cahn | Frederick the Great post links

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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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Just saying, "Older Fritz and Frenemies" is an awesome fandom! You could get both Joseph and Voltaire in there! \o/

:D This is very cool, thank you!!

I will confess to totally being in love with (Verdi's) Posa, myself :P

This is very interesting!

Possible explanation: in this case, the tyrannical father also happened to be the reformer of the two.

Yeah, I can see how Schiller might have felt a little stymied by that. (Although that would make an interesting drama... just not the one Schiller was writing :P )

And: I really feel like I should thank you and

mildred_of_midgard much more! This has been amazing and I have been having the best time, and learning a bunch :D

...well??

I mean. You should know by now I am not going to let things like that stand!

That's exactly the version I was thinking of when I thought of you being in love with an imaginary Katte!

I know! And I almost didn't say it for that reason, because it's been too long for me to remember much more than that they exist, and I have the constraints mentioned elsewhere on refreshing my memory. But maybe

selenak will come through for us.

The only entertaining one that comes to mind right now is that Russian Orthodox men wore long beards, western European men did not, guess what Peter's solution was?

a) Ban Russian-style beards.
b) Tax beards.
c) Empower his police to forcibly grab men with beards on the street and shave them off.
d) Personally grab men with beards and shave them off, aka Peter the Great Barber.
e) All of the above.

I also vaguely remember him traveling a lot (like, a lot, see selenak's comment about Joseph imitating him) to figure out how things were done in the countries he wanted to imitate, including visiting the Netherlands to learn about shipmaking technique, and generally being a very hands-on monarch. Like, he was not above grabbing a hammer and nail and learning how to actually Do Shit.

I remember him being extremely tall (Wikipedia says 6'8"), and I'm sure if FW had had the option of kidnapping him for the Potsdam Giants, he totally would have. :P As it was, Peter supplied some of his taller subjects for FW's ~~addiction~~ collection.

...We've mentioned that FW had his agents kidnap tall men throughout Europe for his regiment of extremely tall soldiers, right? Surely we have.

Edited 2019-09-20 05:28 (UTC)

(psst, you're posting anonymously again below, so I'll respond to this one.)

Fandom: So I still wonder if we can't do something like 18thC European Royalty & Nobility, and explain in an evidence post that all of them are connected politically and personally. However, it would prooooobably still be closer to the spirit of the rules (and more likely to go through as a single fandom) to call it something like "Frederick the Great and Frenemies" :P And, as mildred says, then we could nominate Voltaire! Although Imentioned splitting up into two fandoms below, and I still think this is a possibility we should keep in mind in case there are mod problems, I think we should try to keep them together unless the mods make us separate. (I mean, Wilhelmine counts for both!)

Characters: I agree that Elisabeth Christine and Voltaire are unlikely to be much help for your particular scenario, but that scenario (amazing though it is) isn't all I want to request! :P :)

My requests (that I know about right now): I'm going to say in my letter that AND matching is partially optional. I'd like to request Maria Theresia, Elisabeth Christine, Wilhelmine, and Fritz (argh, only being able to request four!)

Things I would be happy receiving:
-your scenario with Maria Theresia and Fritz having a Sekrit Meeting, allllllll the popcorn, bonus points if Joseph finagles the meeting but not required
-Anything about Maria Theresia, honestly
-how did Elisabeth Christine navigate having Fritz as a husband, anyway
-Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine and Fritz in the same room: disaster or BIG disaster? Discuss.
-Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine liking each other so that Fritz decided not to talk to Wilhelmine any more: there's GOT to be a fic in this, right?? (I know the most rational explanation is that Fritz is... Fritz, but COME ON, this is what we have fic for) (I don't ship MT and W, mind you, I just... really like it that they got along!)

-even though I don't have slots to request Voltaire, bonus points if writer makes up scathing Voltaire quotes and/or quotes actual scathing Voltaire quotes

Hmm, the more I think about this the more I think you may be right that Elisabeth Christine doesn't quite fit with the rest of everyone. Let me think about this. Hmm, on second thought maybe I request Maria Theresia, Fritz, and Wilhelmine, and make it absolutely AND :D

:D

"18th Century Frederician RPF" as the title? This means it includes young Fritz and old Fritz both, and any friend, foe, relation or frenemy. The 18th century nominer is for potential Readers who don't know what the hell we mean by "Frederician". And there's precedent with "Elizabethan" and "Georgian", after all!

"Frederick the Great: Friends, Enemies, and Frenemies" :P

You have many awesome ideas. :D

I just want my gay ship, but I can't sign up, so this is sad. On the plus side, I was lying in bed just now trying to sleep (you can see how that worked out), came up with an idea for a fic, wanted two events in Fritz's life to take place in the same year but couldn't remember more than they were both from the 1740s, decided I was willing to fudge the chronology for fiction, got up, discovered not only that they're both from 1747 (woot!), but ALSO that I was going to link one event to Classical mythology, and it turns out Fritz ALREADY linked it to that exact Classical myth, because he's awesome like that and he and I are in the same fandom. So at least I can keep scribbling away at my own Fritz/Katte fics. <3

Meanwhile, I will enjoy and support whatever you two come up with even if it's not my tragic ship! Because all these characters are awesome.

