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

selenak and I have coordinated our nominations, here and here.

Since real life seems to have come along and blindsided you,

cahn, I've taken the liberty of adding your Frederician characters to the spreadsheet, though obviously I don't know your other fandoms, so you have no comment in that post.

Hope everything's okay and RL lets up soon for you!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

You're back! Yay!

at first I was thinking I might ask for this AU for Yuletide too only, like, it's all right here so I don't even need to ask for it

Hee! I've been thinking this too! Sometimes a plot outline is almost as good as a fic, and they're a lot easier to generate.

How over the line would it have been if in this MT/Fritz AU where Fritz isn't having sex with her, MT had found someone else (Franz Stefan?) to father her kids?

I've been wondering the same thing, only with brother Wilhelm, if an annulment was out of the question. Yesterday I entertained the idea of Fritz allowing Franz Stefan to father his heir, for about two seconds, and then went, "Naaaahh. DDD-:" But if I squint, I could almost just barely see some parallel universe where Fritz is telling his brother and MT, "Okay, you two, heirs from my wife and my next of kin, get to it, I have better things to do." Fritz is just enough of a "I do what I want" person that if he decides he wants something, societal expectations be damned. That's the scenario in which I see him agreeing to this.

Problem is, even in the rather unlikely scenario where MT/her family/the Austrians put up enough of a fight against Fritz's reluctance to father heirs that he concedes there needs to be a child of the marriage, *and* he decides that it doesn't need to be of his body if everyone involved is discreet about it, I see MT's piety and sense of duty as the sticking point.

selenak can tell me if she disagrees, as she knows MT rather better than I do, but I have a hard time imagining it.

And that's *if* Fritz goes along with it, which 1) probably requires it to be his idea, and 2) requires him to have his back to the wall in terms of admitting he needs an heir via MT and not be willing to do it himself. (If he really is incapable of getting it up with a woman, I see an annulment agreed to or better yet, insisted on, by MT as the most likely scenario.)

Interesting point re all this, though: Goldsmith interprets "C'est pourquoi, si je me marie en galant homme, c'est-à-dire laissant agir madame comme bon lui semble, et faisant de mon côté ce qui me plaît, et vive la liberté!" from one of his letters to Grumbkow to mean that Fritz might have been okay with EC having discreet affairs. Now, as noted, Goldsmith puts a lot of weight on evidence that won't hold it up, imo, and my eyebrows immediately flew up. Especially since the preceding text is "Once I get married, I'm in charge, no woman ever tells *me* what to do."

Plus, even if Goldsmith's right (curious what you two think), what desperate Crown Prince Fritz thinks and what autocratic King Friedrich II thinks are two different things. *Plus*, a child is not the same thing as a discreet affair, although if it's his idea and it's discreet enough that no one knows/no one talks about it, and he's keeping up appearances enough that it's plausibly his...I would be interested in what

selenak thinks, because my own gut reaction is that having someone else quietly father MT's children is a very sensible solution to a political problem, but Fritz's resistance to having his hand forced in any way combined with MT's piety means that, even if one of them manages to come up with the idea, the other one most likely isn't going to go along with it.

AUs are fun!

From:

cahn

Thanks <3 Yeah, RL is kind of whacking me on the side of the head a bit this week. I'm slowly catching up though...

I did manage to post on the earlier nom/brainstorming post here but I haven't managed to comment yet on the spreadsheet post because I don't want to lock in my nominations yet because I don't know what the third one is :P

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Aha, I had missed your comment to that post (it has a lot of comments).

Anyway, the important thing is, Frederician RPF is now coordinated and all our characters are in the spreadsheet! Plus I dropped some heavy-handed hints, lol, not that I'm expecting anyone to take them. :P

Go us! \o/ Bring on the Fritz fic! (I wish I could tell Katte that he's still remembered. <3)

From:

cahn

"C'est pourquoi, si je me marie en galant homme, c'est-à-dire laissant agir madame comme bon lui semble, et faisant de mon côté ce qui me plaît, et vive la liberté!"

