Frederick the Great post links

[cahn]

More Frederick the Great (henceforth "Fritz") and surrounding spinoffs history! Clearly my purpose in life is now revealed: it is to encourage mildred_of_midgard and selenak to talk to me about Frederick the Great and associated/tangential European history. I am having such a great time here! Collating some links in this post:

* selenak's post on Frederick the Great as a TV show with associated fandom; a great place to start for the general history

* I have given up indexing all posts, here is the tag of discussion posts. Someday when I actually have time maybe I'll do a "best of."


Some links that have come up in the course of this discussion (and which I am putting here partially for my own benefit because in particular I haven't had time to watch the movies because still mainlining Nirvana in Fire):
Fritz' sister Wilhelmine's tell-all tabloidy memoirs (English translation); this is Part I; the text options have been imperfectly OCR'd so be aware of that (NOTE 11-6-19: THIS IS A BOWDLERIZED TEXT, I WILL COME BACK WITH A BETTER LINK)
Part II of Wilhelmine's memoirs (English translation)
A dramatization of Frederick the Great's story, English subtitles
Mein Name ist Bach, Movie of Frederick the Great and J.S. Bach, with subtitles Some discussion of the subtitles in the thread here (also scroll down)
2017 miniseries about Maria Theresia, with subtitles and better translation of one scene in comments

ETA:
Miniseries of Peter the Great, IN ENGLISH, apparently reasonably historically solid
ETA 10-22-19
Website with letters from and to Wilhelmine during her 1754/1755 journey through France and Italy, as well as a few letters about Wilhelmine, in the original French, in a German translation, and in facsimile
University of Trier site where the full works of Friedrich in the original French and German have been transcribed, digitized, and uploaded:
30 volumes of writings and personal correspondence
46 volumes of political correspondence
Fritz and Wilhelmine's correspondence (vol 27_1)
ETA 10-28-19
Der Thronfolger (German, no subtitles; explanation of action in the comment here)
ETA 11-6-19
Memoirs of Stanisław August Poniatowski, dual Polish and French translation
ETA 1-14-20
Our Royal Librarian Mildred has collated some documentation, including google translate versions of the Trier letters above (see the "Correspondence" folder)!

Comments

[mildred_of_midgard]

This is a delightful purpose in life and very timely (for me)! I'm so glad you're having a great time. I started out trying not to overload you with my fandom just because you were interested in Verdi, but now I have abandoned all shame and am hijacking your posts to hold all my thoughts as they occur to me, in exactly the same way I used tumblr in my Hunger Games fandom days (before I jumped ship because of the great Adult Content Fiasco). :-DDDD

If not for my health woes, I'd be refreshing myself on 18th century history and telling you more about non-Fritz people, but alas, between finances limiting Kindle purchases, inability to read library books (or even the contents of my own book shelves), and, lately, inability to concentrate at all, you're just going to be in my "talking about Fritz makes me feel better" fandom for now. ;) Keep bringing the questions!

I need this lecture on Katte to have English subtitles, dammit! Hilariously, I discovered from this documentary that my ability to comprehend spoken German, which has always been 0%, is distinctly better on the subject of Katte's execution than any other topic in the world, because I have Google-translated *so many* of the German sources, but obviously I still can't comprehend an hour-long lecture. :-( Basically, there are topical words and phrases I now recognize, but if it's not one of those, i.e. if it's new and therefore worth listening to, then I'm just a non-German speaker.

AKA when "Hinrichtung" becomes one of your only German lexical items. :P

Wilhelm II and those-fanboys-you-don't-want-to-be-in-your-fandom in German history

Being in a fandom with history-rewriting Nazis is the worst. Fuck out of my fandom, Fritz would have kicked your collective asses!

ETA: Also, have you noticed that we just passed 400 comments on the 3 posts combined? :P

The Lecture, summarized

[selenak]

in lieu of titles, I offer a summary of the lecture - btw, thank you for the link! It's from a conference focusing on literary reflections on friendship, from what I understand, and the changing discourses. Our lecturer picked as his subject three instances of Berlin based writers tackling the Katte tragedy (Theodor Fontane, Heiner Müller, Michael Roes), with however a prologue reflection on not-Berlin-based Schiller and Don Carlos, which made me gleeful. (I always like to hear other people arriving at the same conclusion I arrived at. :) Our lecturer points out that Schiller started to get fascinated with the Don Carlos topic and started to work on it in 1783, when Fritz was still alive, but that the drama didn't premiere until a year after Fritz' death.

(This made me think of something which has nothing to do with the lecture, will address it in a different post.)

Then he presents Fontane, Müller and Roes, adressing not just the different ways they dealt with the topic in terms of event and characterisation but also style, observing, for example, that Fontane - who, I'll remind you, included the whole thing in a travel guide book! - by the way he quotes various "witnesses" - Katte's father, the preacher who was present when Katte died, the courtier/adventure Pölnitz, and Wilhelmine - creates the illusion of a literary salon discussing Katte and Fritz, which is very him, given Fontane, as a novelist, excells at a style he himself referred to as "Plauderei" - casual chatting/discussion - and often characterises people via their dialogue.

Müller's play from the 1970s is one about Prussia which uses FW humiliating the preacher Gundling, the Katte tragedy and the writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing as three different aspects of Prussia becoming a tragedy. (Being written in the 1970s by an East German author, you can also insert your East Germany = GDR coding here.) It contains notable departures from history due to the theatre format (i.e. Katte gets shot, not beheaded - easier to do on stage - for example) - and includes an interlude where Fritz, Wilhelmine and Katte play what we call "Blinde Kuh" in German (old party game where someone gets blindfolded and has to figure out identities of the other people in the room), Katte is the one blindfolded, Fritz and Wilhelmine exchange clothes ("simultanously hinting", quoth our lecturer, "at the almost incesteous closeness of the siblings and their rivalry about Katte"), the predictable re: Katte ensues, and Wihlelmine then adopts a mask to play FW so Fritz can play-kill her, as he promptly does. But it's also the darkest of the three in that the last scene is one where Fritz as king has become his father, a woman cries for mercy for her husband, a deserting soldier, with the same phrases Fritz has used to plead for Katte earlier, and Fritz replies with his father's words. I.e. Müller goes for the "what was human in Fritz dies with Katte; FW wins beyond his wildest hopes" interpretation.

Roes' novel "Zeithain" I reviewed myself, and we've talked about it elsewhere. Our lecturer points out the difference in discourse in three centuries re: sexuality - i.e. not only are Fritz and Katte explicitly lovers in this one, but also the other first person narrator, contemporary to us Philip Stanhope, is gay and in love with the Katte of his imagination - and Roes' little nods to his predecessors, some of which I missed, such as him calling Katte's invented aunt, at whom Katte addresses the fictional letters from the novel, being called "Melusine" - this is a Fontane heroine from a unrelated to Katte novel, not the French countess and werecreature of myth, though Fontane called his heroine after her, of course. Since Stanhope is very obviously an author alter ego, the lecturer talks about the play of first person narrration in three identities - Katte, Philip Stanhope and Michael Roes.