Works for me!

Peter: since the musical angle always is worth mentioning, Peter is the main character in the Albert Lortzing's opera "Zar und Zimmermann" (Czar and Carpenter), vaguely based on his undercover stint to learn shipbuilding mentioned above. Youtube has a lot of excerpts, I'll see whether there's something to link you to.

As a boy of ten, Peter witnessed the Strelitzes (think Russian cross between mercenaries and sort of traditional soldiers as a vague description) killing two of his uncles and his mother's foster father during their uprising, which is always blamed for his later loathing of the Strelitzes, Moscow and his relatiaonship to brutality. His mother had been his father's second wife, and his older half sister Sophia (supported by the Strelitzes) was regent for much of his childhood. Young Peter used his youth out of power to visit the German and Dutch parts of the trading foreigner's settlements in Moscow, was fascinated, learned a lot, wanted to learn more, and it left him with a lasting desire to modernize the country. (Russia was still v.v.v. medieval at this point.) Mind you, "modernize" doesn't mean he wanted to relinquish power (once he finally had it) one bit. (Other than moonlighting as a shipbuilder in the docks.) As anyone who ever did something he didn't like found out. One reason why the Russian Orthodox Church loathed him and vize versa was that Peter introduced secular schools and in general curtailed the power of the church. (Also that he got rid of his deeply faithful first wife, whom he'd had to marry as a young prince, and married a Baltic German Catholic- though she converted later - ex serf named Martha (when she converted, she became Catherine, and after his death ended up as the first woman on the Russian throne, Catherine I., though she only ruled for two years before dying herself). (Not to be confused of course with Catherine II (the Great, the quondam Sophie Amalie von Anhalt Zerbst).) (Martha/Catherine went with Peter on his campaigns, and supposedly once saved his life when he was fighting the Turks.)

Peter also made it obligatory for the Russian nobility to dress western style and send their sons on the Grand Tour through Europe. (This seems to have had less the effect he hoped for - the young men picking up new ideas - and more even enlarging the gulf between the nobility and the people. (Cue ominous rumbling in the background with a few notes of the Internationale.)

re: his oldest son (the younger ones, by Catherine, all died, whereas some of their daughters survived, among them Anna, mother of Peter III the Fritz fanboy, and Elizabeth, who was the second woman on the Russian throne and a firm enemy of Fritz): the relationship was always rocky, but cracked for good in October 1715, when Peter penned Alexei a letter bemoaning his lack of military prowess and threatening to deprive him “of the succession as one may cut off a useless member.” Peter added that he would rather pass the crown “to a worthy stranger than to my own unworthy son.”

Alexej agreed to enter a monastery (which would have removed him from the succession - remember, at this point Peter's younger sons were still alive) but instead ran off first to Austria, where none other than Maria Theresia's dad reigned, whose wife was the sister of Alexeji's dead wife. This left MT's dad Karl with mixed feelings, because that marriage had been terrible, but otoh Alexej made a credible case of being afraid for his life, and more importantly, Peter by defeating the Swedes and allying with Prussia (ruled by FW) had become a big factor in German politics, which meant it could be useful to have the next Czar be obliged to you. Alexeji ended up in Italy where he was tracked down by his father's people and "persuaded" to come back to Russia. Where a spectacularly violent saga of public confessions, tortures to death, first of Alexeji's allies and his mother's supposed lover, but not of Alexeji's own lover, Afrosina, who'd handed over his paper's to Peter in exchange for being granted immunity, and then of Alexeji himself ensued. We don't know for sure all that was done to him, only that it included being whipped 25 times and that he finally died of his wounds.

Supposedly, one of the most prominent Russian Orthodox priest then cursed both Peter and his immediate descendants (no son of your blood on the throne) and the Romanov family in totem. (Well...)

Next: how does one do an "evidence post",

cahn? In all my years of participated, I've never written in a fandom that needed one.

Also, let's note down the nominations so far:

cahn: Maria Theresia, Wilhelmine, Elisabeth Christine and Joseph.

mildred_of_midgard: Fritz, Katte, Peter Keith, ? - Catherine maybe (sans Peter III it should be safe), or Voltaire?

self: either Voltaire or Catherine depending whom Mildred doesn't take, Anna Carolina Orzelska (outside/inside pov, and interesting no matter what did or did not happen between her and Fritz), Sophia Dorothea and... drumroll… Fredersdorf (he did meet Fritz relatively briefly after Katte's death, after all, so should come in handy for H/c scenarios).