So from everything you guys have told me about Fritz, and reading this totally without context, I actually think he might have meant that he was OK with EC having affairs, but I also am getting Anti-Machiavel vibes here in a big way :P It's the kind of thing where I can totally see him going around saying "Everyone should have freedom to have affairs and do their own sex thing, vive la liberté!" and then when presented with the actual thing from his actual wife... maybe might not feel the same way about it.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

That is entirely plausible. I'm actually startled by the idea of him implying sexual freedom for his wife in the first place, but hey. Anti-Machiavel.

I can totally see him going around saying "Everyone should have freedom to have affairs and do their own sex thing, vive la liberté!" and then when presented with the actual thing from his actual wife... maybe might not feel the same way about it.

You almost literally quoted from Mein Name ist Bach there. In that case (since I don't think you've seen it) it's his unmarried sister having an affair, Fritz throws a fit, and she says, "You're always saying everyone is master of their own fate and arse in this kingdom, but by 'everyone' you mean 'you'." :P

So like I said, that's why I can see him deciding that his wife needs to sleep with someone of his choosing, but not that she's allowed to sleep with someone of her choosing.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Flipping through one of my newly acquired hard copy Fritz bios that I can't read, I am reminded that by this age, he had gout not only in his toes (where he'd been plagued by gout flare-ups since at least his forties) but also his fingers, which I'm sure affected his flute-playing even if he could still write voluminously most days. So between the asthma, the gout, and the teeth falling out, yeah, he couldn't play any more. :-(( I'm also sure having these problems (plus many, many others) *and* not being able to play the flute did his mood no good either.

Tangentially, this same bio (Asprey) gives the first plausible explanation of the peppercorns & mustard in the coffee that I've seen: they were meant to be medicinal. I had this total AHA and also DUH moment when I read that. Fritz always spent a lot of time thinking about his physical problems, had strong opinions on medical matters, and frequently tried to apply his own cures to himself (and suggest them to other people), irrespective of professional opinions. Spicing up his coffee (especially since he liked spicy food in general) makes so much sense as an 18th century medical treatment I can't believe this is the first time I've encountered this explanation. (It's kind of tragicomic watching biographer after biographer give Fritz a hard time about thinking he knew better than his doctors, and occasionally be forced to admit that while he wasn't often right, he wasn't necessarily better off listening to the professionals either, because this was the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.)

I would still like to see documentary evidence that it was intended medicinally, but I always want to see documentary evidence, and I rarely get it, which is why biographies are basically novels in my mind.

Anyway, it makes enough sense that I guess I have to stop teasing him about his absurd tastes and possible bravado (which I did affectionately and admiringly, as someone with some absurd tastes and occasional bravado myself).

Edited Date: 2019-10-01 10:09 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Plus you just know a lot of nobles both Austrian and Prussian would have formed parties against each other and would have schemed to get her on their side.

This is why I think he's in over his head. He doesn't have the same opportunity to isolate and entrench as he did as sole uncontested ruler in Prussia, following in his father's footsteps as sole uncontested ruler.

One could wonder how adaptable Fritz was, i.e. whether he took the isolate-and-entrench approach because it was easily available to him, and whether he would have been capable of developing a different strategy in a different context like Vienna. But considering how little he managed to back down even in the face of someone having absolute power over him (like, he just barely played along to the point where FW *knew* and was constantly complaining that the moment his back was turned, Fritz was getting up to whatever he wanted--Fritz was not capable of or willing to fool anyone, at any time in his life I can think of; the closest he could come was promising something and blatantly and openly breaking his word as soon as it was convenient to do so, which is worlds away from manipulative skills), I kind of feel like isolate-and-entrench was Fritz's innate strategy, and it was amplified by one million by decades of chronic trauma*, and his chances of developing a different strategy in his twenties were slim.

