cahn | Frederick the Great post links

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)!

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Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Thaaaaat's a really interesting question. To begin with, my chronology assumes they have maybe one year of knowing each other in person. (Maybe this is not the most realistic chronology, but it was also made to order for maximum

cahn enjoyment rather than strict derivation from first principles. ;) )

I'm going to go with, no, knowing MT in person from 1731-1732 and getting an annulment after a childless marriage doesn't stop Fritz from invading Silesia in 1740. I don't think he invaded and conducted his wars the way he did primarily because he underestimated MT's desire to rule and iron will in any way that he wouldn't have if he'd known her for that one year. He *did* underestimate her and her iron will, obviously, and he was in for an unpleasant surprise himself at how non-trivial it was to hold onto Silesia (and I'm not even talking the crazy hard Seven Years' War here, just the first two Silesian wars).

But 1) knowing in 1732 that this 15-yo meant to rule, even if she managed to impress him with her intelligence and strength of will, would probably not have scared him off. The first thing he did in 1740 was distance all royal women from the throne, because otherwise they'd start trying to rule, so it wasn't like women running things was a foreign concept to him. (At the same time, he was distancing all his brothers as well. Isolate and entrench, his lifelong MO.)

2) Many of his decisions in the first two Silesian wars (and, yes, at least the first few years of the Seven Years' War too) came from underestimating, not MT herself, but her generals and the quality of the various armies he faced. When I asked "does time in Vienna cause him to stop underestimating them?" I was thinking mostly of the army. And my conclusion is no, he neither has the interest in interacting with the army to the exclusion of all else (I do think he takes something of an interest), nor does he have the time, power, and interest to reform them yet.

The upshot, I think, is that Fritz walks away from his time in Vienna still thinking he can do better than they can and it's safe to invade. He might think that MT's next husband needs to make damn sure he imposes his will on her or she'll start running things, but I don't think that prevents him from invading any more than Elisabeth or Madame de Pompadour keep him from being misogynistic or underestimating Russian and French forces. The Fritz who walks away from this marriage and goes back to Berlin is probably the same canonical Fritz who thinks he can do better than everyone else.

Now, does ~7 years of power affect his behavior in such a way that his Machiavellian tendencies show well before 1740, meaning MT is more prepared? Maybe. (I mean, strictly speaking, my chronology assumes he reneges on the AW deal as soon as FW dies, so that's a big sign right there, but he could pass that off as that promise being made under duress, and play on people's sympathies.) His expansionist interests were showing early on in that decade (even at Küstrin, I think), and Eugene definitely thought he was going to do great things, in 1734 or whenever they met. Of course, the context in which they met was military, and I think Fritz was trying to impress FW too, but yeah, the 1740 about-face was foreshadowed if you knew him well.

So MT might have known to keep an eye on him, but probably more based on the way he ran his kingdom after their annulment than on their brief marriage. And would she have seen Silesia specifically coming? I kind of doubt it? I think she probably would have expected him to do the Poland land grab of 1773 first, because that's what he was mostly talking about in the 1730s, in the excerpts I've read on his musings on such subjects.

These are just guesses, of course, and it's difficult to draw strictly logical conclusions from illogical premises like "FW has a literal fatal aneurysm from reading Fritz's letters from Vienna." ;)

From:

selenak

At one point when Wilhelmine's daughter Friederike, age 16, takes off with her new husband to Italy on a whim with no advance warning (this was before Wilhelmine's own journey south), Wilhelmine writes ruefully to Fritz wen reporting this that this is what they should have done at that age (running off to Italy together). "We have wasted our youth trying so hard to be dutiful and good."

Have relistened further, and post-reconciliation (quoth Fritz "in an argument between head and heart, my heart will always argue in your favor", and hence he accepts she didn't mean to betray him and really loves him), they've fallen in their old co-dependence. He's actually rather sweet when she finally does come clean about her reasons for the Marwitz debacle. Which she has to, because Marwitz, whose first name was Wilhelmine Dorothee (this, like the Margrave being called Friedrich, is just mean to future fiction writers and readers!), upped the ante. Background: her father, who was old Prussian nobility and once was left for dead after a Fritzian battle but came back from that, had died. Because Wilhelmine had arranged the Marwitz/Burghaus Austrian marriage, Fritz refused to let Marwitz have her inheritance (no Prussian money or Prussian goods go to the Austrians!). Given Marwitz' Austrian husband, it then turned out, had counted on that money - he was a gambler -, Marwitz remained in Bayreuth and continued to be the Margrave's mistress. Post sibling reconciliation, she point blank told Wilhelmine that if Wilhelmine wanted her to go to Vienna as opposed to spending her mornings fucking the Margrave, she'd better get her that inheritance money. (Marwitz is totally played by Joan Collins in my head.)

