaries who were *also* prolific writers = a basically limitless pool of anecdotes for me and selenak to tell you about. :DDD

Oh, fuck you, Mitford. The only thing I remembered about Mitford's bio of Fritz from when I read it 15-20 years ago was that I hated it, but it's one of the only books on him available on Kindle, and I now have this disability where I can't read physical books any more, and that's killing me. So I started rereading it this evening, wondering whether to expect the worst or whether I might like it better as an adult.

Well...twelve pages in...

"By the time Frederick was twelve it had become obvious that he and his father were on the worst of terms. Frederick was a polite, delicate little boy who hated rough ways. He was always in trouble: was beaten for wearing gloves in cold weather, for eating with a silver fork, for throwing himself off a bolting horse...Sophia Dorothea never took her husband’s part. She must have known how ill he was but never showed him any sympathy; she told all and sundry that he was mad and that she went in fear for her life. Nor did Frederick try to please his father...Frederick William’s favourite pastime was hunting, which Frederick disliked all his life. He loved riding—a day never went by without several gallops—but thought that hunting was cruel and dull. He was forced to ride to hounds by his father, but infuriated him by disappearing, to be found talking to his mother in her carriage or playing the flute in a forest glade. Worse still, he hated or pretended to hate anything to do with the army. His father knew that he called his uniform his shroud. If he was beaten, starved, humiliated and generally ill-treated it was to a large extent his own fault and his mother’s."

PLEASE TELL ME SHE DIDN'T HAVE KIDS. I want to rage-cry for every kid who's grown up in a world where these are acceptable opinions.

Man. Mostly I look back at my high school self's opinions about history and have to cringe a little and think, well, they were precocious for my age and I outgrew the most embarrassing ones. But this time...I have to look back and say, "Good job, teenage self."

Oh, no, I just turned the page. "He had icy self-control, never flew into rages, and received his father’s blows and insults with an air of maddening indifference."

*rage-cry*

I mean, the victim-blaming here is so over the top that it's the sort of thing I would write under censorship, if FW were going to read it, and I wanted to garner sympathy for his victims under his nose among all sensible readers. Or, you know, it's the sort of thing I would write IF I WERE FW WRITING MY MEMOIRS.

Omg, I just realized. If I keep reading, I'm going to hit the Katte affair. I don't think I can take it.

*closes book*

It's not worth it.

Cannot cope, off to ~~Mordor~~ write a "five things that never happened to Fritz and Katte" as a palate cleanser, just to recover from that.

So, like, I was reading your excerpt going "well, I know mildred and selenak both strenuously don't agree with this version of events, and I am inclined to believe them rather than you, random author, although I guess this is not so bad if you think FW was sort of vaguely emotionally tense with Fritz rather than actually emotionally and physically and every other kind of way abusive," and then I hit this brick wall:

If he was beaten, starved, humiliated and generally ill-treated it was to a large extent his own fault and his mother’s.

WHAT
NO

PLEASE TELL ME SHE DIDN'T HAVE KIDS.
+10000000000000

Oh, everything she lists in the lead-up is factually true. I've seen variations on the details, but I have no quarrel with the facts. I am currently working on a 10,000-word fix-it fic about the horse incident. The gloves and fork also get a passing mention. The reason I quoted the passage at such length was to enumerate the list of Fritz's abuse-worthy offenses:

Look. "He was BEATEN for wearing gloves in cold weather, for eating with a silver fork, for throwing himself off a bolting horse."

* wearing gloves in cold weather
* eating with a silver fork
* throwing himself off a bolting horse
* thought that hunting was cruel
* talking to his mother

Look at those offenses! Talking to his mother! Wearing gloves in cold weather! What author writing in 1970 wouldn't think a twelve-year-old kid deserved to be beaten and starved for that??

I want to retroactively call CPS on any kids who may ever have come into her care.

This is worse than the 1800s German nationalist who said it was a good thing in the end that Katte got executed, because otherwise no expansion of Prussia. I don't expect any better of 1800s German nationalists. But this! This is satire, right? Right?

wait, I just totally MISSED the word early in there that he was beaten (which sure enough is right there, I apparently just completely skipped over it) and just read that he was in trouble for dumb things, which isn't great but I figured she must have meant FW just gave him the cold shoulder sometimes, because obviously she wouldn't have been as blase about anything more substantial than that (and even that is totally weird and wrong for those kinds of offenses, but okay, sometimes parents are totally weird and wrong), right?? Right?? Oh wait, no, totally wrong.

Right? I knew you had missed it, so I capslocked it for you. She sneaks that past you in the midst of all her sympathy for FW and his poor physical health and how he just wanted his family to go along with all his whims and suck up to him all the time, is that too much to ask? (There's pages of this, I just excerpted.)

She's vicious to Sophia Dorothea and says she was making up all the claims of abuse, lying through her teeth, because her husband loved her and always treated her extremely well. Now, I'm as critical of SD as I am of adult!Fritz, but wow, um, no, FW was pretty awful to his wife too.

The intro says Mitford's crazy about adult!Fritz, so I bet she just victim-blames all his victims too. I can fill in the blanks, I don't need to read it. It's also only 200 pages long, so I don't think I'm going to get a lot of reliable extra detail I don't already have. PASS.

Everything he was beaten for as a kid would have been totally par for the course in the agoge (boys' military training) of classical Sparta, an ethos that FW was trying to revive. But by the 18th century, even Prussians thought FW was over the top.

(Like Alexander/Fritz parallels, Sparta/Prussia parallels are also interesting.)

Also, earlier today, before I read this, while writing up the Heinrich Situation for you, I found myself thinking, the best decision Fritz ever made was not to have kids.

Now hoping Mitford made the same wise decision. Too afraid to check.

Also, lol, this is young Fritz like five minutes after he entered into his own forced marriage, "Well, she doesn't seem to be getting pregnant despite our best efforts. I predict a childless marriage, but don't worry, Dad and Prussian subjects, no throne has ever been vacant for lack of heirs! I'm sure one of my nine living siblings will produce some candidates."

Everyone: "You're giving up on yours and your wife's fertility a little early, don't you think?"

History: *approaching 300 years of debating whether that marriage was ever even consummated*

Oh, Elizabeth Christine in later years: "Our childlessness was no fault of our own or of our marriage, it was due solely to Providence ~~giving me an extremely gay husband~~," is what I think she meant when she said that. She absolutely 100% would have covered for him until her dying day. (She outlived him by several years, and died saying how nice he was, because she was kind of saintly like that.

Meanwhile, Fritz's attitude toward her was basically, "I may personally despise her lack of intellect and her piety and the fact that my father liked her ~~and her total lack of penis~~, but that doesn't mean the rest of you, if you have the misfortune of running into her, don't need to pay her the respect due a queen. Far, far away from me."

Translated from the original French: "She has cooties."

EC: "He's so awesome. I'm so lucky to be married to him. Best king ever. Best husband ever."

If there's any evidence that EC thought guys had cooties, I haven't seen it, but writing this, I wonder. Saint or lesbian? I may have a new fanon. :P)

Not knowing a single thing about EC except what you have said, I can imagine that, even if not a lesbian, she might know enough about things that could go wrong with royal marriages and childbirth to be like, "My husband doesn't ever want to have sex with me? He doesn't even want to be near me?! Best. Husband. Ever!"

This is very true. Louis XV's wife eventually had to say "no more sex" after a difficult childbirth, and the poor guy was then limited to sex with his many, many mistresses (after whom I'm told Fritz used to name his dogs in mockery, because he didn't believe in having mistresses, especially politically influential ones *the horror*, and lost all respect for Louis XV).

No, Nancy Mitford didn't have kids, but she was one of THE Mitfords, as in, the most (in)famous British family of the 20th century this side of the ~~Saxe-Coburg-Gothas~~ Windsors. Her father had a lot in common with FW as a parent, while Nancy, the oldest Mitford sister, as a sibling had more than a few things in common with Fritz. (Though with better reason. I mean, denouncing your sister as a traitor and ensuring she remains locked up for the the remainder of WWII is unsisterly, but if your sister Diana happens to be married to Fascist leader Oswald Mosley and has had Hitler as a wedding guest, it's not, err, unprovoked.) Another thing Nancy shared with Fritz was Francophilia - she moved to Paris permanently early on - and corresponding with one of the most praised Writers of the day (Evelyn Waugh) who clearly thinks himself her superior but yet can't resist exchanging barbed one liners.

The most famous of the Mitford Sisters:

Nancy the novelist (and occasional biographer)
Diana, first a famous Society Beauty, then a famous Fascist
Unity, an even more famous Fascist due to being so much of a Hitler fangirl that she stalked him in Munich until being admitted to his inner circle; she tried to commit suicide by shooting herself in the head when WWII started, survived that, was brought back to England in a coma and lived for a few more years until she died
Jessica ("Decca") the communist and heroic anti-Fascist freedom fighter in Spain who later moved to the US and promptly ran into Trouble with McCarthyism as she remained an social activist all her life

I got most of this from the intro, but not whether she'd had kids. *sigh of relief* Thanks for setting my mind to rest on that point.

I almost said something about her over-identifying with Fritz, and then realized I'd have to talk about my repeated comments about over-identifying with Fritz EXCEPT DIFFERENTLY, and then deleted that paragraph.

Also, new rule. Therapists for everyone. Therapists for FW, therapists for Fritz, therapists for Wilhelmine, therapists for Heinrich, therapists for Nancy. Nobody is allowed to say anything to or about anyone else in this list until they can pass an Interpersonal Relations 101 exam.

While the course is in progress, witty individuals will be allowed to engage in censored written correspondence, to be viewed by people who will find the contents entertaining rather than rage-inducing.

Very good rule. :) Also, wiki's summary of Mitford Senior. Am I unfair to him or FW with my comparison? You decide!

As to why Nancy, impossible Fritz opinions notwithstanding, is actually worth reading in other regards, there's the earlier mentioned correspondance with Evelyn Waugh.

NM: Darling Evelyn, Brideshead has come (...) - there are one or 2 things I long to know. Are you, or not, on Lady Marchmain's side? I couldn't make out. I suppose Charles ends by being more in love than ever before with Cordelia - so true to life being in love with a whole family (it has happened in mine tho' not lately). (...) I think Charles might have had a little more glamour - I can't explain why but he seemed to me a tiny bit dim & that is the only criticsim have to make because I'm literally dazzled with admiration.

EW: Dearest Nancy, Yes I know what you mean; he is dim, but then he is telling the story and it is not his story. It is all right for Benevunto Cellini to be undim but he is telling his own story and no one else's. I think the crucial question is: does Julia's love for him seem real or is he so dim that it falls flat; if the latter the book fails plainly. (...) Lady Marchmain, no I m not on her side; but God is, who suffers fools gladly; and the book is about God. Does that answer it?

NM: I quite see how the person who tells it is dim but then would Julia and her brother and her sister all be in love with him if he was? Well lov eis like that & one never can tell. What I can't understand is about God. Now I believe in God & I talk to him a very great deal & often tell him jokes but the God I believe in simply hates fools more than anything & he also likes people to be happy & people who love each other to live together - so long as nobody else's life is upset (& then he's not sure).

EW: There is no doubt that God does like dunces repugnant as it is. I think it is like the lower classes - everyone loves the simple gaffer until he starts telling us what he heard on The Brains Trust the evening before. We are all very lower class to God and our cleverness & second-hand scholarship bore him hideously.

Nancy Mitford tried to avoid theological subjects - but that was hard to do with Evelyn Waugh, who had all the fervour of a convert and seems to have regarded tolerance is one of the lethal sins. Occasionally they came up, which led to exchanges such as this:

EW: My dear Nancy, Would it not be best always to avoid any references of the Church or to your Creator? Your intrusions into this strange world are always fatuous.

NM: Don't start My Dear Nancy I don't like it. I can't agree that I must be debarred from ever mentioning anything to do with your creator. Try & remember that he also created me.