Interpersonal skills were what would have been needed at Vienna, and Fritz was always short on those. I've seen biographers point out that if he'd been willing to play along more often instead of kicking out foreign envoys and refusing to meet with people, he could have been a much greater, more effective, and more famous ruler. To which my reaction is, "Me too. My career would be way more successful if I were willing to interact with people more. I've seen it done by a friend/former boss who's almost exactly like me except for being willing to fake extraversion for the sake of good leadership. And to me and Fritz, it's just not worth it." Take what you want and pay for it.

* Whatever strategy people develop in the face of trauma is the one that they usually carry for life, regardless of how ineffective it is in their post-trauma life, because their limbic systems equate that strategy with survival. Much of effective PTSD therapy is built around helping people develop new strategies for less traumatic environments.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

HRH had a great time at the public concert last night, playing flute while MT sang, and that's before we get the first letter (in French, of course) saying "Mon cher Papa, have suggested to the Emperor to request loan from our treasury so we can bring the Austrian army up to speed and also build me an extra royal mansion equipped with the latest fashion from Paris, cherio, Fritz".

I keep opening the notification thread in my email to reread this and laugh out loud.

cahn's right, it's every bit as good as Yuletide!

RIP Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia
1688 - 1733
Cause of death: aneurysm

From:

cahn

Hee, yes!

I also sort of have this attachment to the thought of Fritz and MT in this AU playing music together and bonding over it, even if they didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of other things :) (Well, until Fritz started telling MT how to sing, anyway...)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

*spits out drink* This AU is the gift that keeps on giving.

From:

selenak

Same here. I mean, even that bit from his memoirs where he sides with future FW II's first wife cheating on him and says it's totally his nephew's fault for "neglecting her charms" and cheating on her first strikes me more as an (hypocritical) insult to his nephew than an actual acceptence of a woman's right to sexual freedom. Also: note that he agreed to his nephew seeking a divorce from said first wife when the woman got pregnant by definitely not his nephew, i.e. a non-Hohenzollern future heir was not on the menu.

He might have tried to marry August Wilhelm off to MT's younger sister (who in rl married Franz Stefan's younger brother, so it's a plausible match under the circumstances) and get a Habsburg/Hohenzollern heir the respectable way. But that's supposing said younger sister was still free to be married off by the time Emperor Karl dies instead of Karl making a match for his younger daughter before that. Also, again, I think MT would have been invested into getting a child of her own as heir, especially if she has a miserable marriage and no or not much power.

Now, best case scenario: we take Fritz at his word that he did have an affair (in the physical sense as well) with Orzelska as a teen in Dresden and when she later secretly visited him in Berlin, i.e. he's able if he's willing, he is motivated post-Küstrin to make a success of his new life in Vienna. Maria Theresia wouldn't get the 16 kids she had in rl out of that, but she was certainly fertile, and if she and Fritz manage an heir and a spare instead of or in addition to girls in the first few years, that would be enough to make any more future marital sex superflous, so by the time both their fathers are dead, they've come to an arrangement that suits them.

Edited Date: 2019-10-02 11:34 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

MT retaliates by correcting his French. And his Latin. And his Italian. (Which he admits to Wilhelmine is weak in the letter where he sends her his opera Montezuma, which has to be in Italian because most operas were, until Mozart and Die Entführung aus dem Serail.)

MT was fluent, though unlike Fritz, she also was fluent in German, which she spoke with a Viennese accent. There was a joke in Austria at the time re: the Austrian nobility, that they spoke Latin like Cicero, French like a Parisian, and German like their nurse. Which was literally true in that their nurses - both wetnurses and nurses in the toddler years - were the only ones speaking German to the noble kids, and they of course were not nobles. Meaning the German they spoke was literally the language of the people, deemed vulgar by the nobility. Note that Wilhelmine, who could be a snob, is making fun of MT's older cousin the Empress married to the Wittelsbach guy for her Austrian accent and for insisting to speak German, not French. MT, having been raised to be a spouse to European royalty, spoke French just fine and corresponded in French not just with her youngest daughter (Marie Antoinette), but she didn't have Fritz' hangups about the German language. There's an affectionate, playful letter of hers to Franz Stefan from their engagement time where she keeps switching between French, German and Italian and writes stuff like "je vous adore, mio Mausi".

re: the Latin: being taught hardcore old fashioned Catholicism by a Jesuit does have its drawbacks for one's future mind in the of the Enlightenment, but it does provide one with first class Latin.