Afterwards, there's a discussion among audience, and I was fascinated that almost all of the questioners were men, because at most conferences I attended, two thirds were women. Anyway, most of the questions aimed at whether the increasing emphasis on "gay love story" was due to the relaxation of the taboo of talking about homosexuality, and whether or not something was also lost by the "privatisation" of the story, i.e. the incendiary politics of the whole situation. Another question was about the possibility (or lack of same) of friendship in a very hierarchical society, and the lecturer went as far back as Cicero about friendship between the ranks. All lin all, very interesting, but note: not a historical conference about the historical Katte and Fritz, just about their literary reflectionis.

Second post with proper thanks to you and cahn later that day, I must be off to breakfeast.

Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

[selenak]

Okay, back online for a few minutes. So, the other thing I was thinking about turned into two things.

1.) Yuletide. Firstly, we should request not just Fritz, but assorted other personalities, and coordinate our efforts in order to get the maximum in. (Other than Fritz, Katte and FW, who are a given.) Honestly, my current cracky idea is to follow the tradition of inventing meetings that everyone ever writing about Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart followed and describe a secret summit that never was between Fritz and Maria Theresia, so someone needs to request her. (It'll be a a disaster, naturally, but a very entertaining one.) Possible secret meeting arrangers would be, depending on the time frame, either Wilhelmine or Joseph the rational fanboy? Others? Ideas?

2.) Remember the brave lady-in-waiting who told FW not to be like Philip of Spain and Peter the Great in killing his son? thus preceding Schiller in what historical parallel to use? It occured to me that I never wondered before why Schiller didn't go for Peter and his son Alexej. This father and son were far closer - as you'll recall, Wilhelmine met Peter I. as a child (which means so did Fritz) when Peter was on one of his European travels. And I recently was reminded that FW actually wasn't the worst royal father in his era, because Peter managed to beat him by a) torturing his son to death, and b) having put his son's mother, his first wife, into a nunnery to get rid of her years earlier than that, he invented a lover for her once Alexej did his ill-fated runner, and made life even more horrible for her in her nunnery (as punishment for the supposed illicit sex, but really for being the mother of his oldest son). There are eerie parallels - Alexeji followed a great escape plan with his lover - and differences - he suceeeded in leaving Russia but was tracked down. Also, his lover turned crown's evidence against him.

Now, other than being pitiable for what his father did to him, Alexeji doesn't come across as very sympathetic. He abused his unwanted wife, too (as in, he beat her regularly, and possibly was the cause of her early death at 21 when pregnant with his second child). But then, historical Carlos wasn't anytihing to write home about, either, and Schiller didn't let that stop him from changing his character and inventing Posa for him. So why not gift Alexeji with a better character and a freedom loving bff?

Possible explanation: in this case, the tyrannical father also happened to be the reformer of the two. Peter famously and infamously dragged Russia into the modern world, and Alexej in one of the letters held against him swore he'd abandon and reverse all those reforms, burn the new fleet, abandon St. Petersburg to the wild and restore the supreme status of the church. Precisely because the Peter and Alexeji drama was an 18th century one, Schiller might have known this and found it impossible in this case to rewrite history into the prince and his friend being the freedom lovers.

And lastly: it's such fun to talk with you two about all of this, and thank you so much, cahn for hosting this!

Prussian sibling correspondance

[selenak]

Starting a new thread, because the old ones were getting awfully difficult to read. cahn, I don't blame you for not continuing with the memoirs - honestly, I go directly to the correspondance, too, because it does contain what's up with Wilhelmine's life (well, some of it) but also is focused on the sibling relationship. You asked about the Fritz/Wilhelmine correspondance in English. Honestly, I have no idea. Now I did know the edition I have is a selected one, but what I didn't know before looking it up just now is that the complete letters were never published, simply because there are so many of them. (This, bear in mind, despite one single letter surviving from the pre Küstrin era, since Wilhelmine and SD burned the lot otherwise.) German translations of various highlights editions are available in print, audio and as an ebook, this I knew, but my new checking out online availability revealed that the Bayreuth website, bless them, has put, among others, the two "dog pov" letters Fritz and Wilhelmine wrote to each other online in the original French read out loud; if you want to tackle your spoken French, I can link you.

Even better, though not in English, is this website, a treasure trove I've just begun to explore. This has letters from and to Wilhelmine during her 1754/1755 journey through France and Italy, as well as a few letters about Wilhelmine, in the original French, in a German translation, and in a faksimile, so you can see what the actual letters look like. Fritz is the main other correspondant, but there are also three of her other siblings (August Wilhelm, Ulrike and Amalie), which is fascinating to me because for the first time, these give me a sense of what Wilhelmine's relations to the younger sibs might have been like, and there are few letters from her mother, not to Wilhelmine but to the other kids referring her.

Now, about that journey: Wilhelmine and her husband the Margrave - whose first name, btw, was Friedrich, which is just too confusing in this context, so I'll keep calling him the Margrave like she did - were travelling under the nome de plume "Count and Contess von Zollern" because if they'd travelled officially, it would have been a quasi royal state visit to to Wilhelmine being Fritz' sister, and more expensive both for them and their hosts. Wilhelmine was already sick (she only had a few more years to live) and traveled partly for the climate's sake, but wouldn't you know it, Europe collectively was suffering form one of the coldest years around, so it wasn't much warmer in France and only a bit in Italy. She also was a culture tourist, of course, and visiting France and Italy was fulfilling a life long dream.
The Fritz letters show him both at his best and worst. Best: he's worried for her (justly so, as it turns out, like I said, she was already sick), tenderly concerned and smacking down any criticism from people back home complaining that this journey was too expensive to make and the late FW would never have permitted it. (Context: Wilhelmine actually had to ask Fritz for permission to leave Prussian ruled or allied territories because the 7 years war was just around the corner and neither France nor the Italian states, which were mostly Austrian ruled, were considered friendly at this point.) Worst: bear in mind that what was Wilhelmine was doing was actually filfilling a life long dream for both of them. And he never got to do it, and he never would. So a part of him must have found it impossible to let her enjoy it without him. He keeps lecturing her on the note of: "Of course, you can't possibly enjoy Italy because it's just like a stale old whore looking back on her young sexpot days, right? I mean, Caesar would hate it if he came back, right? And yeah, sure, so you have the chance to check out the new diggings at Pompeiji, the most sensational archaelogical discovery of the age, but you can't possibly enjoy it, can you, because surely those unworthy current day Italians suck so much? And as for seeing Michelangelo's statues and Caravaggio's paintings in the original, surely they have only second rate examples left in Italy, and anyway, did I mention my new gallery has some great paintings which are much better than anything you can possibly see in Italy?" And so on, and so forth. Here is a map from Wilhelmine's travel route, so you can see what she visited.