Fritz: after that explanation, provides the money without a single "I told you so" and only warns Wihelmine that Marwitz and her husband the gambler are just the types to ask for more later.

(She did go to Vienna, and was quite succesful in creating a salon there, attended, among others by young Joseph, eagerly listening to stories about the Prussian court.)

Some years later, when Fritz has the impression the Margraves cheats again, he tries marriage counselling by creating a fable about a butterfly which can't help visiting all the flowers, and so our heroine who loves the butterfly is only making herself sad when wishing it not to be a butterfly (thus says a fairy he names "Moral"). To which Wilhelmine responds with: "Love your fable, but it doesn't apply right now: luckily my own butterfly is finding the local flowers to be roses, with thorns." (This was during their long journey.)

Meanwhile, Wilhelmine tries her best to reconcile him with his frenemy. Incidentally, his reaction to Wilhelmine's Voltaire letter is "I'm not surprised at the comedy he played for you. Why oh why has such a genius to be such a jerk!" (All of Europe: starts coughing.)

I think for a Wilhelmine fix-it (which alas would make our Franconian landscape poorer - it's my home province she contributed a lot of nice buildings and nature parks to), it would have needed someone who accomplished such a myriad of feats: being trustworthy, in love with her, interesting, able to outshine or at least equal Fritz in her eyes, with patience and understanding, and at least a noble because she definitely wasn't ahead of her time enough to go for a citizen, that no candidate among her ontemporaries comes to mind. Not to have married at all might have worked for her in that she never appears to have considered cheating on the Margrave on return and once writes to Fritz when he does his thing about female virtue again (i.e. she's one of the few, everyone else at the spa where she's currently staying is a slut) that it's no virtue without temptation and her passion is for music, not guys. But otoh, this is a girl who's been told her purpose in life was to be a royal spouse and mother and only married woman who procreate are pleasing in God's eyes from toddlerdom onwards by both parents (who just disagreed on whose spouse she was supposed to be), and no matter her own inclination, she probably would have felt like a failure if she hadn't gotten married at all.

A romantic friendship with another woman would have been a plausible non-anachronistic way to be happy, perhaps, but alas for Marwitz' nature (that letter where Wilhelmine finally explains about her also has her writing "I truly thought I had found a friend, a true and beloved friend in her"). No other lady-in-waiting ever seems to have gained similar stature in her eyes, other than her beloved "Sonsine" - i.e. Fräulein von Sonsfeld, her governess (the non-abusive one) who'd come with her to Bayreuth and remained with her until her death, but that's a very different type of relationship.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Leaving aside the fact as to who wronged whom,

This.

she didn't outlive him; it's always easier to speak well of the dead.

This. (It's also what I think is largely responsible for Napoleon's famous comment about Fritz.)

But my dislike is rooted in the experiences I've had with him.

This. Duh, essay writer?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

"Why oh why has such a genius to be such a jerk!" (All of Europe: starts coughing.)

Haha, I have my own matching anecdote! Fritz once told Catt that he had reprimanded Voltaire for quarreling, and that Voltaire had countered with "We're exactly alike, Sire."

Fritz: Can you BELIEVE it? About ME?!

[How I like to imagine Catt reacting: Sorry, Sire, it's just this cold I'm catching. You might hear me coughing a lot tonight. Don't take it personally.]

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yeah, I mean, mildred_of_midgard is the psychology expert here, but I was definitely getting a trauma bonding / emotional incest vibe from them even before that telling letter.

Haha, "expert", but yeah, they definitely banded together in the face of a traumatic situation. Some siblings do this; other siblings go in the opposite direction. Like most trauma coping mechanisms, this one had its downsides, but honestly, despite the many and obvious downsides, my opinion is that, given the situation and their limited options, their relationship was really the best thing in the world for them. In that, without it, they would have been much, much worse off, both of them.