Edited Date: 2019-10-02 11:31 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

Separately, re: would have MT gone along with having an affair to get an heir especially if Fritz was unwilling/unable from the get go and annulment was not an option?

Definitely not if he'd advised her to sleep with his brother. That would have been spiritual incest (since, post-marriage, his siblings were her siblings as well) in addition to being adultery, and a MT unhappy in her marriage would have been more likely to throw herself into her religion to compensate, not less.

However: in rl she never was in the situation of being in love with someone she absolutely could not have. So I'm not completely sure she wouldn't have had an affair with Franz Stefan (who definitely was okay with adultery) if he'd tried, because she really was deeply in love with him already at the point where the timelines would have diverged. Not immediately, I think she would have given this marriage an honest, dutiful try, but some frustrating years later? Just about possible for young MT, foiled in love, no realm ruling to put her energies into and stuck with Fritz as a husband.

Edited Date: 2019-10-02 11:31 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

Meaning: Nominate away here! I've already done so.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Wheee! Fritz and his boyfriends have been nominated.

From:

cahn

DONE

Since my Frederician noms are already in the spreadsheet, I'll wait to comment on the other fandoms until some time when it's not bedtime :) But it's now officially IN.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yay! \o/ Our fandom is small but awesome. Thank you both for being in my fandom.

From:

selenak

Epic indeed. :) BTW, are you are of this upcoming miniseries about Catherine starring Helen Mirren? It's Catherine in her old age, so no possibility of a Fritz cameo (unless there are flashbacks?), but it looks great. And this second trailer with different material contains this great bit of Catherine sass: "There are unscrupulous people in Russia. Fortunately, I am one of them."

(Alas if it's about her old age, though, we won't get away from the depressing fact her son hated her guts and banned women from the throne the minute she died. She had intended to pass him over in favour of her grandson Alexander, but didn't get to it before dying. Otoh her son then ended up murdered after a relatively short reign just as his legal father had done - legal because he may not have been Peter III's biological kid -, with Alexander ascending anyway.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

No, I was not aware of that! Thanks. Despite my low attention span for TV and movies*, I've actually been checking out (at a rate of a few minutes at a time on well-spaced-out days), Ekaterina, the subtitled Russian TV series about Catherine, which begins with her arrival in Russia. I'm not sure I would like it as an introduction to Catherine, but since I'm already in the fandom, I've been enjoying it in small doses. An anachronistically old-looking Fritz with some--are those Borzois?--non-Italian greyhounds gets to be a bit player, so far mostly paying people to spy on the Russian court and getting invoked and imitated by Pyotr in every other scene, to the point where I've predicted Pyotr's dialogue more than once. :P "Pyotr, don't do that!" "But Frederick the Great does it!" (Me: "I knew Frederick the Great. Pyotr, you are no Frederick the Great.")

* I *still* haven't finished Mein Name ist Bach (just barely got to the roleplaying scene recently, and oh, god, it killed me inside, I have *so* many thoughts and feelings, it was not at all what I was imagining from your description), nor the two Fritz documentary films I've been crawling through.

Haha, so, confession, when you mentioned Alexander and the post-Catherine inheritance shenanigans, it gave me flashbacks to that historical AU novel I spent most of high school writing. Namely, the part in which my OC protagonist's granddaughter went to Russia to marry a teenage Alexander. They ended up doing a little one-upmanship over their respective grandmothers' accomplishments as expansionist queens, and at the end, my character did the insincere "I am a young woman newly arrived in a foreign court and will defer to my betrothed" thing by saying, "Yes, you're right, your grandmother is far greater, I will model myself on her instead."