There are about 80 letters Wilhelmine/Fritz letters in that collection (to and from), versus ca. 11 to brother August Wilhelm (he also got some from her husband and wrote back to both her and her husband, but only the letters to her husband are preserved). These are more affectionate (though he's only her cher frère whereas Fritz is tres cher frère) than I'd have thought, even taking into account the style of the day (after all, FW had been mon cher père as well); August Wilhelm gets just about the only landscape descriptions (whereas Fritz gets antiques, the people she's met, and concert descriptions) in addition to some chit-chat about the people she meets (btw, she doesn't copy the descriptions from her Fritz letters into her August Wilhelm letters, each brother gets different descriptions, i.e. she took the time to write individual letters, which, if you consider how long writing by hand took, and hers weren't dictated, they're in her handwriting, says something about her emotions for them, too), and she keeps asking about Heinrich and Amelie, and reminds him to give them her love, begging forgiveness for basically writing to the three of them together). At one point, August Wilhelm has reported that Fritz has had a riding accident, knocking out two teeths, and Wilhelmine basically writes back: "OMG! Thank God he's okay! You know, you sound so honestly concerned in your letter that you should allow me to let Fritz read it, because it would improve relations between you two. He likes you, I swear he does, he just needs reminding you care for him, too. I told you he's just sooo sensitive!" ("I have always told you the King is very sensitive" is the literal quote.)

(Speaking of Fritz the sensitive, Wilhelmine did visit Voltaire en route and gives his love to Fritz, swearing Voltaire is sorry for every none to swell behaviour, honest he is, and missing Fritz dreadfully.)

Ulrike (mother of Gustavo/Riccardo of Verdi opera fame) comes across as something of a scheming minx, writing to their mother first that surely, it's not true Wilhelmine is off to France, surely Fritz would see that as gross betrayal, right, and need consoling from his other sisters, and later "so I figure Wilhelmine surely will visit you on her way back, she won't be as hard-hearted as neglecting the chance to see her poor old mother again, I surely wouldn't!". Wilhelmine writes one time to say she'll write to Ulrike when she gets back but she's so overwhelmed with correspondance already that she can't during the journey. Otoh, Wilhelmine's letter to Ulrike when she IS back is actually informative and contains something the boys don't get, i.e. a gender-related observation about the French. Not surprisingly, she's found the French countryside and the villages are very poor (there's a revolution brewing, after all) and most of the culture is absolutely Paris focused. Surprisingly, though, Wihelmine tells Ulrike that what cultured people are in Avignon and other non-Paris towns she's visited are much better acknowledging women have brains and carrying conversations with them whereas the male Parisians are patronising idiots to women and only take other men seriously.

In the facsimiles, you can see that Sophia Dorothea has a distinctly different handwriting style to the entire younger generation. Here are samples from everyone's letters so you can have a look at the actual letters: Fritz to Wilhelmine, Wilhelmine to Fritz, Sophia Dorothea to her youngest son Ferdinand, August Wilhelm to his brother-in-law.

[primeideal]

Every time I see your posts I'm reminded that technically Frederick is the first character namedropped in "Godel, Escher, Bach" (obviously in the Bach context). Don't have anything to add to that but glad you're enjoying :)

[cahn]

Haha, it's been so long since I read that that... it's clearly time to read it again :D Thanks!

Royal obsessions

[mildred_of_midgard]

We may have mentioned that FW was obsessed with collecting tall soldiers, but I don't think we've conveyed all the batshit anecdotes that went with his bizarre fetish. I haven't investigated the historical accuracy of all these anecdotes, some happened and some may be apocryphal, but he was obsessed enough that all of them have been attributed to him by someone thinking, "Yup, yup, old FW would totally have done that."

So he had this regiment called the Potsdam Giants, for which the only qualification was being tall. The taller you were, the better you got paid. It was pretty much FW's goal to have every tall man in Europe in his regiment, voluntarily or involuntarily.

One of the kidnapping stories goes something like this: some tall guy in some country that wasn't Prussia got tricked into lying down inside a chest in a store/workshop/something to settle a bet on how wide the chest was. Bang! went the lid, and the guy was shipped off to Potsdam inside the chest. (I've also heard that he arrived DOA because of lack of airholes, not sure if any of this is true.)

Other things FW's been accused of that I personally always put a mental question mark next to, until I find good evidence:1) Putting soldiers on the rack to make them even taller. 2) Eugenics, breeding tall men on tall women and having his agents keep an eye on any babies born in the realm that looked like they might become especially tall.

FW would have the giants paraded through his bedroom when he was sick, to make him feel better. He's supposed to have said that he was indifferent to the beauty of women, but tall soldiers were his weakness. ("But Ima get rid of all my son's boyfriends, because eww gay.")

Given the King's emotional attachment to them, the Potsdam Giants were way too precious to ever be risked in combat. They were strictly ornamental, to be paraded around for the King's visual enjoyment. This was good, as they were not especially good at fighting just because they were tall. In fact, there are stories that they were one of the less competent regiments. Some of them were likely tall as part of genetic conditions that came with other health problems.

Fritz thought this entire thing was ridiculous, a frivolous, pointless expense, and the moment he inherited he redistributed the giants into other regiments and stopped paying them just for being tall.

Now, how tall was FW, you might ask? Not tall. I've seen numbers ranging from 5'2" to 5'5". For Fritz, I've seen anywhere from 5'2" to 5'7". I'm sure none of this is helped by the lack of standardization of units. Napoleon himself got a reputation for being super short by dint of being 5'2" in French units, which is 5'6" in English units, and for hanging around tall soldiers that made him look shorter by comparison. So who even knows. But neither father nor son was anywhere near 6 feet tall, which I believe was the cut-off for the Potsdam Giants.

Soooo...FW was def compensating for his height, and possibly also very repressed sexual urges. Fritz: "Save money, admit your preferences. :-D "

Now, Fritz had his own costly royal obsession, which FW considered a frivolous, pointless expense, but with which we are much more in sympathy.

Namely, music. I know we've mentioned Fritz's flute-playing, art-patronizing, libretto-writing, musical-performance-dictating inclinations. But I'm not sure we've conveyed the level of obsession here. From the moment he took up flute playing in his teens until in old age he became physically incapable of it*, he played it every single day, barring the occasional acute episode of health that prevented him.

* My sources say it was when his teeth fell out. But I googled that, and everyone says it's possible to relearn to play the flute without teeth? I feel like either you can't get the same results, or else maybe his asthma played a role, because if it had been possible for him to keep playing, he would have. He was devastated when he had to put it away forever. He said he'd lost his best friend. :-(

Every day, he woke up at some ridiculous hour of Dark o'clock and started practicing the flute, did a bunch of paperwork, practiced some more, did more work of various kinds throughout the day, and dedicated the evening to listening to music and frequently performing chamber music for a small and select audience. He took his flute on campaign and practiced just as regularly in war as at peace.