Their exchanges were quite often in this Punch and Judy style. See also:

NM: I hear your daughter Teresa is beautiful & fascinating how lucky for you.

EW: My daughter Teresa is squat, pasty-faced, slatternly with a most disagreeable voice - but it is true that she talks quite brightly. She has cost me the best part of 1500 pounds in the last year & afforded no corresponding pleasure.

He must have been horrid as a father; these kind of remarks about his children are quite the rule. Though as he grew older, he democratically disliked everybody. With the French (Nancy lived in France) getting special bile and Americans special condescension:

EW: You see Americans have discovered about homosexuality from a book called Kinsey Report (unreadable) & they take it very seriously. All popular plays in New York are about buggers but they all commit suicide. The idea of a happy pansy is inconceivable to them.

Oh, and

cahn, one more Mitford detour: it's one of the theories in Harry Potter fandom I'm utterly ready to believe that JKR modelled the Black Sisters on the Mitfords, as in:

Andromeda - Decca
Bellatrix - Unity
Narcissa - Diana (co-starring Lucius Malfoy as Mosley)

No Nancy equivalent in the House of Black, though.

Oh dear, these exchanges are hilarious! Although hard on his children.

It's a very witty correspondance in general which makes you glad you were never anywhere near Evelyn Waugh, especially in his capacity as a father. The correspondance editor, btw, who one other than Charlotte Mosley, aka ~~female Draco~~ daughter of ~~Narcissa Malfoy~~ Diana Mitford Mosley, who evidently didn't let Nancy's feud with her mother stop her. (Since Nancy had, as mentioned, no kids of her own, Charlotte probably inherited as the offspring of the next oldest sister). One of my favourite bits is Nancy reporting the reaction of her Cousin, Winston Churchill's son Randolph (the Churchills were related to the Mitfords via Winston's wife Clemmie, and given the whole Mosley-as-leader-of-British-fascists Thing, it was, well, extra), to Brideshead Revisited: "I shall never commit adultery with the same zeal again!"

Mind you, since Nancy's father did such stuff as keeping his hunting dogs in shape by letting them track his children, her views on parenting (both FW's and Evelyn Waughs') might have been, err, less than informed by anything like a normal Standard.

And lastly, it had to exist: The Mitford Sisters/Harry Potter crossover.

! That fic was extraorder, although I'm sure I'm missing at least half of the references.

...I am going to have to read Brideshead Revisited, aren't I.

Well, there's a reason why it's considered a classic.:) Mind you, Waugh has been breakig Slash fans' hearts since generations by letting the m/m couple break up mid book, never to reunite again as a couple (though there's one more time Charles sees Sebastian, gone to seed and drunkenness in Morocco), with one half of said couple first marrying, then falling for his previous boyfriend's alsao married sister. The prose is gorgeous, Waugh at his best, but just about 99% of the readers disagreed with him with who the main pairing of his novel is.

he was king of... Prussia??

Little known fact! He started out with the counterintuitive title King *in* Prussia, not King *of* Prussia. As you probably know, the Holy Roman Empire was this grab-bag of little principalities of varying degrees of size and importance, all technically (some only nominally) under the Holy Roman Emperor. The Hohenzollerns gradually got more and more powerful and the Emperor less and less powerful, until finally Fritz's grandfather got to call himself a king.

But King *in* Prussia, not King *of* Prussia. In part because the region that had been called Prussia from olden times was now divided up, and the Hohenzollerns only ruled part of it. The rest was part of Poland. So it wasn't accurate to say the Hohenzollerns were kings of the whole *of* Prussia, but only kings of some territory *inside* it. (If your eyes are glazing over, just know that this was the most I could simplify it.)

But, as Fritz would later say about being "Duke" of his newly conquered province Silesia, "I don't give a fuck about titles as long as I have the territory." F 1, FW 1, and F 2 were all kings and acted like it.

Enter Old Fritz. He's won the Seven Years' War and is trying not to get involved in another one. He figures out the best way to achieve his current political goals is to get his neighbors Catherine the Great and Maria Theresa involved in grabbing parts of Poland as opposed to fighting each other.

Many Europeans are appalled, because it's cool to divide up the Americas and Africa and places like that, but when you start dividing up countries in *Europe*, omg, who's next? Me???

But when Russia, Austria, and a Prussia that's just elbowed its way in with the big boys all agree on something, what're you going to do? Well, nothing, and certainly not if you're Poland.

So the three rulers sit down, draw up a map, and everybody takes the part of Poland that's of most interest to them that they think they can hold. Fritz gets the smallest part, but it's very strategically chosen. Now he's got all of Prussia! Tada, congratulations, Your Majesty, King OF Prussia.

Maria Theresa was one of the "but this is terrible! What have the poor Poles ever done to us??" Europeans. But when you're a monarch and your principles come up against what you convince yourself is necessary for your country...you find a way.

Inspiring Fritz to this jewel of cynicism:

“Catherine and I are simply brigands; but I wonder how the Queen-Empress managed to square her confessor!...She wept as she took, and the more she wept, the more she took.”

Words of wisdom from the man who shed *no* recorded tears over the discarding of the Anti-Machiavel before the ink was dry.

After Fritz's death, more partitions of Poland continued, because it was, like, sitting RIGHT THERE.

Wow, okay! Hee, Fritz. Also, lol, some large part of what I know about history comes from Dave Barry (the humorist)'s book A Sort-of History of the United States (which was the book my roommate and I used to study for the US History AP -- if you can judge from this that our history teacher and textbook were both terrible, you would be right; Dave Barry was way better than either of them). I don't have access to my copy right now, but he says something like, "One of the lessons of history is that anything, including summer thunderstorms, leads to Germany invading Poland."

Wow, I'm so sorry. My AP US History teacher was one of the only good teachers I had in my mediocre high school, and we chatted a few times after I graduated. :/ That book sounds interesting, though!

"One of the lessons of history is that anything, including summer thunderstorms, leads to Germany invading Poland."

When my partner and I did our central Europe trip, we joked that we were entering Germany from Poland and not the other way around, because otherwise we'd be invading Poland. :P

Other anecdotes of note.

Fritz was an anti-anti-vaxxer. Vaccination per se hadn't been invented yet, but inoculation via variolation had, and Fritz was *all for it*, and got super mad at it getting banned in France, the same way we get mad at anti-vaxxers today. So mixed in with all the deaths, he saved some lives.

Plus the lives that he failed to take because the criminal code became less harsh (still very harsh by modern standards) in most respects under his rule.

One thing he takes a lot of modern heat for is leaving the death penalty for "sodomy" while probably committing more than his share of sodomy, and even if not technically committing it in practice, definitely all for it in theory. However, I would be super curious about whether enforcement changed at all under Friedrich II, in either direction. (Sodomy law is one of those things where enforcement has varied widely across place and time. If you read up on Renaissance Florence, for example, it's amaaaaazing.) There has to be some queer history paper or book out there where someone's looked into this.

Another fun, out-there anecdote that you can add to your peppercorns and orgasm list: he and Wilhelmine once wrote letters to each other, each pretending to be their dog writing to the other one's dog, because of course they did. The letters are a little on the misanthropic side, all "The more people I meet, the more I love my dog," but they're also adorable and more than a little weird. You can read the context and English translations of the letters here.

Would not be at all surprised if this ever happened in real life. "I'm a very busy king, total workaholic, no time to sleep, important stuff to do, don't bother me!" *closes door* "Whoooo's a good giiiirl?" Would not be surprised if it happened more than once.

OMG, forgot to tell THIS anecdote.

In addition to homosexuality being a capital offense, so was bestiality. There are at least two accounts of Friedrich refusing to enforce this sentence against someone who'd had sex with a four-legged animal. In one case, it was a member of the cavalry who'd had sex with his horse. Fritz's punishment was to put him in the infantry, which, as it was both a demotion (the cavalry being the more prestigious of the two) and got him away from horses, I consider quite a neat little solution.

On the other occasion, Friedrich wrote, and you're going to love this, "In this country, there is freedom of conscience and penis."

Now, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I HOPE, and I expect, that it was a lot easier to get away with homosexual intercourse under his reign than previous reigns. Still would have been infinitely better for all, e.g. people after he died, to lift the death penalty, but I accept that reformers run into problems getting their reforms accepted. And I would still love to see the data on prosecutions.

But anyway. CONSCIENCE AND PENIS. Yes, Fritz, I'm sure your subjects loved religion and sex being placed side-by-side like this. Go you!

"In this country, there is freedom of conscience and penis."

LOL OMG FRITZ

RIGHT?! Most on-brand thing he ever said. "I am an extremely enlightened monarch! As well as an extremely gay one!"

Sadly, our source on this is Voltaire, which, Voltaire + things stated or implied about Fritz and sex =/= reliable journalism, so unless there's another source corroborating this anecdote, I find it suspect, but, you know, I totally believe it anyway. :P If he didn't literally say it in those words, I feel the message was received regardless.

ahahahaha :D I will take it with a grain of salt, then, although clearly I need to read more Voltaire :P

Oddly (or perhaps not oddly), the biography I was reading this in cites this as a true fact with no reference to the fact that estranged!Voltaire is not the most reliable source on Fritz. That said, I'm finding that the majority of history I read has the same MO: just state things from the primary sources without critically evaluating them. Leaving you frustrated if you have any familiarity with the sources at all, or even have just read other books that selectively cited different material from the sources.

REGARDLESS. I can imagine Fritz reading this and thinking, "Damn, I missed my chance! That's a great line, can't believe I didn't think of it. It's not too late, is it? Quick, someone go fuck a donkey or a horse so I can pardon you with freedom of the penis." (He always admired Voltaire's way with words, all his life, even when he was busy denigrating him as a person and having him arrested and stuff. When Old Fritz was rapidly approaching his deathbed and having his favorite authors read to him in the evenings to distract him from the pain, in the last month of his life, our sources record that the very last piece of literature read to him was something by Voltaire. Ultimate frenemies. <3)

Argh, I hate that. I am totally happy with quoting Voltaire on this, I just want to know that it's Voltaire I'm quoting, not Fritz himself, you know?

I know. So many times we think we're quoting someone, and we forget or don't realize we're quoting someone else attributing something to them.

And I mean, maybe we do have Fritz directly on that (I would be over the moon if we did), but given that my only source quotes Voltaire, I'm thinking we don't.

While I'm here, I reported in another comment that Voltaire published his memoirs anonymously and denied publishing them, leading to an authorship controversy, but all I can find when googling is that they were published posthumously. So I must be thinking of something else (one of his many other controversies, I'm sure). So take everything I say with a grain of salt too, since I'm frequently working from memory. ;)

Wait, did you tell me that when Opera!Posa dies, he sings, "Ah, je meurs, l'âme joyeuse"/"Io morrò, ma lieto in core"???

Because one version (there are several slight variants, all telling Fritz not to blame himself) of Katte's last words to Fritz is "Je meurs pour vous la joie dans le cœur."

!!!

oh, man, I don't think I did tell you, sorry!! Yes, he sings that, it's basically my favorite aria in the whole thing <3

OMG IT'S KATTE MY KATTE *mad hugs for both*

I'm just surprised it hasn't come up yet, in all our discussions of possible inspirations! (No comparable passage seems to exist in Schiller, but still. I want to believe it's Katte.)

Though I guess I don't have actual proof or anything, I am personally sure that someone involved in the libretto (Méry/du Locle/Verdi) knew the story of Katte, as all the changes made from Schiller in Posa's personality (and there are a lot!) are structured to make Posa even more relatable and heroic and sweet and ~~totally in love with~~ self-sacrificing for Carlo. (Selenak pointed out somewhere above, or possibly on the last post, that 19thC vs. 18thC sensibilities were just different and everyone thought Posa was awesome in both incarnations, but it's also true that everything (and that line, and another line I'll talk about when discussing the clip) sort of points to a very Katte-like interpretation. And she also pointed out Fontane, who wrote his Katte-centric take -- including " 'Er gehe mit Freuden in den Tod', so sagte er" -- a couple of years before the opera was produced (although that line was in the very first version, I believe, so it may not have been influenced by Fontane in particular).)