(I want Wilhelmine fix-it fic too :P Can she escape with Fritz and Katte? or with Maria Theresia)

I know, right?! Every time I do a Fritz/Katte successful escape attempt, it turns dark the moment Fritz starts worrying about those left behind (which is like paragraph 2 in the one I'm currently working on). Seriously, you know what FW said to Fritz about what would have happened if he'd made it to England? I only have indirect discourse from a biographer here, but it goes like this:

"Had he thought of the consequences? his father asked. His mother would have suffered the greatest misfortune; Wilhelmina would have been imprisoned for life. Finally, 'I would have invaded Hanover and burned and ravaged it even at the cost of my life and kingdom.'"

(That's so incredibly common in abusive situations. There are so often hostages holding you back from escaping, and then if you do make it out, half the people you meet later in life are going to blame you, the fucking victim, for not caring about the ones left behind. Ugh.)

Keith and Katte: she has so many reasons for holding her brother's bond with them against them that it's not even funny.

Fix-it fic: the only one I've found is that modern AU, where Wilhelmine is not abused (except insofar as she has to watch her brother get abused, which is a form of abuse), gets married, has a kid, gets divorced, and becomes a successful conductor and composer. No estrangement period with Fritz, lives happily ever after.

W and MT fix-it fic: I like it! I don't think I can write it, but I like it! (I'm sorry I'm not up for doing research these days, I would totally get my hands on some books and give you MT fic. :/)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yeah, what about us?! (Honestly, I think there are much better reasons to be interested, not the least of which is that if his favorites were women, no one would call you a gossipy sensationalist for being interested in his relationships with them. There's also the question of "just how did being gay in the 18th century affect people?")

Maria Theresa is just so great, so emotionally healthy compared to... well, most people at that time, but particularly Fritz. With some reason, of course. Yay no-super-traumatic childhoods and romances :P

Yeah, I mean, she may not hit a bunch of my specific buttons, but she's definitely got her shit together as a human being. Go, MT!

Re Fritz, though: we spend a lot of time talking about the ways in which his trauma fucked him up emotionally, but honestly, it's possible to look at it from the flip-side, and I do that a lot. As you know, Bob, I think there's a tendency to overestimate the extent to which the trauma shaped him. And regardless, even if, for the sake of argument, you agree with the historians about every single thing about him that's ever been attributed to the trauma...I continue to be fairly impressed by how intact he came out of all this. Compared to a lot of other people in a whole gamut of other traumatic experiences.

Part of this is genetic, of course, and his personality, but a huge part of it, I think, was that FW was an outlier. The number of people who agreed with FW and wholeheartedly joined in with the abuse are vanishingly small. Even Fritz's earliest influences, his mother and sister, were all, "Yeah arts! Yeah French!" Even the *society* in which they lived overwhelmingly disagreed with FW.

FW: Music is effeminate.
Male musicians in Europe: abound. Are respected. Are often in the military as well.

Etc., etc.

So Fritz was getting validated like crazy every time he turned around. The number of validation/mitigation anecdotes is astounding. Even Katte's executioner had to be ordered three times, and was apologizing profusely to Katte! And as a result (I would argue), a lot of Fritz's time as an abuse victim was spent waiting for Dad to die already so he could join the rest of the world in Sane Land. And that kind of ability to externalize the abuse makes a world of difference to your prospects as a survivor, and is why I start twitching every time I see a biographer use the word "broken" to describe what FW did to Fritz. Hurt? Absolutely. Damage? Sure, at this point we'd be arguing semantics. But break?

I maintain that Fritz came out of his abuse difficult, frequently abusive to others, and unhappy, but with a basically intact core. And that is part of why in the other comment I said his relationship with Wilhelmine was the best thing for both of them: as far as I can tell, they both came out with basically intact cores, and without that close relationship (and at least some of the positive aspects with their mother, amongst all her terrible acts of parenting), it would have been much more unlikely for both of them.

But fix-it fics for everyone!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

But yes, absolutely, she has to say that in the SecretSummit.

Does anyone else feel like author reveals are going to be a little bit redundant in this fandom? :P I mean, I know other people have written Fritz/Katte in past Yuletides, but, like, there are going to be some dead giveaways amongst the three of us. Anything that has at least four Classics references and only passing mentions of music is me, obvs. :P Secret summits are Selena. If anything turns up about Countess Orzelska, I'm going to have my suspicions about Selena. If it's a surprisingly specific fic about Fritz's dogs after the Battle of Soor...Etc. ;)

From:

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!