Maria Theresia and Wilhelmine liking each other so that Fritz decided not to talk to Wilhelmine any more: there's GOT to be a fic in this, right?? (I know the most rational explanation is that Fritz is... Fritz, but COME ON, this is what we have fic for) (I don't ship MT and W, mind you, I just... really like it that they got along!)

I don't blame you. Also, it's been years since I've been to the Eremitage in Bayreuth (Wilhelmine's Sanssouci) so I couldn't swear to it, but I think she even painted a miniature Portrait of Maria Theresia (or more likely MT gave her one but in any case Wilhelmine kept it among her personal possessions, not with the state stuff), which makes her "look, she's my husband's liege lady, she was just passing through!" protestations to Fritz a bit less than convincing. But then he was basically: YOU TRAITOR! so much that I figure she had to downplay it for any kind of reconciliation being possible at all. (In what few angry letters he wrote during their breakup and pre reconciliation, he kept referring to MT as yOUR FRIEND the queen of Hungary".) Anyway, yes, there's a fic in this!

(Wilhelmine and Fritz had a quarrel shortly pre her meeting with MT, too, but that one was mostly a misunderstanding. Wilhelmine's Lady in waiting, one Countess of Marwitz, was also her husband's mistress, to Wilhelmine's great distress. So she arranged a marriage for her rival. The groom was an Austrian noble (i.e. away with the Countess of Marwitz to Vienna!), which infuriated Fritz because Marwitz was a Prussian noble and thus not allowed to marry an Austrian noble without his permission. Being paranoid, he thought by arranging the marriage his sister entered a conspiracy against him. (She hadn't told him Marwitz was her husband's mistress because when does this family ever share vital Information when it's most needed? Also it hurt her pride - she was insisting her marriage was a success to him.) Post-reconciliationn, she explained what had been up with the Marwitz, and in any case by then MT had become the greater issue.

Fredersdorf is a good choice; I was thinking of him for h/c purposes for exactly that reason! I was also thinking of Sophia Dorothea and the Countess Orzelska, so good to see them on the list.

Catherine vs. Voltaire doesn't matter to me either way, especially if we're just dividing them between us. I can take Catherine and you can take Voltaire?

If we weren't limited to 4, my other choices would be Algarotti, and, um, Fritz's dogs. :P

Of course, the best part of all this is that FW has been dropped like a hot potato. :D

I'm sorry, I always do this! I always go into a fandom and end up wanting gen fic that's not about the juggernaut pairing :P :)

BUT! don't fret about this! At least, don't fret yet. :) I believe that Friedrich II and Katte have been nominated for the past... two years?... by someone who wasn't me (obviously) or (I think)

selenak, and Fritz/Katte was definitely requested and written for last year by someone who wasn't either of us. So there are other people out there who are interested! I plan to make a canon pimping post on it when that yuletide post comes out (unless selenak wants to do it), and I'm betting we can flush more fans out of the woodwork to request your ship :D

Haha, no worries, seriously, you are not responsible for my ship any more than I'm responsible for your gen EC fic! ;) I wasn't registering disappointment about your choices, just about my inability to sign up. (And even if I did, there'd be no guarantee this request is the one I'd get a story for anyway. *Although*, I would probably nudge it in that direction by choosing even MORE obscure historical RPF fandoms for my other requests, mwahahaha.)

And yes, I had noticed that two of my favorite Fritz/Katte fics came out of last year's YT, so my nominated characters still have hope. :D They are a very trope-y pairing, as

selenak's TV show outline highlights!

Morbane or other mod will make an Evidence Post in yuletide-admin with the format to follow, usually fandom, possible issue with the fandom, and why the fandom should be considered eligible.
Last year's post is here and you can get a flavor of it:
https://yuletide-admin.dreamwidth.org/55143.html

I think the possible issues that might be iffy here (and the reason why we should probably make a post) are that a) mods might not understand what "18th Century Frederician RPF" means (er, since we, or you, kind of made it up, though I agree that is absolutely the correct way to go about it) and b) to argue that all these people (e.g., Voltaire, Catherine, Maria Theresia) do fall under that umbrella even though to someone who doesn't know any of the history *two-months-ago-me raises hand* the set of characters may sound kind of eclectic).

Haha, true, and even if you signed up AND got a story for it, you wouldn't be able to micromanage-direct it ~~like Fritz would have done~~...

That TV show outline is TOTALLY going to go in my canon pimping post :D

Evidence: Frederick the Great was awesome. He had amazing interactions with his contemporaries. These would make excellent fic. QED. :P

...if this is the era you dabble in, I am intensely curious about what era you do more than dabble in, although it also sounds like the sort of thing one might not want to admit to under a fandom moniker :)

Oh, I spent last night entertaining myself by drafting an optional details prompt/Santa letter thingy (that I will never use, sadly), and I'll have you know it was very wide open and non-micromanage-y. :PP

YES!