Also, do you have a clip? Asking for a friend. ;)

Ohhhh yes of course I have this :D (As Miranda's Hamilton would say, "Is it a question of if or which one? No, seriously, I, uh, was choosing between four versions I own. Which doesn't even count the ones I didn't like!) I don't have my computer that has software for making a clip, but here you go:

So here's the thing. "Io morrò, ma lieto in core" is actually the death aria Posa sings after he's been shot and is dying. You will also want the aria he sings right before that, "C'est mon jour suprême" / "Per me giunto è il dì supremo" a) because one really cannot have enough of Simon Keenlyside, in my opinion :P (he is the Posa in the clip I gave you with Philip) b) Alagna (the Carlo) and Keenlyside are both such great actors and also c) I CANNOT BELIEVE I didn't make this connection before, for this or Io morrò, but in this first aria he totally sings "l' estremo spiro lieto è a chi morrà per te" (The last breath is joyful for the one who dies for you) which, you know, just in case you don't get it in the scene where he's actually dying :)

I am having a bit of trouble getting to this but I think it has to do with this particular computer; hopefully you don't :)

Anyway, the scene starts at 2:54:08 and ends 3:05:02.

I'm also going to give you a couple more time coordinates, but you really really want to watch the whole scene:
Death: 3:01:10
Io morro starts 3:02:46

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hCf6wiMZgqYf-2LrvSqO9AsAt0R_0H0a

It's also seriously amazing that he sings WHILE LYING DOWN and even more so WITH HIS TORSO AT A 45-DEGREE ANGLE. That man has serious abdominal muscles.

Hahaha, sorry, my mistake. Which clip do you have that I should watch?? :P

I will check all this out when it's not 1 am and well past my bedtime, thanks!

Thanks for the clip! Wow, the way they switch roles, first one and then the other hovering over his friend and wanting to help, but being refused...yes, excellent acting.

What struck me was how passive Carlo is throughout the scene, and then I watched the next minute or two, and it looks he does a total 180. It reminded me of a passage I ran into on the internet a couple days ago. It's from a novel, by an apparently famous German author Nobel laureate author named Günter Grass, whom

selenak's no doubt heard of and probably read but I hadn't, about German reunification. The passage in question describes a (I think fictional) play about the Katte affair that's put on during the removal of Fritz's remains to Sanssouci in 1991.

After Katte is killed in the play, Fritz curls up into a tiny ball of trembling despair. Then, and here you have to forgive Google Translate: "While a white sheet was being draped over Katte's body, the Crown Prince, who at the moment was still folded on the floor, his heart broken, rose and grew larger than life. The young girl who played him indulged in acrobatic exercises as a young man in the interweaving of the scaffolding. She made clowning, jumped on the platform, suggesting the flight of an eagle, jumped over the friend's corpse, walked on her hands, shone by serial dangerous jumps, forwards and backwards, declared symbolically some wars for a yes, for a no, tore up treaties, stole provinces, fought dozens of battles, passed over corpses with a skill now well acquired, drove on one side, then on the other chorus of mimes - was driven out in turn but did not admit defeat."

Now, of course Don Carlo doesn't end that way, but the sudden rise of Carlo to his feet, sword in hand, defiant, reminded me of that passage.

Also, if you hadn't pointed out the poses in which Posa's singing, I wouldn't have noticed, but YES! That's impressive.

famous German author Nobel laureate author named Günter Grass, whom selenak's no doubt heard of and probably read but I hadn't

I can do better; I have a photo of myself with Günter Grass. ;) (Made when PEN Germany celebrated its 90th anniversary; I translated for some foreign guests who wanted to have their picture taken with him, and he said yes, so I thought I might as well.) He died a couple of years ago, controversial to the end. His big breakout novel was "The Tin Drummer" in the 1950s. He was a huge stylistic influence on Salman Rushdie, so if you've read Rushdie, that's similar to how Grass wrote in German, occasionally, but not always, venturing in magical realism. (Rushdie in Joseph Anton, his memoir about the fatwah years, is hugely complimentary about Grass as a erson, too, since when all hell broke loose after Chomenei's edict GG was one of the few international writers supporting Rushdie in word and deed throughout. He - Grass - was the instigator for publishing the German translation of The Satanic Verses via a collaboration of several publishers, for example. (This was when the Japanese translator had already been killed.)

The two main controversies linked to Günther Grass were:

- back in the days when he was a young rebel, the explicit sexuality in his writings and his relentless attacks on 1950s and 1960s cover up/complacency about the Nazi past

- the casual reveal in his memoirs decades later, that in the last year of the war when he was 17, he didn't just join the army (as had been previously assumed), he joined the Waffen SS. Cue major uproar of "Et Tu, Günther?!? Of all the people, you?!?" (I.e. if the guy most famous for his "you bourgois assholes need to be honest about your Nazi past" attitude turns out to have been, however briefly and however young, a member of one of the most vicious Nazi institutions around, well…)

There were a lot of other Grass related controversies, but these tend to come up first. He was born in Danzig, Poland (today), and thus literally was an East Prussian. In his middle age, he got very interested in Fontane and Prussian history.

I have a photo of myself with Günter Grass.

So you've heard of him, have you? :D

More fascinating material from you (this and Wilhelm and Liselotte), thanks as always!

Danzig, Poland

A memory that always makes me laugh: I happened upon one of those large world maps on the wall of some department hall during my freshman year of college, glanced at it, and was shocked to find Danzig/Gdansk smack in the middle of Poland. "That can't be right! I *swear* it's right near the border with Germany." I walked away with feelings of shame that my European geography wasn't as good as I prided myself on. To the point where I went home and got a second opinion from a different map, which, to my dismay, agreed with the first one.

Later that day, I realized my mental map of Europe, and Germany especially (thanks, Fritz), was heavily skewed toward the second half of the 18th century, the setting of that novel I'd spent most of high school writing. Oops!

Re: Wilhelm, forgot to include a historical quote the movie didn't use, when he was urged to abdicate: "No descendant of Frederick the Great would ever abdicate!" (He really said "Nachkomme" - descendant - rather than "Nachfolger" - successor.) Willy, unless you're postulating Fritz was getting it on with his sister-in-law, you're not his descendant.

Map problems: yes, I can see how imprinting on late 18th century borders would have been confusing. :)

*spits out drink*

I'm getting the feeling that any time anyone in power 1900-1945 opened their mouth about Old Fritz, he had to turn over in his grave. "Look, there's a reason I asked to be buried with my dogs. It's because you humans are stupid!"

Also, Fritz discussed abdicating after Kunersdorf, yeah? Or does this fall under "Fritz got a miracle, and so will I!"?

Map problems: yeah, it came as no small relief to know that I wasn't misremembering, per se, just remembering anachronistically. Being wrong for the right reasons.

"Fritz got a miracle, and so will I!"

Got it in one. Because destiny was with the House of Hohenzollern, etc. But seriously, 1900 to 1945, Fritz fandom is the kind of fandom where no one makes you cringe as much as your fellow fen. Including Thomas Mann. Which reminds me, there is this Wonderful exchange of letters near the end of WWI, when Wilhelm was ranting about "no descendant of…" etc:

Background: Anglosaxons associate Thomas Mann mostly with the later stage of his existence, as the dignified nobel prize winner in exile, recording speeches against Hitler for the BBC. In 1914, by contrast, he was very much pro-war, and singing the same tune as most people: superiority of German culture, decadent shallow France, perfidious Albion etc., you name it, he said it. Meanwhile, his older brother Heinrich was among the minority of writers firmly anti war. In the lead up, he'd written what is still the best satiric novel about Wilhelmian Germany, Der Untertan (translated as Man of Straw and later as The Subject); he'd also written an essay about Emile Zola (focusing specifically on Zola the political journalist, J'Accuse as the centre) which among other things was very much an attack on the increasingly nationalistic output of many other writers of the day. These of course included his younger brother, who was outraged and stopped talking to Heinrich at that point except through the press. (He also wrote Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen - "Contemplations of an Apolitical Man" - in which he attacks the Zivilisationsliterat (guess who) and which is so anti democratic that it's not surprising Thomas in later years prefered not to talk about it.

In the last year of the war, at a point when even the most fervent of war believers had to face the fact Germany was about to lose, Heinrich attempted to get into contact again. So, a hundred years ago, he wrote thusly:

Dear Tommy,

your article in the Berliner Tageblatt was read out loud in my presence. I don't know whether the other listeners had the same impression, but it seemed to me as if at least in some parts it was addressed to me, almost like a letter. Which is why I feel the need to reply to you, although without the press as an intermediary, if only to tell you how unjustified the accusation of fraternal hatred is.

In my public announcements, there is no "I" and hence also no brother. They are addressed to the public at large, disregard - at least this is my intention - my advantage or disadvantage, and are solely focused on an idea. Love for humanity (which is in its political manifestation: European democracy) is indeed love for an idea; but he who can open his heart this way has to be capable of doing it on a smaller scale. (...)

I've been following all your work with the best intention to understand and empathize with it. NOw I've always been familiar with the antagonism of your mind. If your extreme position during the war surprised you, well, I found it predictable enough. This knowledge of you never stopped me from often loving your work, even more often to penetrate it and to praise or defend it publically, and to comfort you, when you were doubting yourself, as my younger brother.

If you hardly ever returned this, I didn't mind. I knew that in order to define yourself you didn't just need self confinement but the active repelling of the other - and thus I coped with your attacks (...) without much effort. I did not return them, or returned them only once, when the issue at hand wasn't a literary preference anymore, or a intellectual knowing-all-ness, but the most basic threat and misery. My essay titled "Zola" was a protest against those who, as I had it see it, were falling over themselves to do damage. Not against solely yourself, but against a legion of writers. (...)

Perhaps my explanation today will be listened to. This could be possible if your newest lament against myself was dictated by pain. If this is the case, please know you need not think of me as an enemy.

Heinrich

Thomas was, shall we say, not in the mood for what he saw as being patronized by his older brother. His reply (Carla and Lula were their sisters):

Dear Heinrich,

your letter finds me at a moment where it is physically impossible for me to reply to its true sense. (...) Besides, I wonder what the point would be of pressing the mental torture of two years into a letter which of necessity would have to be much longer than your own. Oh, I believe your assurance that you don't hate me. After that absolving outburst of a Zola article and given your current circumstances and the way all is well for you, you don't need to anymore. Using the phrase "fraternal hatred" had been meant more generally anyway. (...)

Calling my behaviour during the war extreme is a lie. Your behavior was extreme, and despicable, completely so. I haven't suffered and struggled for two years, neglected my dearest plans, investigated, tested and contemplated myself, and condemned myself to artistic silence just to sobbingly hug it out with you - after a letter which exudes understandable triumph and was dictated in no line by something other than self righteousness and ethical smugness. (...)

You can't comprehend the rightness and the ethics of my life, because you are my brother. Why didn't either Hauptmann or Dehmel who even praised German horses to the skies or Harden who demanded a preventive war need to feel the insults of the Zola article adressed to them? Why was its entire sensational invective tailored to fit myself? The fraternal Welterlebnis (untranslatable term roughly meaning "way of experiencing the world and life") forced you to do it. (...)

Let the tragedy of our brotherhood complete itself. Pain? Ah, well. One gets hard and numb. Since Carla committed suicide and you broke off relationships with Lula, separation for all time isn't anything new for our community anymore, is it? I haven't made this life. I despise it. One has to live it out as good as one can.

Farewell.

T.