From:

selenak

Essay writer was male, which was no big surprise. There's also the fact that the "chill, generous" things Fritz had to say about MT were incredibly condescending; if the writer really wanted MT to have said something similar about Fritz, it would have had to be:

"The King of Prussia can keep it in his pants. Most men can't, and waste a lot of money and time on getting laid, but not him. He brought honor to his sex, and he's got more than one talent."

...somehow I think Fritz would have been happier with what she actually said about him...

Re: Napoleon, considering that I can't recall him being similarly complimentary about, say, Wellington, I think you're onto something. (Whereas Wellington, once Napoleon was safely dead, replied to the question who the greatest military leader of their age had been: "In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon."

(Now there's a set up for an epic rap battle - Fritz vs Napoleon - who'd win?)

From:

selenak

I'm really really really busy right now, so in all brevity, try these links and have Chrome translate them:

https://www.die-kartoffel.de/31-blog/stories/191-friedrich-der-grosse

https://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/sendungen/kalenderblatt/2403-friedrich-ii-empfiehlt-kartoffeln-100.html

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartoffelbefehl

Gist: the "potato order" is historical, but that he tricked people by having his soldiers guard potato fields in order to make them look desirable to the farmers is a legend which can't be proven one way or the other. Whatever he did, it worked, whereas Dad FW had already tried to introduce the potato to Prussia and failed.

Potato grave: no idea, could not discover by quick googling. Must dash!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

LOLOLOL, MT, you missed your chance! That would have been hilarious.

The funniest part is that, leaving out the part about writing off an entire sex, Fritz actually *was* kind of proud of being able to keep it in his pants and not waste a lot of money and time getting laid, haha. The *facepalm*y part was where he decided both Louis XV's and Catherine II's politically active favorites were proof that women were unfit for ruling, because...logic fail.

Ah, yes, Wellington's quote. In his case, I think it's not only that Napoleon was safely dead, but also, if you've *beaten* the greatest military commander, it makes you look extra awesome.

Which reminds me of the exchange attributed to Hannibal and Scipio:

Scipio: So, who are the greatest generals of history?
Hannibal: Alexander, then Pyrrhus, then me.
Scipio: Hahahaha, lol forever, and where would you have ranked yourself if you'd actually managed to beat *me*?

(Now there's a set up for an epic rap battle - Fritz vs Napoleon - who'd win?)

LOL! Fritz wins! He has the flute. Check out the polls for the episode Fritz was in. On the official poll, current votes are

- Ivan the Terrible: 751
- Alexander the Great: 1021
- Frederick the Great: 5267
- Catherine the Great: 1996

Fritz by a landslide! I also found this unofficial straw poll someone put together hilarious:

- Frederick the Great: 38
- Catherine the Great: 7
- Old Fritz's flute: 6
- Ivan the Terrible: 4
- Pompey the Great: 4
- Alexander the Great: 3

Catherine's gotten one vote since the last time I checked. When I found this poll, Fritz was in first and his flute was tied for second, which made me laugh a lot.

So I say Napoleon doesn't stand a chance. (In his actual rap battle, it looks like he beat Napoleon Dynamite.)

Real life battle/war? Man, this is something I've been thinking about lately, and gotten super annoyed because I studied Napoleon's campaigns about as closely as Fritz's back in the day, but haven't looked at them in 20 years, and so I no longer remember enough detail to make informed comparisons. And for the same reasons I'm not up to doing MT research, Napoleon research is out of the question.

My impression is that Napoleon was the far superior tactician, but Fritz won his wars through a variety of other skills and personality traits, and I think he would have put up much more of a fight after his defeats than Napoleon got from the Prussians in real life. However, any time I try to do an actual "Who would win?" I run into AU world-building problems. How old and decrepit is Fritz? How long has he been king? A Fritz born in 1778 and just getting started is a world of difference from a Fritz who manages to live to 94 years old and somehow still be alive and active.

Is the oblique order new and surprising or old hat to Europe? Is Fritz in the middle of trying to hold Silesia? What does the political scene of Europe look like? I get the impression Fritz has more allies in this AU than in the Seven Years' War, because people are a wee bit more worried about Napoleon, but how well does Fritz play the political game and does he piss off all of his allies? Does he underestimate Napoleon as badly as he underestimated his real-life foes? Etc.