(In what few angry letters he wrote during their breakup and pre reconciliation, he kept referring to MT as YOUR FRIEND the queen of Hungary".)

lol forever OH FRITZ

I think a lot of my ~FEELINGS~ here are from reading Wilhelmine's memoirs (I'm still a third through the second part, it's a bit of a rough slog here because she's now going through hard times with her family-in-law and possibly other people, none of whom I can really keep straight) and her life is just horrible in general and I just want her to have a friend!!

(She hadn't told him Marwitz was her husband's mistress because when does this family ever share vital Information when it's most needed? Also it hurt her pride - she was insisting her marriage was a success to him.)

Oh Hohenzollerns :(
Does all this happen in her memoirs? You mentioned MT shows up as the Queen of Hungary but obviously I haven't gotten there yet.

See, I think this is amazing, I ask a dumb question and get all kinds of awesome stories back (as well as the connections to alllll the other stories :D )

The musical angle is always worth mentioning, especially to me :P

Holy cow, Peter and Alexej. Yeah, this is rather worse than FW. *shiver* Man, there's a fic there too, isn't there, all the parallels except for this one being even darker (I'm not sure I'm glad to know this is even possible!) and (as you say) Afrosina turning coat against him, where Katte doesn't turn coat against Fritz and gets the loyal last line <3

"Zar und Zimmermann" is a comic opera, so no gruesome deeds here. It's very loosely based on Peter's time undercover at a Dutch shipping yard The plot revolves along a confusion of identities - word gets out that the Czar of Russia is working at the shipyard under another name, and there are two Russians named Peter present - Peter Michailov (the real deal) and Peter Ivanov (a deserter, whom everybody believes to be the uncercover Czar and flatters accordingly). Young Ivanov is in love with the burgermaster's niece and gets to do tenor stuff, thie French and English ambassadors scheme (this is a 19th century German opera), and at the end there's a happy resolution for all - Peter goes back to Rusisa after sorting things out for the young lovers, the schemes are foiled.

Links:

Zar und Zimmermann, an English summary

Sonst spielt' ich it Zepter, one of Peter's big arias (he's a baritone, the young tenor is someone else

Lebe wohl, mein flandrisches Mädchen (the French ambassador gets romantic)

O sancta justitia! : aria of the Burgermaster, the comic relief and main antagonist of this opera

Man, there's a fic there too, isn't there, all the parallels except for this one being even darker (I'm not sure I'm glad to know this is even possible!) and (as you say) Afrosina turning coat against him, where Katte doesn't turn coat against Fritz and gets the loyal last line <3

Like I said, Wilhelmine (and thus Fritz) met Peter on one of his travels - I think it might even have been the journey during which Peter found out by letter that Alexeji had used his father's Absence to do a runner. FW received Peter in Prussia - they were allies - but the Russian Delegation must have left the Palace they were given in a terrible mess. Whether that had anything to do with the news Peter received - who knows. Anyway, given SD's lady-in-waiting later admonishes FW not to follow Peter's (and Philip's) example of son-killing, the story must have been well entrenched at the Prussian court by then. Here's another irony - I think FW might have gotten along better with Alexej (religious, conservative) provided that in this scenario, Alexeji wouldn't have threatened to undo all his father's work, or would have drunk far too much. And Fritz may have wondered how he'd have fared with Europe's most famous (and infamous) micro Managing reforming Monarch pre him as a Father - would he have died, or would they have gotten along?

(Peter seems to have been a good father to his other Offspring, but then, the only ones who lived beyond early childhood were girls and Father/daughter relationships are sometimes easier.)

In any case, I don't think FW would have thought of persuading/buying Katte to testify against Fritz. His mind didn't work that way. (Maybe if Fritz had run off with Orzelska instead? But no.) Though at least verbally it did occur to him to kill Fritz. He did have other sons, but so at the time of Alexej's death did Peter, so I wouldn't be surprised if the idea that the sin of killing your own child would doom his dynasty (or get a WOMAN on the throne - Peter had changed Russian law to make that possible) was indeed one of the things holding him back.

Speaking of women on the throne, as I observed in my fictional tv series About Fritz post, you have a rich variety of interesting women in the era and not one of them Comes between potential fandom's favored m/m couple. And many of these ladies were actually the most powerful people in their country. (MT, C1, E & C2 in Russia, and Madame de Pompadour in France.) Russia still stands out for having not one, not two but three female rulers within the 18th century.

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Frederick the Great post links

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: The Lecture, summarized

Re: The Lecture, summarized

Re: the Other Royal Murder Dad

Peter

Re: The Lecture, summarized

Re: Peter

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Peter

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: The Lecture, summarized

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

Re: Peter

Re: Peter