Heinrich drafted a reply:

Dear Tommy,

against such bitterness, I should fall silent. (...)But I don't do separations intentionally, and never forever. (...) I regard myself as a self reliant being. My Welterlebnis is not a fraternal one, it is simply mine. I don't mind you. As far as I can see, you have underestimated what you mean to me emotionally and overestimated your intellectual impact. (...) For example: if you ever wrote something other than childishness about French subjects, I'd be honestly delighted. But you know what you'd do if I suddenly decided to declare myself a follower of old Prussia? You'd throw your notes for a Frederick the Great into the fire. (...)

Don't see my life and actions as being all about you, they are not revolving around you and would be literally the same if you didn't exist.

Your inability to take seriously another life finally births monstrosities. And thus you find that my letter, which was meant as a gesture of simple kindness, "exudes triumph". Triumph because of what? "All being well for me" - i.e. the world smashed to pieces and ten million dead bodies in the ground. What a justification! How promising of satisfaction to the ideologue! But I am not the man to fashion the misery and death of nations after my intellectual pet peeves, not I. I don't believe the victory of any cause is worth discussion at a point where humanity itself is getting destroyed. All that will be left after the last, most terrible ending will taste of bitterness and sadness. I don't know whether any of us are able to help our fellow humans to "live better", but I should hope our literature will never again help them to die more eagerly.

They're still dying. But you, who approved of the war, who still approves of it and calls my attitude (...) "despicable, completely so" can have, God willing, another 40 years to "investigate and test", if not to reclaim yourself. The hour will come, I hope, in which you'll see human beings, not shadows, and then you will see me, too.

Heinrich

Wowwwwwww. That's some exchange of letters!

To be fair, as an older sister myself *ahem*, it's a fine line between coming across as loving and coming across as patronizing, and the whole time I was reading Heinrich's first letter I was like, "...this is not going to end well." Though Thomas certainly... exceeded my expectations, there.

When you say Heinrich drafted a reply, does that mean he never actually sent it?

Also, lol to Heinrich's mention of Frederick the Great. What happened with Thomas Mann's Frederick the Great?

Thomas Mann never wrote it. He did write an essay in 1914, "Frederick II and the Great Coalition" which tells us how Germany invading Belgium is just like Fritz invading Saxony, and the current enemies of Germany were just like those Fritz faced in the 7-years-war. Most telling sentence:

"The Koalition may have changed a Little, but it is his Europe, the Europe allied in hate, which does not want to endure us, does still not want to endure him, the King, the Europe which has to learn again in lengthy Detail, maybe even through another seven years, that it will not manage to murder him."

("Die Koalition hat sich ein wenig verändert, aber es ist sein Europa, das im Haß verbündete Europa, das uns nicht dulden, das ihn, den König, noch immer nicht dulden will, und dem noch einmal in zäher Ausführlichkeit, in einer Ausführlichkeit von sieben Jahren vielleicht, bewiesen werden muß, daß es nicht angängig ist, ihn zu beseitigen.")

Oh, Tommy, as Heinrich would have said and did say. Just last year, I discovered there's a Fritz novel which is also a Brothers Mann novel, with a great premise: in their exile years, at which point they've long been reconciled (but the past is unforgotten), they decide to write a Friedrich novel together, only it's going to be a Fritz-and-his-brother-Heinrich novel. Guess who gets two write whom? Heinrich is uncertain whether roleplaying feuding Hohenzollern brothers is really a good idea, given, you know, but can't resist, and they start writing chapters, at which point the novelist does a credible parody of both Thomas Mann's style and Heinrich Mann's style, but then, alas, the whole thing collapses and stopped being credible, and I stopped reading.

No, Heinrich didn't send the second letter. They were reconciled in 1922 or 23 (I Forget which), when Heinrich was really dangerously ill and Thomas made a tearful appearance at his hospital bed.

wowwwwwww. Oh Tommy indeed.

I got rather excited about the Fritz-Brothers-Mann novel from the first part of your description -- that's really too bad it didn't live up to its premise.

Wait... so he went around telling eveyone they shouldn't cover up the Nazi past, but he didn't go around telling anyone about his Nazi past (even if brief) until decades later? I can see why there was a major uproar :P

Indeed. *facepalms*

Cahn, while I will always approve of Keenlyside's abdominal muscles, I'd vote for the baby Alagna/baby Hampson version of "Ah, je meurs, l'âme joyeuse" as being the most slashy/ Fritz/Katte-like. So many choices ;)

argh YOU ARE TOTALLY RIGHT, of course. (

mildred_of_midgard: this particular production (in French) was notable to me for being the most shippy Rodrigue/Carlos I've ever seen, like, the canon Carlos/Elisabeth seems like an afterthought... I wasn't thinking about Fritz/Katte then, but... yeah) *riffles* Here you go, mildred:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eIhYz4DgIj4YhJdwRo8aBpKqHkJja1BZ
2:42:58 to 2:54:07, you are less likely to be super impressed by the wild duet Carlos and Philippe sing over Rodrigue's dead body than iberiandoctor and I were, but I love it SO MUCH (and it is cut from the revised versions))

Unfortunately I only have French subtitles for this.

(oh man,

mildred_of_midgard and

selenak, I do have other responses for you coming up probably tomorrow, I just... keep getting sidetracked by, er, Rodrigo)

(mildred, I deleted your comment below so I could edit this -- apparently I put the ENTIRE COMMENT in the username tag, gah)

Edited 2019-08-28 16:15 (UTC)

Oh, MAAAN, that is some shippy shipping! \o/ Thanks for sharing. That's...that's canon slash, is what that is. :P

And no worries about the French, my passive French is just good enough (a teensy bit better than my German) that I could follow along with the subtitles.

Haha, yeah, I wouldn't have noticed that before taking singing lessons. But now I know how hard it is to sing even when one is upright, much less in odd contorted positions. And I'd think at that angle you're stressing the same abdominal muscles you use to sing!

[NOTE: I wrote the rest of this comment while on a plane (yes, I have this version of Don Carlo offline to reference :P) and before

iberiandoctor pointed out that Hampson/Alagna is a much better Fritz/Katte reference. I have also fixed that comment, by the way, to link you to the death scene in that one:
link to comment: https://cahn.dreamwidth.org/158748.html?thread=1018652#cmt1018652
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eIhYz4DgIj4YhJdwRo8aBpKqHkJja1BZ
]

I didn't have time when writing the last comment to point you to other Posa parts but I'm going to now, because if you think of Rodrigo, Marquis de Posa as Katte and Carlo as Fritz I think you'll enjoy these too. (If not, then of course you don't have to watch it :) ) Same link as parented up: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hCf6wiMZgqYf-2LrvSqO9AsAt0R_0H0a

-Early on, Rodrigo and Carlo sing a duet affirming their friendship ("Dieu, tu semas dans nos âmes" / "Dio, che nell'alma infondere"). This is widely regarded in Don Carlo fandom as a love duet :P (I really like friendships in my fandoms and therefore I was probably the only person who didn't emphatically ship them, but now that I know about the Katte reference I see it's more of a canon ship than I thought...) 36:21 to 44:32. (Notes on this: 1. See Simon run! It's kind of amazing to actually run onto stage and then sing, not too many singers can manage this, but he does this all the time. Showoff :D (I'm really joking here. I saw Keenlyside give a masterclass last year and he was the nicest person ever.) 2. Look at his reaction when Carlo says he's in love with the Queen (okay, fine, they couldn't make this ALL Frederick/Katte), lol. He's been asked to make this shippy! 3. I have another video of this same staging with Keenlyside (though a different Carlo) and he plays it a little gentler; this Rodrigo is a little more soldierly and aggressive. Not sure how you envision Katte, although I (who know not much about him besides what you guys have told me) think of him as a little gentler than Keenlyside plays Rodrigo here. I can of course find that one for you as well :P This one is better though as a first introduction to Don Carlo because the videography is SO much better than the other one that it's clearly very exciting even if you don't care about the music, which you don't.)

-Here's where Posa takes Carlo's letters. You don't have to watch the trio preceding (where he gets into a scuffle with the Princess Eboli), although I like it too because Rodrigo's all "I keep having to get my boy Carlo out of trouble!" I just really like how the letters bit is staged in this version --

I'll have to give you some background here, as this is similar to but differs from the Schiller

selenak and I have discussed previously. In the opera (second act, ~1:35:30) Carlo has gotten a note to meet him at the garden at night. He is in love with the Queen so assumes she has written the note. It was actually written by the Princess Eboli, who is in love with Carlo. (Carlo is kind of a failboat, if we didn't make this clear before.) Carlo meets this veiled lady -- in a scene which I believe is cut in revision (and is certainly cut in this production), it is clear that Eboli is wearing the Queen's veil ~~so as to maximize plot confusion~~ -- and gets all excited until he realizes it's Eboli, at which point he tries to put her off (even though Eboli points out she can help him, that he's in danger, that Posa and the King have been talking about him...). Eboli, meanwhile, because of the veil, realizes he must be in love with the Queen!

At this point Rodrigo ~~who is apparently stalking Carlo in the evenings because his boyfriend~~ jumps in (1:39:22 will give you a little of the flavor before the trio plus trio, but if you don't want to listen to the trio read on) and threatens Eboli if she tells everyone that Carlo is in love with the Queen; he almost stabs her at one point (but Carlo prevents him). Notably, he also threatens her with being the favorite of the King, which Carlo hears and is taken aback by, thus his reaction in -- and finally this is the place for Carlo/Rodrigo interaction -- 1:46:07 to end of act at 1:48:10.

(You may not notice, but the tune that plays at the end of this bit is the same as in the "love duet." This tune also comes back in the middle of Rodrigo's death scene, although when I watch it I'm always so emotional that I never really notice.)

-Also, auto-da-fe in this version, still sad pandas although out of context I like the first clip I showed you better. But this one has a swordfight! Here: 2:04:24 to 2:07:19, although rewinding a couple of minutes will show you the Flanders delegation and everything just ramping up. (Posa's shellshocked face as they take Carlo away, omg.)

Edited 2019-08-28 16:27 (UTC)

Thank you for all this! My attention span for audio-visual media is very short, so I'm watching only a bit at a time, but I started with the part where you asked me about Keenlyside vs. Katte.

Notes:

1. OOMMMGG SOO SHIPPY THIS IS SHIPPIER THAN THE DEATH SCENE \O/ \O/ \O/ <333

I really like friendships in my fandoms and therefore I was probably the only person who didn't emphatically ship them, but now that I know about the Katte reference I see it's more of a canon ship than I thought...

Yes, sorry, I love friendships too, but canon ship is canon. :P

2. See Simon run! Heee.

3. Rodrigo's reaction to (I started to type 'Fr', lol) Carlo's declaration of love is exactly how I (and most of AO3) imagine Katte reacting Fritz proposing escape. "Betraying your king? Your country? Your oath?? No, no, you're suffering, nothing else matters to me." I really think that one line perfectly encapsulates Katte's struggles over his divided loyalties: Fritz's suffering and Katte's love for him won out over everything else: Katte's oaths, his desire not to let down his own family, his sense of self-preservation, everything. Not without a struggle. But I think every time he went around and around in his head, agonizing over what the right thing to do was, he came back to "Fritz is suffering."

Not sure how you envision Katte, although I (who know not much about him besides what you guys have told me) think of him as a little gentler than Keenlyside plays Rodrigo here.

Weeelll, it's really hard to get a read on Katte. There's so little evidence. I mean, for Fritz we have 76 volumes in his own hand, plus a gazillion eyewitness volumes, and the #1 word most used of him by scholars is "enigma." Katte? We have a few paragraphs here and there, and two of our major sources didn't like him? It's really, really hard to draw many firm conclusions. Most of my growing sense of his personality is a fanon interpretation, one of many possible interpretations, rather than anything I would defend as canonical.