After all this practice, I gather he was considered a quite proficient flute player. At any rate, people seem to have higher praise for his flute playing than his sonatas, concertos, symphonies, and the like, which seem to be considered good by amateur standards but far from anything to write home about. I'm not qualified to comment, but you can find performances of some of his compositions on YouTube and judge for yourself, if you care.

Dad, of course, thought flute playing was effeminate and that his son should only be interested in tall soldiers. So he forbade the whole endeavor. Meaning Fritz had to practice in secret. There's one lovely famous story that I think I've mentioned, where Quantz was giving Fritz a private lesson, and Katte was standing guard outside to give them warning as soon as the King approached. Katte and Quantz ended up hiding in a closet together while the King looked for evidence his son had been up to something. (This is why I raised an eyebrow at Mein Name ist Bach to see Quantz acting like he thought comparing Bach père to Fritz's father was bound to give Fritz warm and fuzzies toward Bach.)

At Rheinsberg, Fritz had to get his friends outside into a wood or a cave to practice music where no one could hear them. And once he became king, he recruited all the musicians he could get and never let them leave. (I feel like these facts are related, which is one example of what I meant by him reacting even more to chronic trauma than to Katte's execution.)

Throughout his life, Fritz chose many of his closest companions based on their musical inclinations. He and Wilhelmine used to play together, him on the flute and her on her lute. (As noted, she was a talented musician herself, and, as far as I can gather, the superior composer of the siblings--probably helped by the fact that her time wasn't divided with military campaigns and administrative micromanaging. You can also find some of her work on YouTube.)

One of the things Fritz bonded with Katte over was that they both played the flute. And Fredersdorf (one of the "six I have loved most") was a professional musician for the army, and he used to play the flute for Fritz during his imprisonment at Küstrin. In fact, Fritz's sympathetic jailers were so concerned about the treatment he was receiving that they told FW that they were afraid he would literally lose his mind under the abuse strict regimen he was put under to rehabilitate him after Katte's execution, and reluctantly FW gave them permission to lighten conditions a bit. And the number one way you keep Fritz sane in prison is by letting him have some flute music.

Side obsession: Fritz was a huge bookworm, as we've mentioned, and he kept having to accumulate secret libraries and hide them from Dad, who kept getting rid of them. During the escape attempt, one of Katte's responsibilities, along with "communicate with foreign envoys," "try to get an asylum offer," "acquire funding," and "take care of the Prince's valuables," was "get the secret library out of the country." Cause there's no point in fleeing for your life if you're not also bringing your books. MAN AFTER MY OWN HEART.

Re: Royal obsessions

[cahn]

FW, woooooow. I must admit that my immediate reaction was to think "I bet he's not tall at all" even before you said he wasn't :)

FW would have the giants paraded through his bedroom when he was sick, to make him feel better.

omg FW

So I was interested enough in the flute question to do a bit of googling myself. I found this was kinda interesting:
http://www.fluteland.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=637&sid=baf0ee6fa761822ef273dc49d875e714&start=15
"It is impossible to generalize about removable dentures and blowing a flute. Typically a denture patient loses the alveolar bone over time. (This is the horseshoe shaped bone onto which the denture rests and is pasted.) The degree of resorption or bone loss is different in everyone depending on how long they have been without their natural teeth. Trumpet players have problems with upper dentures. Flutists have more of a problem with the lower denture. I can say that the lower alveolar bone is much more prone to resorption (or loss) than the upper. When we apply pressure to the lower lip with a flute we must rely on the stability of whatever it is behind the lower lip be it natural teeth, bridgework or a denture. If the alveolar bone is minimal or gone entirely, the denture "floats" and will move when pressure is applied with a flute. A flutist with this problem may undergo: 1. Alveolar ridge augmentation surgery.
2. Dental implants
3. Fixed Bridgework
This treatment plan will render a natural result allow you to perform natural flute licks."

So I can imagine that whatever was wrong with Fritz' teeth was in such a way that he actually couldn't play, or perhaps he would have been able to retrain in a perfect world but didn't know how (in the same thread are people who notice that their tone or technique has gone really wonky and aren't sure how to fix it). Gosh, I sympathize, though. I had RSI problems and had to put my violin away for a number of years, and it really sucked. And I didn't like it nearly as much as Fritz liked his flute.

(Man, it sounds even worse to play flute than violin. At least with violin you only have to worry about your fingers. Flute you have to worry about fingers AND mouth AND teeth!)

Re: Royal obsessions

[mildred_of_midgard]

I just realized FW was playing an early version of Pokemon Go all over Europe. Gotta catch 'em all!

speaking of musical relationships....

[selenak]

And here's a tale about another fascinating woman in Federician times whom he had a "oh, Fritz!" relationship with. Born Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling in Kassel in the same year fellow Hessian Goethe was, 1749, she was the eighth daughter of a poor (and violent) town musician. Who had the same idea Leopold Mozart did when he saw his toddler kid grabbing a violin and hit the road with little Gertrud, presenting her as a musical Wunderkind in the Netherlands and various German cities. At first a violinist, but then this happened:

People: so, your kid is getting taller. Soon she'll hit puberty. The sight of a woman violinist is unseemly. Just saying.
Dad Schmeling: Maybe if I dress her in male clothing?
People: Works for a while, but are those breasts she starts to have? You're about a century too early for George Sand, mate.
DS: Gertrud, enough with the violin. You have a nice singing voice. Maybe become a soprano instead? I still need cash.
Gertrud: turns out to have a spectacular singing range of nearly three octaves, going from little g to three-stroke f (I hope that's the right expression in English).
German public: goes wild
Young Goethe: like many a fanboy, writes a "you're divine, be mine!" type of love poem to her; the poem isn't important, but there's a lovely pay off for this decades later
British and Italian public: goes wild
(Dad Schmeling: spends to much of her earned money he ends up in British debtor's prison until she gets him out of same)

Gertrud: debuts in Berlin, listened to by one of Fritz' courtiers who hastens off to Sanssouci
Old Fritz: okay. I still think German voices sound like my horse, but I'll listen to her auditioning for my opera.
His dogs: bark, since they're not used to a woman anywhere near him at this point.
Gertrud: is fearless and tackles the aria he selects, a bravoura aria from Graun's Britannicus called "Mi parenti, il figlio indegno"
Fritz: has her sing for him every night the next six weeks
Dad Schmeling: So, cash?
Fritz: You strike me as a jerk. 3000 Thaler for a two years contract.
Gertrud: 6000 per year and a life time contract, and independence, that's what I'm thinking. Bye, Dad.
Fritz: I sort of sympathize with the Dad issue. You've got a contract. But that name has to go. It's so... German.
Gertrud: Christ. Okay, how about Elisabeth Schmeling instead? That's my middle name.
Fritz: Not much better, but a bit.