Someday I may have opinions rather than questions. Right now all I have is questions.

Definitely Old Fritz in the rap battle, though. He's got creative talents and battle malice. ;)

From:

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.

From:

cahn

I was kind of confused about the whole reburial thing, so I appreciate this :P

Aww, I am glad Voltaire liked her <3 I just have a lot of feelings for Wilhelmine.

From:

cahn

...every time this 16 kids thing comes up I'm all !! how does this even work with running an empire?! /has given birth twice, was pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing, and that's with modern medicine

That Fritz quote! One hears such sounds, and what can one say but... Fritz. (

mildred_of_midgard, this is a quote from Amadeus, what Mozart says about Salieri. But it is applicable here!)

"No, I am not unforgiving towards him. But my dislike is rooted in the experiences I've had with him. I am concerned, and not without reason, that I will never be able to feel safe for as long as this King is as powerful as he is now."

I don't understand the essay writer; this sounds pretty chill to me, given everything that had happened!

From:

cahn

Awwww, Wilhelmine and Fritz may be awfully co-dependent but they are so cute together :P

Well, this is why the romantic friendship has to be with Maria Theresia :P (At least, until Fritz finds out about it...)

From:

cahn

Heh, I'd feel equally like a gossipy sensationalist for being interested in the relationships with women. (hiiiii there, August the Strong!) But, yeah.

Oh, I agree with you that he came out functionally intact, although damaged and also verrrrrry bad at relationships. I do appreciate that view of all the external validation he was getting -- and also his relationship with Wilhelmine. (As I've mentioned before, my relationship with my sister is very close, and a large part of how we weathered parents that were (a) not nearly as bad as Fritz's and (b) not nearly as wacko as yours, but who still I think could have messed up either of us -- though particularly my sister -- rather worse. So I feel that very much.)

From:

cahn

heeeeeee!

I, uh, have something of a tradition at this point of giving and receiving highly non-anonymous exchange fic. Last year it was Don Carlo(s) fic -- one giftfic of mine which I didn't know, to be fair, but highly suspected was by

selenak (and it was).

From:

cahn

2) I want to say Wilhelmine said something along those lines in her memoirs? (I may be remembering incorrectly.) FW, ugh.

3) I FULLY SUPPORT THIS AU

From:

cahn

What I think:

Napoleon: I have superior battle tactics! *wins lots of battles*
Fritz: Yeah, but NO ONE can out-stubborn me! *grimly holds on like a terrier until Napoleon folds*

From:

mildred_of_midgard

That's what I think!

That plus Napoleon and Alexander were so battle-and-territory focused that they never put together something that was going to last. If Alexander had lived a bit longer, I think we would have seen some catastrophic empire-holding-together failures.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Fritz and FW have had like 5 "final" resting places. It can get very confusing trying to keep up. (Okay, not all of them were intended to be final, but still.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Look, if this is to be a fix-it fic, Fritz is going to have to be okay with it. We'll make this as canon-divergent as we need to!

AU: Instead of Fritz, Katte, and Keith escaping to France and/or England, Fritz and Wilhelmine (and possibly SD?) escape to sympathetic Vienna court. Discuss. :P

From:

cahn

I AM TOTALLY UP FOR THIS

though I must say I don't have enough sympathy for SD at this point for her to escape too :P (She was pretty vile to Wilhelmine.)

Edited (added the actual important part of the coment) Date: 2019-10-18 05:26 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

This is true. She should stay well away from them. I just wanted to get her away from abusive husband FW. Maybe she can go to England?

BUT ANYWAY. Fritz and Wilhelmine escape to Vienna, where canonically, MT's dad was like, "Please take a chill pill and don't kill your son" to FW during the whole Katte affair.

Somewhat-less-senile Eugene takes Fritz under his wing as surrogate father. Wilhelmine and MT end up in a romantic friendship. Fritz doesn't go to war with Austria, so he's cool with his sister's BFF.

No Silesian invasion. No marriages that don't work out.

HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I mean, this is pretty much the Seven Years' War.

Heinrich: I am clearly the superior tactician in this family. Can you 1) listen to me before battles, 2) make peace already, even if it means giving up some territory?
Fritz the Terrier: No and NO!

One of Fritz's contemporaries said about him, "It is in adversity that he shines; when he is really down, he has an irresistible buoyancy."