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[cahn]

This is totally too good to keep to myself: on my "I showed my family opera clips" post, mildred_of_midgard and selenak are talking about Frederick the Great (by way of Don Carlo, of course) and it is like this amazing virtuoso spontaneous thing and whoa

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

Only a partial list of the additional things I now know about Frederick the Great (henceforth "Fritz") and associated historical figures due to mildred and selenak:
-Fritz and Katte's escape plan (which resulted in Katte's execution) was... really, really boneheaded. As boneheaded as opera plots! :P
-Katte was in the process of destroying 1,500 letters when he got caught (! puts all those letters in Don Carlos into perspective) (ETA: but also see mildred's comment below)
-Fritz wrote opera libretti and so did his sister
-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
-Fritz wrote a poem about orgasm that also reads as if he's never actually, like, had sex (although that was not in this post, it was in the comments to this one)
-FW apparently beat up George II when they were kids
-I am totally not even going to try to summarize the discussion about FW's "rationalized sadism" and sexual hangups and the reeeeeally bizarre Dresden interlude (go down a couple of comments for the really insane stuff)
-Fritz' sister Wilhemina wrote tell-all memoirs about her totally insane family which I am SUPER going to read now, watch this space

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

Comments

Re: Our Insane Family: The Next Generation

[selenak]

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.)

Re: Our Insane Family: The Next Generation

[mildred_of_midgard]

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!

Re: Our Insane Family: The Next Generation

[selenak]

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.

Re: Our Insane Family: The Next Generation

[mildred_of_midgard]

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.

Re: Our Insane Family: The Next Generation

[selenak]

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...)

Re: Our Insane Family: The Next Generation

[cahn]

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