*Elisabeth Schmeling continues to wow Berlin; among many fans is a young guy named Zelter, which only becomes a plot point later*

Elisabeth: *falls in love with Prince Heinrich's drop dead gorgeous Violinist Johann Mara, wants to marry him*
Fritz: He's my brother's boy toy. Normally I'd see this as hilarious, but I sort of like you. Don't do it.
Elisabeth: But I love him! He's the most beautiful man I've ever seen! You're just being a mean, controlling jerk, as per your reputation. I don't believe you.
Fritz: Not in this case I'm not. Don't do it.
Elisabeth: *runs away with Mara, marries him, is caught on route to England by Fritz' people*
Fritz: You have a life time contract, Missy. Ten weeks arrest for Heinrich's boy toy.
Elisabeth, now singing as Elisabeth Mara: I'm too young to make pointed remarks about people running away to England with their lovers and getting caught. Still. Can I at least guest star in a few German states?
Fritz: Mayyybeee. Okay. But none that belong to the Queen of Hungary.
Johann Mara: *spends Elisabeth's money, cheats on her*
Fritz: I'm just saying.
Elisabeth: He's still drop dead gorgeous and in my bed, jerk. Also, I'm off to Prague.
Fritz: Prague belongs to THAT WOMAN. You're fired!

Elisabeth: *gets rave reviews and audience adulation in Prague, Vienna, etc., then goes to Paris, where the French are divided between "Maraists" (her crowd) and "Todists" (fans of Luisa Modi, the other prima donna), goes to Britain and is fanboyed by the Prince of Wales, and has a distinct sense of deja vue as her husband gambles money away and has sex left right and center, until she separates from him*

Elisabeth: Okay, one more season in Paris to earn some money, then I'm off to Moscow. Haven't done Russia yet. It looks like an interesting place to retire. Also they'll pay me my star salary whereas here the younger crowd is eyeing my top position.

*one revolution and one Empire later*

Moscow in 1812: *gets invaded by Napoleon, burns*

Elisabeth: There go my retirement fund and my earthly possessions. FUCK YOU, WORLD CONQUERORS. Guess I'll have to go back on the road again. *goes back to England, Berlin, gives some concerts, teaches a bit, finally gets offered job as house teacher from Livonian family, takes it for lack of alternatives*

Zelter *has become Goethe's old age pen pal*: Dear JWG, recently heard the wonderful Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling Mara has fallen on hard times. Remember how we loved her? I feel we should do something when you're both turning 83 this year.

Goethe: *writes a second poem, "To Madame Mara", which uses the same metre his youthful ditty did but says, in rhymed form: Your life was full of music, you are still the music of our lives; you've brought joy often when my life had been a drag, and now that we're both close to our final destination, I send love and adoration to you!

Hummel: *sets the second poem to music*

Zelter: *sends poem and score to La Mara in Livonia

(Goethe: *dies one and a half year later*)

Elisabeth Mara *dies two years later*

Epic rap battles of history

[mildred_of_midgard]

Okay, so this isn't a musical recommendation, but it *is* historical education via entertainment, so...

Apparently there is some YouTube series called Epic Rap Battles of History where actors portraying famous historical figures face off against each other and try to one up each other by recounting their accomplishments and putting the other person's down. It's basically a flyting.

And in one episode, Ivan the Terrible faces off against 3 of my faves: Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great, and Catherine the Great. Here's the 4-minute video of the battles, and what was of far more interest to me, the wiki article with the exegesis.

Most hilarious line IMO: "Oblique attack tactics ain't exactly straight." I realize it's just wordplay on a very recent meaning of the word "straight" and has no basis in psychological fact, but I've seen the line rendered "Oblique attack tactics(,) ain't exactly straight," and the ambiguity is just brilliant.

Re: Epic rap battles of history

[cahn]

What about a flute-busting Prussian!

omg, this is excellent, thank you! I get a real kick out of the wordplay / rhyme of rap when married with esoteric knowledge (why yes, I adored the heck out of Hamilton) -- I will have to look up more of these (although I suppose I won't get the historical parts for most of them). I adored the bit where he's playing the snazzy flute solo amidst chants of "Old Fritz!" and "Oblique attack tactics ain't exactly straight" LOL FOREVER.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Aha! In "Pulvis et Umbra", I wrote, "The engineers were still trying to figure out the fountain at the bottom of the hill." This was based on something I had read about the development of Sanssouci, namely that Friedrich wanted a fountain spurting water into the air, but that it was a tricky problem before the 19th century and depended a lot on local topography, and engineers didn't figure out how to make it work at Sanssouci until the 19th century. (I like that they were still trying!)

You can see the product of their success in the picture I took when I was there. Oh, and this one, viewed from the top of the hill.

Well, what I didn't realize was that "engineers" included the great Euler! His Wikipedia page has this quote from Friedrich in a letter to Voltaire: "I wanted to have a water jet in my garden: Euler calculated the force of the wheels necessary to raise the water to a reservoir, from where it should fall back through channels, finally spurting out in Sanssouci. My mill was carried out geometrically and could not raise a mouthful of water closer than fifty paces to the reservoir. Vanity of vanities! Vanity of geometry!"

Engineering is hard, let's go shopping stick to math.

Likewise, in one of my comments on these posts, I mentioned the bit about the time the dogs started barking because there was a WOMAN in the room, but I had forgotten *which* woman, and never did know her life story. Fleshing out all these details is fun!

[cahn]

ahahahaha mathematicians failing at real-life applications since the 18th century! (I feel like before then math and engineering were sort of considered as more interchangeable, but my history of science is only very slightly better than my abysmal general history, so I may be wrong about that)

[mildred_of_midgard]

Canon check, please, selenak?

This is Fritz writing to Fredersdorf 2 days after the plundering of the Prussian camp and baggage train after Soor, an event in which all my sources agree that his dogs were captured by the enemy and later returned. (I know Eichel and Lesser survived and were returned too; not sure about the other two humans mentioned below, but I think so.)

"Meine ganze Equipage zum Teufel^a, Annemarie ist todt gehauen, der Champion muss auch todt sein; Eichel, Müller, der Dechiffreur und Lesser sind noch nicht ausgefunden."

Footnote by the editor: "a. Der König hat in dem Briefe nicht an Biche gedacht, von welcher er in einem späteren, ungedruckten Briefe an seinen Bruder Wilhelm sagt : « Nadasdy m'apris, le 30 septembre 1745, ma levrette anglaise qui s'appelle Biche, que mon laquais Claus conduisait. »"

My interpretation: Annemarie is a dog whose body has been found by the Prussians. Champion is a dog whose body has not turned up. Fritz is assuming all his dogs have shared Annemarie's fate. Biche, who we all know is one of Fritz's all-time favorite dogs and buried next to him at Sanssouci, isn't mentioned because Fritz is not talking about the death that hurts the most, just like with Katte. Later, definitely Biche and probably Champion are returned, at which point Fritz is hugely relieved and can talk about Biche again.