Reasoning backwards from Fritz, I would say that you probably had to have a certain amount of gentleness to get anywhere with him (I can't find the quote rn, but contemporaries said this too), which is not to say that you couldn't also be firm with him on occasion. IF you can trust Wilhelmine's account, Katte wrote in no uncertain terms to tell Fritz that he wasn't going to follow him into exile (but later said he would, so who knows). As discussed elsewhere, I get the impression Fritz was more strong-willed than Katte, BUT, 1) we have a very small data set for the latter, 2) their situations were radically different on that occasion, and 3) if you cherry-picked a data set of the same size from Fritz's life, you could get a picture of a vacillating individual as well.

All of which is to say, I saw nothing in Keenlyside's reaction here that couldn't have mirrored Katte's, although it's also possible to read Katte as someone who would have patted Fritz on the head while silently freaking out in his own head. After all, Wilhelmine's memoirs are, for many reasons, not the same thing as having the letter in Katte's hand saying, "Hell no, I won't go!" (We do have a letter in Katte's hand saying, "Remember when I tried to talk you out of this?" but as discussed, that was meant for a lot more eyes than just Fritz's. I don't think we actually *know* how gentle or otherwise he was about his reluctance.)

I have to say, I loooove how Rodrigo segues from "You're in love with the Queen WTAF??!" to "This is exactly why you should go to Flanders!" I get the impression that if Carlo had announced, "I have developed a sudden passion for collecting giraffes," Rodrigo would have reacted with, "What a coincidence! Flanders is the perfect place to use your newfound freedom of action to collect giraffes to your heart's content, aided and abetted by the grateful people whom you will save!" <-- Not!Katte.

Aaaaalso, I love how during the "fight for freedom" song near the end of that clip, Carlo is staring into space and Rodrigo keeps looking over at Carlo. Also Keenlyside's Determinator face next to Alagna's "I guess" face, haha. So awesome.

Carlo is kind of a failboat, if we didn't make this clear before.

This has been made clear to me, as has the fact that this opera should have been called Posa. :P

I can of course find that one for you as well :P

Yes, please. :P

ahahaha let's hook you up with "Dieu, tu semas dans nos âmes" in Hampson/Alagna. Less focus on Flanders, much more shippy, much more Fritz/Katte:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eIhYz4DgIj4YhJdwRo8aBpKqHkJja1BZ
34:40 to 44:17)

I have to say, I loooove how Rodrigo segues from "You're in love with the Queen WTAF??!" to "This is exactly why you should go to Flanders!" I get the impression that if Carlo had announced, "I have developed a sudden passion for collecting giraffes," Rodrigo would have reacted with, "What a coincidence! Flanders is the perfect place to use your newfound freedom of action to collect giraffes to your heart's content, aided and abetted by the grateful people whom you will save!" <-- Not!Katte.

LOL YES. Rodrigo is a little... obsessed. Not Katte :)

I can of course find that one for you as well :P
Yes, please. :P

Here you go:
First half: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-PN_u3VGnBAjgHWw0THoCdjdO9PwxkfI
"Dio, che nell'alma infondere" part of scene starts at 35:25
Second half: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TR7mEcK5UaUeKt_F0yCIbtVxaqx-GiSM
Death scene starts at 39:35.//

(This is my evil mastermind plan to get you into my fandom! Heheheheh.)

Less focus on Flanders, much more shippy, much more Fritz/Katte

OMGGGG, they're so huggy! I read a parody of Prisoner of Azkaban where one of the characters reacts to a Remus/Sirius interaction with, "You know, I think that counts as a marriage ceremony in Massachusetts now." (Thus thoroughly dating itself to 2004.) I watch Hampson and Alagna interact in this and I'm like, "Pretty sure that counts as wedding vows!"

This is my evil mastermind plan to get you into my fandom! Heheheheh.

Turnabout is fair play! You know, I had to go rewatch the bit where Keenlyside/Rodrigo/Katte says "You suffer? Then nothing else in the world matters to me," because that's the closest I will ever come to seeing RL Katte say that to Fritz. <33 And that's how you can tell I'm getting sucked in involuntarily. :P

Also, I kind of really like Keenlyside's facial expressions, irrespective of Katte. <3

Will continue watching the suggested clips at my slow pace, but definitely enjoying. Many thanks for luring me into the fringes of your fandom!

AHAHAHAHA yep. I also adore the bit where Rodrigue and Carlos are all distant while the priest is around, and as soon as he leaves Carlos basically jumps into Rodrigue's arms. SO CUTE.

Keenlyside has great facial expressions! <33333

I'm glad you're enjoying it! (And, of course, don't feel obligated to watch just because I gave you a bunch of clips :) )

It's one of my favourite arias, too, and in many stagings of this scene Opera!Posa sings it romantically while dying in Carlo's arms; this is probably the biggest Don Carlo callback to Fritz/Katte ♥

Today's anecdotes (you can tell the anecdotes are tapering off) from FW's A+ parenting:

On the one hand, he did the over-the-top parenting thing with executing Katte in front of Fritz's eyes for the express purpose of breaking Fritz's heart and hoping to inspire a reversion to religious orthodoxy (seriously, his orders were "Head falls, my son watches, chaplain steps into his cell ready to comfort him and lead him back to the faith"; what they got instead was 3 days of Fritz screaming hysterically and refusing to eat*), which we all know about.

* How long this would have gone on, we don't know, but somebody finally reminded Fritz that his mother and sister would be pretty darn upset if he starved himself to death, and then he consented to eat, and the rehabilitation process began. (Which his jailers had to beg FW to allow them to tone down at one point, because they were seriously worried Fritz was going to lose his reason under the kind of treatment he was being given.)

On the other hand, FW engaged in less-well-known and much more standard homophobic parenting as well. Boyfriend-before-Katte, Peter Keith, was caught doing...something...inappropriate with Fritz when they were about 16/17. Since he was a lieutenant in the army, FW promptly stationed him somewhere far, far away. Like, 300 miles away.

Now, this is relevant to our story, because Keith was that third conspirator during the escape attempt that I told you about. Unlike Katte, who was stuck in Berlin, the heart of FW territory, Keith was stationed right near the border with the Netherlands. So when he got word that their cover was blown, he darted without hesitation across the border to safety, then for good measure from there into England, where FW tried to have him extradited, and the response of the English was basically, "Screw you, and also WTF was that with Katte?" As I mentioned, Keith, after a 10-year stint in the Portuguese army, went back to Prussia after Fritz inherited, and sadly they seem to have quarreled.

Keith: was originally a page for FW, used to report his doings to Fritz and warn him of anything bad coming his way. Was hanged in effigy in front of his regiment after FW couldn't get him extradited.

Katte: has a very famous anecdote, which is in all the fics on AO3 and a bunch of the bios, in which he was standing guard outside Fritz's room while Fritz did some illicit flute-playing inside. When Katte heard FW's footsteps approaching, he came running to warn Fritz, then helped him hide all the evidence, while Fritz changed quickly into uniform, and Katte hid in a closet alongside Fritz's flute instructor. Unfortunately, Fritz's fancy French hairstyle gave away that he'd been up to something, and his fancy French dressing gown (and I think French books) was found by his father and burned, but Katte and Quantz were not found in their hiding place. That must have been a stressful day.

Keith and Katte: have just arrived safely in England with Fritz in one of my many fix-it WIPs. ;) Keith is a little jealous of Katte's new place in Fritz's heart, but Katte is busy smoothing things over, and everyone's going to live happily ever after.

ahahaha, I have just got to this part (Keith) with Wilhelmine, who emphatically Does Not Approve of Fritz' boyfriends, lol.

Yep! This is one of the historiographical problems. Some of our main primary sources who knew Katte while he was alive didn't like him, Fritz would barely talk about him and not write at all that I know of afterward, and then you just get the people who were impressed at the manner of his death (and you get several slight variations on the sequence of events, to the point where we're not quite sure how *exactly* it happened). I think I pointed out in an earlier comment that it's very hard to trust some of the things that were said about him.

I feel we‘re neglecting Fritz‘ maternal family here, so I refreshed my memories, and yep, wasn‘t exaggerating when claiming the House of Hannover could easily compete with the Hohenzollern when it comes to dysfunction.

Grandma: Sophia Dorothea the Older. Was a high spirited princess forced to marry future George I.; at their first meeting, she cried „I will not marry the pig snout!“ But then, no one asked her. She and (future) G 1 both were unfaithful in their marriage, but this being the merry times for women that they were, it had only bad results for SD the Older. She fell passionately in love with one Count of Königsmarck and wanted to run away with him. (Are you paying attention, grandson?) The plan was uncovered, Königsmarck disappeared from the face of the earth, and no one ever saw him again or knows, to this day, what happened. Obvious guess: still not G1 had him killed. But it could never be proven. SD was locked up and remained in prison for the rest of her life, over thirty years of it. She never saw either of her children (future G2 and Sophia Dorothea the Younger, mother of Fritz) again. Most heartbreaking detail: when SD the younger was Queen of Prussia, she once did visit Hannover and the place where SD the older was kept prisoner. SD the older got special robes for the occasion and waited for the entire time of the visit... in vain, because SD the younger only saw her father, G1, during that visit to Hannover.

Uncle G2: spent his early childhood at Sophia of Hannover‘s palace due to his mother being locked up (where he had that unfriendly childhood encounter with younger cousin FW). Despised his father and vice versa, culminating in big scandal during the baptism ceremony for G2‘s second son. G1 had wanted a different godfather than future G2 intended. G1‘s choice of godfather showed up at the cathedral. Future G2 freaks out, insults godfather to the point godfather challenges him to duel. G1 freaks out, has future G2 & wife Caroline locked up in their apartments, then banished from court but without their kids and forbidding them to see same. (Including the just baptized baby.) Later relents so that Caroline can see the kid, but future G2 only once a week, strictly supervised. The baby dies in future G2‘s arms. Flashforward: when G1 dies (in Hannover), G2 refuses to go to the funeral. British subjects, pleased, assume this is because G2 feels more like a Brit than a German. Get disillusioned when he subsequently keeps holidaying in Hannover, to which he says that it‘s a British custom to have a countryhouse, and Hannover is his. Meanwhile, no visits to Dad‘s grave.

G2 has surviving sons of his own. But does he have better relationships with them? Ha. The one Wilhelmine was supposed to marry once upon a time, Frederick, actively campaigns for the opposition. When G2 returns from one of Hannover holidays and gets sick, Fred launches the rumor his father is already dying (not the first itme a Prince of Wales would do something like that), which means G2 gets up and insists on attending a party to stop the rumor.

When Fred dies (leaving baby future G3 behind), followed by his sister Louisa, G2 comments: "This has been a fatal year for my family. I lost my eldest son – but I am glad of it ... Now [Louisa] is gone. I know I did not love my children when they were young: I hated to have them running into my room; but now I love them as well as most fathers.“

This was as functional as Hannoverian parents ever got. I mean, FW still wins in terms of being The Worst Father because the only one executing someone‘s lover was G1 and he did it to his wife, not offspring, but seriously, had those English marriages for Fritz and Wilhelmine ever worked out, they‘d have gotten from the frying pan into the fire, is what I‘m saying.

Edited 2019-08-24 12:10 (UTC)

This is fascinating, thank you. Most (not quite all) of that was new to me.

had those English marriages for Fritz and Wilhelmine ever worked out, they‘d have gotten from the frying pan into the fire

Wilhelmine, definitely. Fritz? I seem to recall Amelia more or less had her shit together, or at least if there are any similar anecdotes about her, I'm not aware of them (but please feel free to share!).

A lot was new to or forgotten by me, too. Such as the fact that old Louis XIV was apparantly intrigued enough by the Sophia Dorothea/Königsmarck/G1 scandal to ask his sister-in-law, Liselotte von der Pfalz, whether or not G1 did the deed. She basically replied with "how the hell should I know? Get your own German gossip, Sire!"

