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.
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Date: 2019-08-21 01:54 pm (UTC)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.