Reasonable interpretation?

[selenak]

Yes, I think so. Also, I keep forgetting to say this, but given the sheer size of Fritz' hangup about German (the language and being one), it really says a lot about his relationship with Fredersdorf that he's willing to write German to him (and presumably talk as well?). Am determined to request a Federsdorf pov for Yuletide, set in Küstrin when he's introduced to a badly damaged prince and has to figure out how to even begin to make him feel better a bit.

MT marriage AU, cont'd

[mildred_of_midgard]

(Putting this in a new thread because selenak is right, the existing one was near unreadable.)

I had totally forgotten this happened, but while rereading parts of the Küstrin episode in MacDonogh's bio for the umpteenth time, I ran across this passage of great relevance to our interests, check it out:

Frederick was looking for solutions that might bring him back his liberty. On 11 April 1731 he hit on the idea of standing down as crown prince in favour of his brother William, and putting himself forward as a candidate for the Empire. To this end he suggested that one of the two Habsburg archduchesses might be made over to him for a wife. The letter was also signed by a group of men who were forming themselves into the prince’s new council: his marshal, Wolden, Natzmer and Rohwedel. Grumbkow was alarmed by this new suggestion from Frederick: ‘an archduchess would never marry a prince who wasn’t completely Catholic’. He sent the letter back to Hille and told him to burn it in the presence of the prince.

Both Seckendorff and the king none the less heard about the idea, the latter probably after Seckendorff sent word to Prince Eugene in Vienna, who was verging on senility and wanted Frederick William to tell him which archduchess he had in mind. Prince Eugene described the project as ‘peculiar’. Frederick William was even less impressed, and he was hurt by the thought that his son might consider converting to Catholicism.

For those of you who are new to this fandom and may or may not have the chronology memorized, keep in mind, Katte was executed Nov 6, 1730. This is only 6 months later. FW's "rehabilitation" regime is going full strength trying to break his son's will. Fritz must have been *desperate*.

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[cahn]

...okay, so now that I know about this potential route that it could actually have happened (well, except for FW, but, well) now I am back to kind-of sort-of wanting MT-Fritz marriage AU. Only really just mostly the part where they play music together and where FW dies of apoplexy, and not the part where MT ends up much unhappier :(

Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd

[selenak]

...okay, now I must mentally apologize to the miniseries because it seems at least there's some basis for the "Grumpkow and Eugene scheme to marry MT to Fritz" subplot, as opposed to there being none. (Though of course the miniseries presents this with FW totally on board, so I was still right with him more likely going "no son of mine will ever become a Catholic" which the Austrian side would have insisted on.)

As I said below, I love your timetable for the AU. Incidentally, given that MT and EC were actually first cousins - MT's mother, also called Elisabeth Christine, being EC's aunt and godmother - I suppose she might have gotten married to a Hohenzollern in this AU, too (to strengthen alliances etc.) but not to Fritz.

Sanssouci

[mildred_of_midgard]

I, er, so, continuing with the theme of me being completely obsessed with Sanssouci and Fritz's burial choices...having written two fics on the subject, I have now proceeded to create what is probably the closest to fanart my inartistic self will ever come.

I.e., I discovered that Google sent someone to get lovely tourist-free images of the Sanssouci grounds on a clear day at sunrise before the park was open, so you can walk around the grounds without leaving your computer, and that's how I spent a good chunk of my evening.

Since you've both read "Pulvis et Umbra" and are now experts on the Antinous statue, I share with you this slideshow of captioned screenshots I compiled from Google street view, which, in full screen presentation mode, gives you pretty good visuals for that fic. You can see what's meant by things like "in the line of sight from my library."

Easter egg: the Antinous statue is extremely dark in these pictures (here's a link to a better picture, of the original), but you can just make out that it's facing the library window and raising both its arms. In "Pulvis et Umbra", I snuck in "a bronze statue of a naked young man, arms held aloft" in our introduction to the piece, followed by "Katte's hands were giving him no such problems. He raised both and waved easily to Friedrich" in Fritz's dream/near death experience.

If you look at the slideshow, you can visualize what I'm imagining: Fritz walks to his window, looks out, and sees Katte standing where the statue is, in a roughly similar pose. The dream also inserts a river in between the window and the statue/grave, which is, of course, less accurate and more symbolic. ;)

Thanks, Google!

I may or may not also have "driven" around the ruins of Kostrzyn today, I mean different parts than I usually drive around, WHAT? :P

On a less morbid note, I am intrigued by the staircases on the terraces. I didn't notice it while I was actually walking down them (walking up, I was sprinting all out because I was way late for my timed entry ticket to the palace, because I spent too long on the grounds), and it may simply be my own architectural ignorance and this may be way more common than I think, but this view looking up the hill reminded me of another staircase I climbed once...Michelangelo's famous one at the Laurentian Library. Fritz's isn't tripartite, of course, nor a close copy, but it's got that flowing effect, and the last three steps are rounded and overflow the horizontal boundaries in a way that seems very reminiscent of the most striking part in the center of Michelangelo's.

I know Fritz was obsessed with Italian architecture, paid people to go there looking for inspiration, picked Algarotti's brain, repeatedly used the Pantheon dome for inspiration in his commissioned structures, including here at Sanssouci, and so...I'm wondering if this is another instance of a specific inspiration. I can't find a link between the two staircases by googling, but given just how *famous* that Laurentian staircase is, and given Fritz's predilections, I'm going to hypothesize that there's a link, until and unless someone tells me that that staircase design was totally a rococo thing and was everywhere to be seen, no Renaissance inspiration needed.

Until then, "If you're afraid to go to Italy and risk your heart, you can always bring Italy to you (if your dad left you enough money)."

Man, I need to go back to Sanssouci now that I know stuff. Meanwhile, thanks, Google!

ETA: Oh, hopefully all the links work and you have permission to view them, but let me know if not.

Re: Sanssouci

[selenak]

The links work perfectly for me. And you know, if Thomas Jefferson based the designs for Monticello on Italian architecture he, personally, never got to see but which he had sketches, paintings and descriptions for, most of which he aquired in Paris, I'd say your theory is plausible enough. Plus Fritz certainly comes across as well-versed (for a man of his era) on Renaissance painters and architects on those lecturing letters and mentions Michelangelo more than once. (Even if to say all Michelangelo only did eight or so truly great works, the rest is just not quite genius, and the genius ones are mostly out of the country, so really, sis, get your expectations low.)

Re: Sanssouci

[cahn]

(now that I can finally look at this!)

Lol, I especially liked the annotation of "Fritz's potatoes." You know you're going to have to explain this to me now :P :D

Random facts

[mildred_of_midgard]

Have a couple of physical Fritz books I badly want to read/reread, but can't, so instead I'm opening up to a random page once or twice a day and reading one page, which is about what I can do without aggravating my back.