Amelia: she comes across as sane and sympathetic to me, too. (The most negative Thing I know is her own variation of the "miller sues Fritz" Story which is still one of the most popular Old Fritz legends in Germany. (She got (successfully) sued for wanting to cancel public access to Richmond Park.) However: she still had a medaillon of Fritz as a Crown prince with her when she died, unmarried, she comes across as a determined, strong willed Woman, and she probably had an illegitimate child. This strikes me as a fatal combination for the thankless job of being Fritz' beard, since she would have had romantic expectations of him, and I doubt she'd have been satisfied with dinner once a year and not even political power and glamour to compensate. At the very least, I can see her Looking for love elsewhere, and somehow I doubt Fritz would have been as understanding as he was about his nephew's wife producing an illegitimate child.

Agreed, *but*...I'm not saying Fritz makes a good husband in any therapy-less universe, especially not to a woman (Fredersdorf might have his own take on this), but do you think he might have been willing to make more of an effort with Amelia than with EC? EC had a *lot* of strikes going against her, the biggest one being named FW.

At the very least, though I'm doubtful about the sex and pretty sure he would have kept her at arm's reach from political power as best he could, she might have gotten more glamour and more romance (at least for show) from Fritz than one dinner a year.

He would no way have excused an illegitimate child, but I have to feel that she might not have gone that far if married, out of self-preservation if nothing else. Especially if they'd managed to keep the marriage from degenerating as badly as FW & SD--not a happy marriage, certainly, but possibly a successful arranged marriage.

I guess what I'm saying is: a marriage that Fritz has fought hard *against* and lost is potentially a different animal from a marriage that he's fought hard *for* and won, even if Fritz remains the same person (and a potentially less bitter person, at that, for not having lost the marriage battle while imprisoned).

Well, the earlier mentioned Lieselotte certainly proves you can have a successful arranged marriage with your very gay husband, and it's true, Amelia wouldn't have been cast as "the woman Dad forced me to marry". Also, the Countess Orzelska proves he could pull off het romance at least once. Assuming the marriage would not have been a catastrophe and went as well as it could under the circumstances, do you think it would have changed anything in terms of alliances? For example, would G2 have been a bit more supportive in the 7-years-war, or would Fritz have helped out nephew G3 in the colonies later?

Interesting questions! I don't know G2 (or his ministers) well enough to say. If there had been, say, 25 years of closer relations between the countries, maybe? If Amelia is willing to try to get concessions out of her father the way Fritz used EC to try to get concessions out of his father, and if G2 is susceptible to Amelia's intervention, maybe.

Fritz and G3 I'm much more skeptical about. Maaaybe if the Seven Years' War had been less devastating to Prussia, and if that was due in an undeniable way to help from Britain? But Fritz was never known for gratitude toward his allies. I can see him helping out G3 if he expects to get something out of it; when he's already gotten what he wanted and is nearing the end of his life, what's the point? He's got problems closer to home to worry about.

The first question that comes to my mind is: helped out how? Going in person? Not a chance. Shipping mass troops overseas where he couldn't personally oversee them? Seems OOC. Money? I don't know, was he in the habit of giving money to his allies when he could use it on opera houses? (Half rhetorical, half serious question: I have an impression of Fritz as reluctant to part with money in general, but there may be examples I'm forgetting where he subsidized other countries to get what he wanted. But again, what does he want here?)

Writing letters to other European monarchs about how democracy was the scourge of the earth and the colonies owed obedience to their British overlords? Yeah, sure, but I don't think history changes much. (While I would never expect him to support democracy as a system of government, I'm curious if you know what his RL opinions were about specific American reforms.)

So that leaves shipping officers overseas to help out the British against the likes of von Steuben and Lafayette (I have to assume Fritz's acid letters to France just made the French-American alliance stronger, if anything). That I could see Fritz doing. He doesn't have to fear mass desertion among his officer corps nearly as much as the rank and file, the cost-benefit ratio is good as long as he has enough officers at home to make up for the losses in the Americas (he never minded losing his officers in battle), he gets to take some credit if the British win, some of his officers presumably come home with more battlefield experience, and he gets goodwill from Britain at pretty low cost.

If we're talking about changes caused by the personalities involved in the double marriage, well, Wilhelmine is long dead and was never queen, and Fritz presumably keeps Amelia as far from power as he can, the same way he did his mother. To the extent that she tries to influence politics anyway, and to the extent that she succeeds, to that extent I predict a less successful marriage.

So, while I see Fritz potentially being 5% more chill in his overall personality because he wasn't forced into a marriage he hated, and at least 50% more willing to make an effort within the context of that marriage, if you assume everything else stays the same, it's hard for me to believe it affects his foreign policy *that* much.

Open to other arguments, though! I am definitely not up on the political nuances here, and am arguing almost solely from Fritz psychology.

Lieselotte certainly proves you can have a successful arranged marriage with your very gay husband

Oh, she was married to Philippe d'Orleans! Thanks, Wikipedia. Yeah, no, Fritz couldn't even have aspired to that level of gayness.

Oh, Philippe d'Orleans! Even this person-who-knows-zero-history knows about him. (To be fair, my French history is very slightly better than my rest-of-European-history because I had a great French teacher who was always feeding me historical fiction, rightly guessing that I would learn more history from that than if she tried to teach it to me directly.)

Whoa, go French teacher! *applauds* I'm glad you had a good one to make up for your US history teacher.

I also learned much of my history (not Fritz, though) in high school from historical fiction. Well, a weird self-taught mixture of history and historical fiction--I'd read the fiction to make the history stick in my memory, and the history to know what I should and shouldn't believe in the fiction. It worked pretty well: much of what I've been regurgitating for you the last few days is from 20-year-old memories. (I'll admit I was a bit nervous writing the Seven Years' War summary and relieved when

selenak didn't find any egregious errors and gave it the seal of approval.)

Well, and then there was the part where I spent a good half of high school writing an 18th-century alternate history military history novel that I abandoned at 800 pages, because that's so on-brand for me. *That*'ll fix stuff in your memory! (Fritz was a fairly minor secondary character in this novel, but it was specifically researching this novel that led me to discover who he was, fall in love within the first few minutes of flipping through a short bio, proceed to read everything I could get my hands on, and spend the next two years trying to keep him from playing an unrealistically large role in my plot, haha. Then, when I abandoned this novel, I handed him over to my immortal Mary Sue character and said, "Here, he can fit into your eventful life story. Have fun.")

Oh, don't feel bad for me, my history teacher was my only terrible teacher in high school, and she wasn't bad in a way that was particularly detrimental to me in any way except that I didn't learn very much US history. I had a fair number of reasonably competent teachers, several good-to-quite-good ones (including that French teacher -- who also gets major major points for recognizing me as a lonely nerd who would totally love ALL THE BOOKS to read), and two great teachers (English lit senior year and physics), which I feel is really more than my fair share :)

Well, that's good to know. :) As you know, my parents literally told me it didn't matter what high school I went to, as long as my brother got into a good elementary school, so my high school was less than well suited to my needs, and that was fine by them.

My individual teachers were by and large not terrible (unlike the guidance counselor), and I got along with a lot of them as people, and a number of them were even good teachers for the rank and file, and I respect that, but the vast majority were not invested in challenging me. Plus the whole system was set up to make sure my time was being wasted, and you know how my parents were about supplementing school with extracurriculars. My two exceptional teachers were US History and junior + senior English. (Not surprisingly, the English teacher was the most hated and feared teacher in the school. She was my favorite.) The librarian was wonderful, I miss her so much (cancer shortly after I graduated). <3 :'-(

My freshman English teacher, god, I liked him as a person, but he argued with me that "The volleyball team played good" was grammatically correct and "The volleyball team played well" was incorrect, because "volleyball team" is a noun, so it takes an adjective. <-- My education.

Freshman me actually asked him to his face what he had majored in, because I didn't think it was English. When my mother heard this story, she made me write him a note of apology. To this day, I think that question was justified.

I think you were justified in asking that as well!

heh, yup, my US History teacher was also a super nice person! She also told us at some point that the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis were the same thing, which even as high schoolers we were pretty sure was not the case. But she often just didn't even show up for class (we were sent to the library to work on history outlines, which you will be unsurprised to hear none of us actually did), so the amount of actually false things we imbibed was fairly low.

I'm told that earlier classes remembered her fondly, so apparently she wasn't always like that -- I wonder what happened.

Wow. I feel like at my high school, that's the teacher who *would* have been remembered fondly, but learning things was not considered cool, so...

Yeah, that was when I was at the Really Good High School. But even before that, I was at Decent High School where doing well in classes was something people were interested in (even if it wasn't always the most important thing), so such a teacher might have been liked, but not respected.

Few could.:) Mind you, Liselotte had her difficulties at the French court in general and with her husband in particular, though his sexuality was but one factor; she had to convert to Catholicism to marry him, which she never quite adjusted to (especially the Catholic religion as practised in France seemed ridiculous to her), all the stuffy protocol collided with her bluntness, and of course she was very upsest indeed when Louis used her marriage as pretext to invade her home country, the Palatinate. The English Wikipedia entry is sadly lacking in the witty letter excerpts the German wiki has; Liselotte wrote about 60 000 letters in her life; we have about 6000 left, of which two thirds are in German and one third in French. (Behold: Liselotte was that rare German noble actually liking the German language. Also, it was practical for her to write in, if her letters got intercepted, which they sometimes were.)

So here is Liselotte, writing to her German relations re: men who love men in general:

„Wo seydt Ihr und Louisse denn gestocken, daß ihr die weldt so wenig kendt? (…) wer alle die haßen woldt, so die junge kerls lieben, würde hier kein 6 menschen lieben können!

(What is it with you and Louise knowing the world so little? If one would hate all those who love young men, one could love all but six people here!") (The English, alas, doesn't convey Liselotte being extremely informal here; that she wrote baroque slang Germman is part of the appeal of her letters.)

Didn't mean she had a high opinion of her husband's boyfriends, whom she regarded as parasites, or of his habit of spending gigantic sums on them:

„Monsieur... hat nichts in der welt im kopf als seine junge kerls, umb da ganze nächte mit zu fressen, zu saufen, und gibt ihnen unerhörte summen gelds, nichts kost ihm noch ist zu teuer vor die bursch

("Monsieur thinks of nothing but his young fellows; they spend the nights stuffing themselves, drinking themselves to oblivion, and he gives Incredible amounts of Money to them, nothing is too expensive for him as far as the boys are concerned.")

She also wasn't impressed with their proclaimed affections; when, in 1702, she was told that the Earl of Albermale, William II.'s boyfriend, supposedly had nearly died of a broken heart following William's death, she wryly commented : "We didn't see such affection from any of the fellows for Monsieur."

But still: they produced children, were both relieved when enough of those were around to make marital sex unnnecessary, and sometimes made each other laugh; at one occasion, they got into a farting contest with their oldest son (the later Regent of France). At that point, Liselotte considered having to put up with Louis XIV's Maitresse en titre, Madame de Maintenon, a greater trial than Philippe's boys, and that was what she was referring to when writing to Sophia of Hannover (she who raised GII, SD the younger and for a few years FW at home):

Madame sein ist ein ellendes handwerck, hette ichs wie die chargen hir im landt verkauffen können, hette ichs lengst feil getragen“.

"Being Madame is a lousy job; if I could have sold it like every lackey in this country does with their office, I'd have done it a long time ago."

Edited 2019-08-25 08:34 (UTC)

Also, it was practical for her to write in, if her letters got intercepted, which they sometimes were

LOL, this made me laugh -- all the nobility hated the German language so much at this point that it was a good way of encrypting messages from said nobility! Heh.

one could love all but six people here!

