(no subject)

[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

[cahn]

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

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?

[cahn]

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.

[mildred_of_midgard]

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.

[mildred_of_midgard]

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.)

[mildred_of_midgard]

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)

[cahn]

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!"

[mildred_of_midgard]

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).