Anyway, I thought yesterday evening's and this morning's fun facts were worth sharing here.

1) Book 1 says mail in the 19th century was mostly cash-on-delivery, meaning the recipient paid. When soldiers got mail, it put them in a really tight spot, because they had so little pay, and yet being stuck in the horrible conditions of a campaign for long periods meant you were really desperate to get those letters. And so you'd often end up selling things you couldn't afford to do without (or were required to have as part of army life and would be punished for not having) in order to get your hands on those letters.

Well, my book says Fritz set up free postal service for his soldiers in the Silesian wars to deal with this problem.

This is consistent with other things I've read about Fritz's army, which is that on the one hand, Prussian discipline was notoriously *brutal*, so desertion was a huge problem he and his officers had to contend with, but on the other hand, he had a lot of soldiers defecting to his side, in part because working conditions were better in many respects than in his opponents' armies. E.g. Fritz was able to keep his supply lines intact and provide much more reliable food, so you were much less likely to go hungry in his army. And getting your mail must have been good for morale.

2) A quote both memorable and pathetic from Book 2.

Infant/toddler Fritz (who was the inbred scion of a family in which illnesses galloped and who only had 18th century medicine to treat him) was sickly, which greatly displeased FW (who had already buried his first 2 or 3 infant sons, I forget, and was desperate for an heir). Quote:

"His father often stormed into the nursery or had the child brought to him to examine as if he were some sort of backward worm."

This was before bb!Fritz could freaking talk! This was before he was pissing off FW by reading French and writing poetry!

Man, I'd always had it presented to me as FW leaving bb!Fritz to the women and ignoring him until he was about to turn 6, which was when the abuse started. No such luck, apparently.

3) Book 2 says when Fritz was fourteen (the actual quote is "in many ways a very weary fourteen," which strikes me as heart-breakingly accurate), the French envoy to Berlin fucking hated FW and for years had been trying to get transferred back home. Meanwhile, he convinced the French court that they needed to build up a party around Fritz and try to stage a coup. Fritz was *all over* this and used to tell the French envoy literally everything he knew about what his dad was up to. He was, in other words, spying on FW for the French.

At one point, French envoy dude wrote a report back home stating that he thought FW was on the verge of being declared insane and unfit to rule and being locked up in a fortress. My book says there's some evidence SD and Fritz thought so too, "which certainly would have been an exciting prospect for the harassed heir."

AU! AU! AU!

Re: Random facts

[mildred_of_midgard]

TIL: Katte and Otto von Bismarck were, if I've got this right, first cousins three times removed (Bismarck being born more than a hundred years later). Bismarck was born in von Katte territory, about 20 km from Wust, the village where Katte grew up and is now buried. The house where Bismarck was born has inscribed by the door the coat of arms and name of our Katte's paternal aunt, Bismarck's ancestor.

Maria Theresia Trivia

[selenak]

Must dash again, as new work has unexpectedly appeared on the horizon, but here are some early results from my MT biography reading. Will repost them on a new post if you like, but in the meantime, enjoy:

So, random Maria Theresia related trivia and background stuff, with an eye to parallels and differences to certain Prussian siblings, or just because I found it interesting:

- like most royals and nobles in her century, her actual raising was done by nurses, governesses and later teachers; she had a respectful though distant relationship to both her parents, whereas she adored her nanny, Frau von Fuchs, whom she called "Mami" (which, yes, means Mom in German) and at times referred to as Füchsin, in a pun on her name (which means fox). As with Wilhelmine's Fräulein von Sonsfeld (aka "Sonsine"), "Mami" remained with MT for the rest of her life. MT had her buried in the Habsburg crypt, the sole non-Habsburg to be so. IF MT, the occasional temper outburst throughout her life, depression in old age and bigotry in same not withstanding, was emotionally balanced most of the time, this woman clearly deserves the credit.

- it's worth noting that neither MT (of course not, because ruler, but also because 18th century) nor Wilhelmine raised their daughters, either. When Friederike, Wilhelmine's daughter, is about to make her illfated marriage to Karl Eugen of Württemberg, Wilhelmine writers she's sad "because I have just begun to know her, and we were starting to get close". MT saw her kids four times a week on avarage during their childhood and early adolescence, which was regarded as sensationally much by the court. (In addition, she sat in on Joseph's school lessons and examinations every two months, but then he was the future emperor.)

- speaking of the Habsburg crypt - the famous "Kapuzinergruft" - , the tomb MT had comissioned for Franz Stefan and herself takes a common trope - the dead couple lying next to each other - and gives it a twist: both figures are turned towards each other, not towards heaven, and are looking at each other:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Wien_-_Kapuzinergruft%2C_Maria-Theresia-Gruft_%281%29.JPG/1024px-Wien_-_Kapuzinergruft%2C_Maria-Theresia-Gruft_%281%29.JPG

- the intimacy in this depiction also echoes another exception: MT and Franz Stefan shared a bedroom. The usual practice were separate bedrooms, sex ensued in one of them, and afterwards the husband (usually) buggered off, no pun intended. MT and Franz Stefan did have separate bedrooms but also a shared bedroom in between, which they used most of the time when both present. MT's advice (by letter) to her daughter Marie Antoinette was to share a bedroom and a bed with her husband as well, not just for sex but to sleep in together. This, she wrote, was one of the few ways to be truly alone together and outside of everyone's view, and it also created familiarity and a relationship. To her disappointment, Marie Antoinette didn't listen (or young Louis truly wouldn't go for it, which was Antoinette's explanation, because her mother could hardly blame her for obeying her husband); the French court, of course, found the mere idea of actually sleeping (as in sleep, not sex) together terribly degoutant and ridiculous.

- while we're talking sex, on the downside, one of MT's characteristics alienating both her contemporaries and posterity about her was that she tried to police everyone else's sex lives in a way not seen since Octavian/Augustus made adultery a crime in ancient Rome. (This had not been the case previously, when her father ruled, who otherwise had been more formal and old fashioned than her , more about this later. The Vienna MT grew up in was in fact famous for its sexual license. And would be again, because Joseph got rid of these laws as soon as she was dead.) Extramarital sex was strictly illegal, the police were encouraged to spy on offenders. This, of course, did not stop anyone. Contemporaries and biographers weren't slow to speculate the reason for this were less her religion and more projected resentment for Franz Stefan cheating on her which she couldn't direct at him. It's worth noting, though, that she honored his wishes regarding the most prominent of his mistresses after his death and gave her a pension (of the same amount as requested) instead of mistreating or just cutting the woman off. Her anti-extramarital-sex laws got worse after his death, though.

- on the other hand, MT also made an interesting exception for illegitimate mothers. This was because she could quickly see that if a woman was severely punished for unlicensed sex, and getting pregnant was the most glaring proof this had happened, it lead to either abortion or infanticide of newborn babies. So midwives and priests were indeed encouraged by law to keep the confidence of pregnant unmarried mothers and help them instead of reporting them.