Do you mean "there are not six people here one could love"? (it just seems like it would make a little more sense in context)

Those letters sound awesome. And it sounds like, while maybe not a perfect marriage, a generally successful and sometimes even happy one, which is rather a relief after reading about all these terrible ones :P :)

"there are not six people here one could love

What she meant was if one could love only people not into m/m sex at the court of Versailles, there would be only six or thereabouts left, so - yes? Also, found a good Translation of the entire passage, Liselotte writing to her nieces at home:

"Where have you and Luise been that you know so little of the world? It seems to me that one does not have to live at court very long to know all about it; but if one were to hate all those who love young fellows, one could not love - or at least not hate - six persons here. There are various kinds of such people; some of them hate women like the plague and can only love other men, others love both men and women … some only go for children of ten or eleven, others want young fellows between seventeen and twenty-five, and these are the most numerous; some of the debauched characters love neither men nor women and have their pleasure by themselves, but there are fewer of them than of the others. Some also engage in debaucheries of various kinds, with animals or people, whatever comes their way. I know one man here who boasts that he has done it with everything, even down to toads. Ever since I learned this, I loathe the sight of this fellow."

I don't blame her. Toads!

a generally successful and sometimes even happy one, which is rather a relief after reading about all these terrible ones :P :)

Okay, here's Liselotte telling her aunt a story she had from her husband's favourite boyfriend, the Chevalier de Lorraine, and bear in mind this is an ex-Protestant who only converted because she had to writing to a still Protestant:

: I know some fine stories, one of which I simply must tell Your Grace: I heard it three or four days ago, and it happened in a Jesuit college. The Chevalier de Lorraine claims that it is his son who did this trick and that he does this sort of thing all the time. One of the pupils at the college was full of mischief of all kinds, ran around all night long, and did not sleep in his room. So the reverend fathers threatened him with a tremendous beating if he did not stay in his room at night. The boy goes to a painter and asks him to paint two saints on his buttocks, on the right cheek Saint Ignatius of Loyola and on the left Saint François Xavier, which the painter did. With that the boy tidily pulls up his breeches, goes back to his college, and starts making all kinds of trouble. When the reverend fathers catch him at it, they tell him, “This time you’ll be whipped.” The boy begins to struggle and plead, but they say that pleading will not do him any good. So the boy gets down on his knees and says, “O Saint Ignatius, o Saint Xavier, have pity upon me and perform a miracle for me to prove my innocence.” With that the fathers pull down his breeches, and, as they lift up his shirt to beat him, the boy calls out, “I am praying with such fervor that I am certain my invocation will be heard!” When the fathers see the two painted saints, they exclaim: “A miracle! the boy whom we thought a rogue is a saint!” And with that they fall on their knees to kiss the behind and then call together all the pupils and make them come in procession to kiss the holy behind, which all of them do.

And here is a great vid showing Liselotte, Philippe d'Orleans and the Chevalier de Lorraine as depicted in the tv Show Versailles.

Edited 2019-08-28 17:00 (UTC)

"there are not six people here one could love

What she meant was if one could love only people not into m/m sex at the court of Versailles, there would be only six or thereabouts left, so - yes?

cahn, yes, when I was reading this, I had to look at the German to figure out the intended meaning. (My German being just good enough to be not totally a black box, if I have a lot of vocab help.)

selenak, "One could love all but six people here" means that, if there are one thousand people at court, you could love the 994 of them that are not into m/m sex. Which, of course, is the opposite of what she's saying, hence our confusion. "There are not six people here one could love" means at least 995 of the thousand are into m/m sex. Which sounds about right. :P

Got it! Yes, the later was what she meant.

Yes, I know just enough German (not very coincidentally, I decided I should learn German when discovering Die Zauberflöte -- but did not get very far; this whole conversation is making me think I should, though, someday when I have more tiiiiime) that I thought I might be able to parse it. It helps that German structure is very much like archaic English structure :P :)

Toads! OMG.

Oh man, Liselotte sounds amazing. LOL.

Also I adore that vid. Should I put Versailles on the queue? (...though I am way behind on TV shows, I might get to it... next year?? at the rate I'm going)

Versailles: the first two seasons are trashy fun, and I reviewed them here, the third and final one was something of a let down, hence no review, though Liselotte is still great in it. The show isn’t a must, and its nods at history grow fewer and fewer as it progresses, but it does offer pretty costumes, pretty people, same sex relationships given the same amount of narrative detail as het ones and, by the end, a successful OT3, so there’s that.

OTOH, if there’s an audiobook in English for LIselotte’s letters, go for it. They need to be read out loud for maximum enjoyment. (I’m only sorry that those English translations I’ve seen invariably sound more formal than Liselotte does in in German, because the fact she writes informal baroque slang German at the extremely formal court of France is part of the appeal.

Ah. Sounds like I got the best part of it from the vid that you linked, then :)

Man, I am totally going to find Liselotte's letters, though! They sound amazing.

Yup, and here are some more vids covering the enjoyable aspects of Versailles:

This one about the Louis (XIV)/Philippe (d'Orleans) relationship through three seasons, and this one about the Philippe/Liselotte relationship in s2 (angstier than the OT3 one I linked earlier as it lacks the happy s3 conclusion, but covers more detail).

One of these days, I should create a poll. Would you rather marry into

- the Hohenzollern
- the Habsburg
- the Hannover
- The Bourbon Family?

(Really evil choices.)

Edited 2019-09-02 16:45 (UTC)

Ooh, so pretty! I like both, though of course I prefer Liselotte, having enjoyed the letter excerpts so very much :D

Agh! Evil choices indeed.

ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE NUTS

I'm in parallel with reading all your comments reading Wilhelmine going "I really, really don't want to marry into this family" and... like... I see her point. FW may be worse, but when you combine her pretty clear Stockholm syndrome (I'm not sure that's quite the right term, but you know what I mean) and his being the devil she knows, I can't blame her for considering this not a good alternative.

THEY ARE.

I...honestly can't believe I didn't figure this out on my own, maybe it was because I read the book before I knew too much about psychology, but there's this one fairly well-known popular historian, Barbara Tuchman, who has this thesis that, at least in the 14th century and maybe in general, the past was such a terrible place because everybody was traumatized (think Black Death) all the time, and nobody was thinking clearly, and everybody was perpetuating trauma on everyone all the time, and it just makes *so much sense*. Because, like I keep saying, I would 100% have been perpetuating the cycle of trauma in their shoes. And in A Distant Mirror, she finds this one semi-obscure French nobleman, and goes, "Him! He acts like a sensible adult! Let's follow him as best we can through the limited documentary evidence."

ETA: Oh, and then he dies of the Black Death, according to Wikipedia. SEE?

Edited 2019-08-25 04:37 (UTC)

everybody was perpetuating trauma on everyone all the time

No kidding. With escalating consequences for everyone else. I mean, WWII had a million more reasons than Wilhelm II.'s hangups, but they sure didn't help. Incidentally, since it's sort of "Our Insane Family: How It All Ended", I present to you Kaiserstur, last year's docudrama about how Germany went from a monarchy to a democracy near the end of mass slaughter, proving that Hohenzollern dysfunction played a role to the very end.

Here's how things went down for Wilhelm II., German emperor famous for his bombast, his hang-ups about his British cousins (his mother having been Victoria's oldest daughter), his hate-mongering speeches leading up to WWII and his utter lack of smarts and judgment, according to this docudrama (in which Wilhelm was played by Sylvester Groth, whom viewers of Deutschland '83 might recall as the most prominent Stasi official):

Wilhelm: It's October 1918, and I was just told by Generals Luddendorff & Hindenburg we're losing the war. How can this be? I'm feeling depressed.

Auguste Victoria (his wife, played by Sunni Melles): Never you mind. You're chosen by destiny. Don't give up!

Kurt Hahn (future school founder, but right now young good looking idealist employed by Max von Baden as his secretary and confidant, to his employer): Clearly, this is your hour. Only you can restore Germany's international reputation and negotiate an honorable peace.

Max von Baden: Kind of you to say so, Kurt, especially since this drama represents me as a weak-willed pushover only and doesn't even mention stuff like my work for the international Red Cross to ensure prisoners of all nationalities get medical care. But since I have no political experience whatsoever, how do we go about making me a good candidate for chancellor?

Kurt Hahn: We'll offer an alliance to the Social Democrats in order to save Germany.

Friedrich Ebert (leader of the SPD): Guys, I'm willing, but you are aware everyone hates the Emperor's guts by now, aren't you?

Max von Baden: I would never conspire against my cousin the Emp...

Kurt Hahn (hastily interjecting): Details, details! Saving Germany is all that matters, right?

Wilhelm II: What's this about me accepting Cousin Max as the new chancellor? Never!

Auguste Viktoria: He's gay and a tool in the hands of his Jewish secretary. Never!

Luddendorff & Hindenburg: Your Highness, we think you should accept Max von Baden as the new Chancellor.

Wilhelm: But why?

Luddendorff: Because we need someone to blame later. Also, I'm told I have a date with Wonder Woman in a parallel universe where I'm allowed to poison all other generals, so I'm off for now. Please sign this declaration.

Wilhelm: This is so humiliating. I hate my life. Ah well, a roaring speech to munition workers about how this is all England's fault will cheer me up!

Workers: *boo and hiss*

Wilhelm: Clearly socialist plants were in the audience, but I think I'll make no more public appearances. As in, ever. *has nervous breakdown*

Philipp Scheideman: Fritz, why the hell should we join a crumbling government? We'll only be blamed after the war. Also, as Social Democrats we oppose all these aristos stand for!

Ebert: Because you don't want us to have something like the Russian Revolution complete with bloody civil war, do you? Also, we're getting two ministeries, and one of them is for you. I'm cunningly not taking one so that as leader of the party, I can maintain my independence.

Hahn: Bad news, your highness. The Americans just said they won't negotiate for peace with you, either, as long as your cousin the Emperor is still Emperor.

Ebert: Look, I'm all for preserving the monarchy, but getting rid of Willy sounds awesome. Since his sons are no better, how about making his kid grandson Emperor and you the regent?

Auguste Victoria *makes a phonecall*: Max, you evil traitor, if you as much as think of taking the throne in any way whatsoever, we'll go public about you being gay!

Max von Baden: *has a nervous breakdown*

Luddendorff: I need to work on the Dolchstoßlegende about the army remaining undefeated. Therefore, I'm performing an U-Turn. Forgot what I said earlier. We don't want peace and will continue fighting.

Max von Baden: *has even more of a nervous breakdown, and a cold which might or might not have been a case of the coming Spanish Influenza*

Seaman in Kiel: *revolt*

Bavarians: *also revolt*

Rest of Germany: *rumblings*

Wilhelm: I'm off to army headquarters, and when I get back with my loyal soldiiers, you traitorous lot will all hang! That goes for you, too, Max!

Luddendorff & Hindenburg: Sorry, no can do. Marching on Berlin is out.

Ebert: Hahn, I swear, we WILL have a Russian Revolution here if your prince doesn't finally get off his butt and does something. Starting with declaring that the Emperor has resigned.

Max von Baden: But the Emperor hasn't... fine. Here's the public declaration that the Emperor has resigned.

Wilhelm: The Germans are a nations of traitorous pigs who don't deserve me. I'm off to the Netherlands, becoming a gardener.

Philip Scheidemann: Hooray! WE HAVE A REPUBLIC! I'M TELLING EVERYONE!

Ebert: Oh, for God's sake! How anti democratic is that? We'll have a people's vote about which state they want first. *takes off to visit Max von Baden again* Okay, if you want to save the monarchy in Germany in a parliamentary monarchy fashion, this is the very last moment. Declare your regency already.

Max von Baden: No can do. Cousins Willy and Auguste Victoria told me they'll destroy me by going public about my sex life if I do that. Sorry, Ebert, it's your turn. I'm declaring you Chancellor in my last act of government.

Ebert: ....I gess we have a Republic now. Also, I think I prefer being President.