- less successful was her attempt to end prostitution by putting prostitutes into work houses instead. The idea had been to give them "honest work" so they wouldn't starve once their job was illegal, but predictably (from our pov), this ended up with the women being terribly exploited as cheap labour. Joseph, all credit to him, during his many tours through his empire as a young co-ruler inspected enough of these places to come back with horrified reports and absolutely and passionately insisted the practice had to stop. This was one of the few times he won an argument with his mother.

- back to young MT: her first year or so in office when first Fritz and then everyone else invaded resulted in a lot of quite obscene caricatures, usually printed in the Netherlands, depicting a young woman getting stripped by a couple of men tearing her clothes from her (in national costumes indicating who represented which nation) , as more or less an overt gang rape, with verses to match. This was not done in sympathy for MT, mind, but as part of the general "well, it's a woman on the throne, she clearly needs to be fucked in every sense" feeling. However, once MT had persuaded the Hungarians to accept her as their Queen and fight for her, the fortunes of war changed to the point that Bavaria was counterinvaded which robbed her rival - the Wittelsbach Emperor - of his home base and later allowed her to blackmail his son Maximilian into not trying to succeed his father and instead voting for Franz Stefan as Emperor- the metaphor in caricatures was turned around; now MT (fully dressed) was depicted stealing the Wittelsbach Emperor's pants and wearing them.

- amazingly enough, her closest royal friend and pen pal was Maximilian's sister Antonia of Bavaria, later married to August the Strong's son and thus ruling Saxony, which put Antonia in a relatively good position for reporting on Fritz (a next door neighbour in terms of how close Saxony and Prussia were)

- even more amazingly, Franz Stefan, who'd met Fritz while doing his two year Grand Tour through Europe (he was present on Fritz' official engagement party, for example, not that this was a joyful occasion to our antihero), had actually be charmed by him (though when Fritz wrote his "dear FS, I'm totally respecting your (and your girl's) right on the Austrian heartlands and will vote for you as Emperor if you hand over Silesia, which by the time you're getting this letter I'm actually invading" message, he was horrified and told the Prussian ambassador so) and later periodically made attempts to persuade MT to maybe consider a reconciliation with Prussia over a French alliance (not least because he had an ongoing grudge against the French for first accepting his duchy Lorraine as a bribe to accept the Pragmatic Sanction, which meant he married MT essentially as a beggar, and then invading anyway), which were all met with a resounding "No, Franzl, NO".

- MT really was a hardcore worker, getting up around 4 am, 5 at the latest, while going to bed around 11 pm (going to bed here means removing herself from public sight, as we know these times from ambassadors reporting to their various masters; who knows whether she actually slept). As mentioned elsewhere, civil servants asking for more vacation time were met by an unsympathetic reminder she was up and about two days after childbirth, so what were they moaning about?

- this being said, she didn't just shrug off those births. After child No. 10, she wrote to Antonia - Marie Antoinette's godmother, btw - that she'd be grateful if that was it, because it pregnancy and birth was draining, she was getting fat and short of breath, and enough was enough (the dynasty was secure). As to why man-of-the-world Franz Stefan didn't have sex with her in a way that did not lead to more procreation and thus children 11 - 16? Neither of them ever said anything, but you can always speculate that it was for religious reasons on her part. After all, this is the woman who insisted on performing all the kneeling on a Good Friday when seven months pregnant, when every priest would have happily absolved her (not least because the health of the monarch and her unborn child were not a private matter).

- she had a keen sense of the performative part of being a monarch, all the more so because she needed to prove herself, a female ruler on the throne being unprecedented in the German speaking territories, and she was good in turning what was regarded as a weakness at the start - her being a wife and mother (if women per se were "the weaker vessel", you can imagine what a pregnant woman was at an age where a lot of them died in childbirth, not to mention that the traditional role of a wife obeying her husband directly conflicted with the idea of her as her husband's social superior) - as a strength: when she made her appeal to the Hungarian parliament, she emphasized her motherhood (though she did not, as legend would have it, newborn Joseph in her arms, Madonna fashion, during the appeal itself; she did have him brought to Hungary, though, since her finally having given birth to a son was a big plus in her favour) and turned into a "you brave and knightly men surely will protect me" thing, all flowing robes, tears in eyes and feminitity written all over her. (It worked.) Otoh, when the actual Hungarian coronation ceremony demanded for her to be on a horse (astride, male fashion), raising a sword (a real, heavy one) and turning thus, sword raised, with the horse in four directions, she did that, too. (MT turned out to be a good equestrarian in general and used the famous riding hall in Vienna for an all female big event in which solely women performed daring riding stunts not long after. Even the French, at the time still hoping their Bavarian ally would make it, were grudgingly impressed by the sheer spectacle.)

- but then, she had already started performing as a child (singing and dancing) at court events. (This was not unusual in the 18th century for royalty. No one had forgotten Le Roi Soleil and his ballet dancing. The nineteenth century had every different ideas about royal dignity, of course (more in line with FW's), but the first depiction we have of child Marie Antoinette is ballet dancing at a court event together with her sisters as well.)

- on the other end of the scale, MT's father Karl had been the ruler during whose lifetime the Habsburgs lost Spain to the Bourbons. After the last Spanish Habsburg (the famously inbred Charles) had died, the Austrian Habsburgs totally expected to inherit, but Louis XIV had other ideas (and put his grandson on the throne). Karl for a while held Northern Spain, though, and he was the Habsburg to bring Spanish Court Etiquette to the Austrian court. This meant, among other things, that anyone being presented to the Emperor or the Empress had to kneel down three times before approaching them, and then they had to kiss their hand. The other German princes resented that a lot. MT cut it down to one time kneeling down and one time hand kissing, and Joseph dispensed with the kneeling altogether. (His nephew Franz II, the reactionary, reintroduced it.) I'm still mulling whether or not MT would have been likely to demand it from Wilhelmine on her Bayreuth visit or whether she'd have been diplomatic and skipped it (knowing how much especially the Protestant German Princes resented it). She'd definitely demand it from Fritz on the fictional summit, though!

Re: Maria Theresia Trivia

[cahn]

Wow. She really was totally amazing. (The Hungarian coronation ceremony plus taking advantage of motherhood tropes!) Except for the sexual policing, HOW COULD YOU MT! YOU GOT TO MARRY FOR LOVE!

Joseph! I totally have a soft spot for him and have ever since learning of his Rational Fanboy nature (and, okay, imagining all these stories with the guy in Amadeus too). :D YAY JOSEPH. (I guess now you can tell me all the negative stories about him :P )

periodically made attempts to persuade MT to maybe consider a reconciliation with Prussia over a French alliance ... which were all met with a resounding "No, Franzl, NO".

lol! ...oh Franzl. Good thing he wasn't (acting) Emperor :P

Thank you for all this, this is wonderful!