All every well acted. As you may guess, my one problem is the presentation of Max von Baden. Not that I doubt he made his share of mistakes, but he's being presented so clueless and weak-willed that it's incomprehensible why Hahn and Ebert for the entire movie until five minutes before the ending think it's a good idea this man should rule the country in its worst crisis ever. And since he's the tale's sole declared homosexual character, with said sexuality explicitly used against him (which, btw, according to Machtan, the historian who consulted for this movie, Auguste Victoria actually did), this is doubly unfortunate. (Now you could argue that the movie doesn't let him do anything he didn't historically do, but they also don't mention, see above, things like his championing of the Red Cross (and the YMCA), which would have at least made it clear where his good reputation comes from. Also, there's a scene where he's getting a massage while the situation is getting ever more desperate which definitely falls under script and direction laying the "weak decadent" characterisation on even thicker.)

Other than that, though, I thought it was a well made docudrama focusing on an aspect in a key period of German history I hadn't known that much about, being more focused on what happened directly after the war was over. It was careful about the details (no one mentions Wilhelm's left arm, for example, but the actor never forgets Wilhelm couldn't move it). It's a story without heroes - though in terms of good intentions, Philip Scheidemann and Kurt Hahn come closest, plus Mrs. Ebert wins for sardonic comments every time her husband comes home with a new development -, but without villains, either, since the generals only show up twice very briefly and Wilhelm has already done all his damage before the war and is increasingly impotent within the chosen time frame. Otoh, no one (other than poor Max von Baden) comes across as one dimensional and you can get where everyone is coming from.

I love your synopses, have I mentioned this recently? :D (and this is one of those periods I know even less about than my usual abysmal state of historical knowledge, so...)

Ditto. If I haven't said this recently enough, it bears repeating. :D As for me, the only thing I know about the 1910s is Antarctic exploration. Was there a war on? :P

Okay, so this is mildly interesting.

Little backstory: In the latter part of his life, Fritz employed a "reader" (Vorleser) named Henri de Catt. Catt wrote some memoirs that make it clear Fritz confided in him. Those nightmares I told you about in another comment were recounted to Catt, plus there's one passage where Fritz talks to Catt about Katte's execution, a subject that was evidently very difficult for him to discuss throughout his life.

Meanwhile, I'm watching this subtitled German documentary film (the one with the escape attempt I gave you the clip from), at the rate of about five minutes every few days because that's about my attention span for audiovisual media, and I just got to the part where Catt is introduced.

Now, the similarity in name between "von Katte" and "de Catt" has been remarked upon by a number of us independently. Jokes and even fanart have been made on tumblr. I noticed it myself and attributed it to complete coincidence; it's not exactly a rare name to have a variant of. But this documentary is the first time I've seen someone at least semi-serious-business comment on it, and this is what they have to say: "Did Frederick choose de Catt because his name is so similar to that of his old friend Katte?"

IMO? No, of course not. Fritz was always picky about who he chose to let into the inner circle, Henri de Catt meets the usual standards, it's not a rare name, and the actual Katte family has plenty of members among the nobility, and we don't see him being drawn to them at all. (Katte's dad gets a promotion immediately after Fritz becomes king, and that's the only interaction that I'm aware of.) I think they're making too much of a coincidence.

But did Fritz get any kind of half-painful, half-pleasurable twinge from the similarity in names, especially shortly after meeting Catt? I consider that quite likely. And would such a twinge have made him any more likely to open up about Katte and Küstrin to someone he'd already admitted into the inner circle? Maybe. I myself experienced a comparable phenomenon once, and I wasn't even close to my sister who died young, nor was her death traumatic for me. (Stressful, yes; traumatic, no.)

LOL, this is so great! I did read of the orgasm poem in the comments on your family exposure to opera powerpoint recap (here I was, thinking exactly, "Bah, IN GERMAN", and then, "Oh yeah, Fritz was actually all Francophile, so it would be IN FRENCH!" and then, bam, there was the link to English version anyw!), but it sounds like those comments really took off, and I missed all the sexy stuff.

You know, I did actually visit Sanssoucci this March, and I think I recommended to you this fabulous RPF Bach & Fritz crossover novel Evening in the Palace of Reason, which I bought in the gift shop and DEVOURED -- if I didn't, please read it after the Wilhemina tell-all, I think it would totally be your thing, and has a whole chapter on fugues and musical transposition <3

OK, I'm now going to slowly devour this discourse ;)

Edited 2019-08-27 13:12 (UTC)

it sounds like those comments really took off

I couldn't help it! She encouraged me! Then she brought someone in to encourage me more! I'm innocent, officer. I plead extenuating circumstances. :P

I missed all the sexy stuff

You missed...oh, say, 50,000 words...of gloriously chaotic wallowing in a scandalous fandom.

I think it would totally be your thing

Yes! I had totally forgotten this existed, because after reading the description and reviews, I went "meh" and decided it wasn't my thing, but it absolutely sounds like it would be yours,

cahn.

Noooooo you didn't rec this! So I am glad you recced it this time! That does seem perfectly up my alley :D

OK, mildred, I'm starting to see what you mean about teen!Fritz just not... being very good at plotting. It seems clear from the way she talks about FW and Fritz that he just wanted OUT. Wilhelmine (who seems in general a little less damaged/abused, although the queen is putting her through a LOT of emotional abuse, it's super awful) keeps trying to tell him all of this is a bad idea!

Fritz: *waltzes in wearing fancy French clothes*
Wilhelmine: WHO IS THAT WEIRDO?! Oh, it's you, bro.
Fritz: I am FED UP with FW, I have a plan!
Wilhelmine: ...that is a really, really terrible plan, bro. Here are all the reasons this is super stupid. Please don't use that plan, you'll be captured immediately.
Fritz: ...oh. Okay.

*rinse and repeat SEVERAL TIMES*

Fritz: I have another plan!
Wilhelmine: As usual, that is a really terrible stupid no-good plan.
Fritz: Don't care. I'm DOING IT.

selenak, I am now kinda wondering whether Schiller had specifically read Wilhelmine's memoirs and whether Elisabeth owes a debt to her, because Wilhelmine's pointing out how boneheaded his plans are and begging him to stop is giving me flashbacks to Elisabeth doing pretty much the same with Posa.

Alas, Schiller can't have, because he died five years before they were published. (In 1810 - 52 years after her death -, Schiller died in 1805; Wilhelmine was careful not to have her tell all published within her or her brother's or her husband's lifetimes.) Otoh, I suppose it's just possible that he could have read them in manuscript if he really wanted to, because he did know enough nobles and librarians in the relevant principalities.

Ha, well, guess it wasn't Wilhelmine -- I imagine there are other strong awesome women in the world, after all :) I can see why she didn't want it published in her brother's lifetime! (Not her husband, yet -- I haven't even gotten to the part where she gets married yet.)

OK, mildred, I'm starting to see what you mean about teen!Fritz just not... being very good at plotting. It seems clear from the way she talks about FW and Fritz that he just wanted OUT.

Yeah. :/ Even adult Fritz was like, "That went off like a childish prank, and Keith and Katte were GREAT GUYS, don't get me wrong, but, uh, about as dumb as I was at that age." ("Now I just never tell anyone anything ever, problem solved. I have a different problem now, called failing Interpersonal Relations 101, but that's okay, you can just bury me next to my dogs, k? K??")

Honestly, I feel like bb!Fritz was trapped and desperate and furious and impulsive and scared to death and also *despising* most everyone around him and especially FW, and none of these things lent themselves to thinking clearly. The real problem, in my mind, is that every time I read about these events, Fritz, who's young and not thinking clearly, is completely alone and trying to come up with an escape plan on his own, and having to drive it and drag everyone else into it, and everyone is going, "Um, maybe...not...Fritz?" and no one is saying, "Look, this is an abusive situation, you're right, you 100% need out. Sit down, it's okay, I as an adult will come up with a better idea."

I'm not blaming anyone for this, it's the 18th century with 18th century mores and FW is an absolute monarch plus totally batshit to boot, everyone gets a pass from me, but really, expecting an 18-yo to come up with a plan for escaping his abuser, when his mind goes into blind emotional turmoil every time he even thinks about said abuser, is asking for a really, really bad plan.

Actually. Writing that out. I wonder if the reason *so many* people were in the know about this plan was that, consciously or subconsciously, Fritz was looking for someone to go YES YES YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE* and to actually take some initiative, instead of him having to drag everyone into his plan by sheer force of personality, when everyone I can think of is--quite understandably, given the nature of the plan and the risks involved!--very reluctant to have anything to do with it.

* This...may or may not be one of my fix-it fic AU WIPs, just saying. :P

I would point out that Alexander the Great, tactician extraordinaire and undefeated in battle, came up with a really bad plan for dealing with *his* semi-estranged father at the same age (

selenak, I'm referring to the Pixodarus affair), and the only reason it didn't end as badly was because Philip was never as awful to Alexander as FW was to Fritz.

ETA: I couldn't agree more with selenak's claim that Alexander would have killed FW well before FW killed Katte. How much of that is the difference between their mothers (Alexander's mother is #1 suspect in the eventual murder of Philip; no one's clear whether Alexander was involved or not), the difference between their centuries (Enlightenment prince vs. Achilles-cosplayer), and the difference between their innate temperaments, we'll never know.

Wilhelmine (who seems in general a little less damaged/abused, although the queen is putting her through a LOT of emotional abuse, it's super awful)

Yeah, FW was awful to his wife, Wilhelmine, Fritz, and to a lesser extent most of the other kids, but everyone is agreed that, as the heir and future king, Fritz got the brunt of the abuse. Wilhelmine, in turn, got more abuse from non-FW people.

It SUCKED to be those kids. :/ CPS for everyone.

Fritz: I have another plan!

Lol, your summary reminds me of an Eddie Izzard skit, where he's talking about Napoleon invading Russia, then deciding it was a bad idea.

Hitler: "I've got a better idea, got a better idea..." *invades Russia* "Oh, it's the same idea! It's the same idea, it's the same idea..."

ETA 2: I also wish to point out what I said in a slightly different way somewhere else in this conversation. I, at the age of 17, having just been accepted to MIT to study physics, could not figure out a plan to get across the country and attend MIT in the face of my parents' resistance, despite the presence of sympathetic adults at my high school. Which you'd think someone who'd just been accepted to MIT could do! You'd think it would be inherent in "smart enough to be accepted to MIT"! But no. That's not how it works.

And granted my situation was much less desperate. But the flip side to that was that I wasn't all panicky inside and should have been thinking more clearly. So this is one reason I'm reluctant to say this plan wasn't Fritz's best effort at that age.

Edited 2019-08-29 21:59 (UTC)

Yeah, I also got into MIT and there was nooooo waaaay I would have been able to figure out something like that. Which also makes me think of something else, which is that Fritz' upbringing does not seem like the sort to, well, feature much practical practice in the way of coming up with Plans That Don't Suck, Taking Initiative in Smart Ways, and other such things. So it's not at all surprising his first attempt to do all that was really bad!

There's that. Oh, haha, in one of my modern AUs (which is a fix-it fic AU to someone else's modern AU, which I have fixed such that Katte DOESN'T DIE), I was writing a passage earlier today where Fritz is lamenting to Katte that, if only he had paid attention to all the things Dad was trying to teach him all these years, he might be able to come up with a plan that doesn't suck for keeping Dad from capturing him. Poor Fritz, damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

In real life, I'm not sure how much going along with FW's upbringing would have taught bb!Fritz to come up with decent escape plans. It's a good question. But it was definitely not Fritz's own self-teaching priority, when he was desperately squeezing every spare moment he could sneak in on music, literature, French, and the arts.

Things I knew about Frederick the Great before a year ago: he was king of... Prussia??

Additional things I knew about Frederick the Great before the last couple of days:

selenak informed me last year that he and his dad may well have been at least somewhat the inspiration for Schiller's Don Carlos, and everything that goes with that: his dad (Friedrich Wilhelm, henceforth FW) was majorly awful, he had a boyfriend (Katte) who was horribly killed by his dad

Things you are now qualified to do: beta read Fritz/Katte fic! Seriously, you are the BEST.

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The anecdotes, they never stop

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Joseph: the RATIONAL fanboy

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Our Insane Family: The Next Generation

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