At which point Alexander got very flustered, as intended. :-P

(

cahn, if this is unclear, remember that Alexander's grandmother, Catherine the Great, had come to Russia to marry the heir to the throne, Peter III, then staged a coup and overthrown him 6 months after he inherited. She hasn't been implicated in his murder afaik, but he did die rather suspiciously "of natural causes" 8 days after being overthrown, so if she didn't give the order, my guess is someone knew she'd look the other way. Unless he really wasn't assassinated, which remains possible, although the timing is a hell of a coincidence if not.)

By way of contrast, my OC protagonist had spent her life playing Joan of Arc to her husband and conquering more and more territory for him to rule, so that's where Alexander's "But I should talk up my grandmother!" "But my own wife should be supportive of me and not overthrow me!" confusion comes in. My OC protagonist was modeled on Joan, both explicitly in-universe and in terms of authorial choices, but with Alexander the Great's level of success at incorporating new territories into her growing empire, lol forever, plus a longevity that is only remotely plausible if you know she was a time-traveler from the future, oh god, I'm laughing so hard.

While my novel was not very good, OOC historical figures and an extremely implausible plot being the least embarrassing of its faults, writing it was one of the most educational things I ever did, especially since I was in an academically poor US high school where *none* of this was covered. I'm like 99% sure we never even learned who Fritz was. I have a specific memory of invoking Machiavelli during a discussion in advanced US History in junior year, and having the guy who would later be salutatorian ask, "Who or what is Machiavelli?" on behalf of the entire class, who were all nodding vigorously and looking confused.

So I regret nothing!

I've actually been thinking lately that all that research I did is paying off in

cahn's delight, because like I said, most of what I remember comes from that time in my life, plus the ability to double-check Wikipedia just to refresh my memory on names and dates. :D

Edited Date: 2019-10-05 01:11 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

...I haven't even started Mein name ist Bach, I have a somewhat higher tolerance for movies than you do but I also have a really large backlog of things I've committed to watch before this, sigh.

My schools weren't nearly as terrible as yours, but skipping eighth grade and changing schools in eleventh grade meant I basically led to my skipping all of the world history classes, so I definitely never learned about Frederick the Great in school. (I think I knew who Machiavelli was, but almost certainly because some fiction book I was reading talked about him.)

From:

cahn

ahahaha omg I will just have to hope that in this AU Fritz doesn't think about correcting her singing (which I think is possible, right? young!Fritz perhaps not being quite as set in his ways as older!Fritz?) as there is no way this net of corrections is going to end well.

There's an affectionate, playful letter of hers to Franz Stefan from their engagement time where she keeps switching between French, German and Italian and writes stuff like "je vous adore, mio Mausi".

That is so super cute. MT/FS is basically my OTP for this fandom. Your posts are making me realize how incredibly lucky she was <3

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I have a somewhat higher tolerance for movies than you do but I also have a really large backlog of things I've committed to watch before this, sigh.

Those facts are related. :) I refuse to watch almost everything, and I wouldn't be watching any of this now if I weren't chronically sleep-deprived.

basically led to my skipping all of the world history classes, so I definitely never learned about Frederick the Great in school.

I *took* all my world history classes, and still didn't learn any of this! At best Fritz might have been a passing mention in the Seven Years' War, but only if we covered the war before I became obsessed, because then I would definitely remember. It's just possible, because I became obsessed in January or February of that school year (I don't remember the day, but I still have a very clear visual and tactile memory of the exact moment), and if we started with the Renaissance in August and finished up with WWI in May...why, yes, I do have surprisingly specific memories of my life, why do you ask? :P

My OC protagonist was modeled on Joan, both explicitly in-universe and in terms of authorial choices, but with Alexander the Great's level of success at incorporating new territories into her growing empire, lol forever, plus a longevity that is only remotely plausible if you know she was a time-traveler from the future, oh god, I'm laughing so hard.

She would have performed well in an epic rap battle, is I guess what I'm saying. ;)

Speaking of memories, I have no idea why this memory just came back to me, but in that world history class sophomore year, I have this hilarious memory of someone asking, in all seriousness, "What's sodomy?" and the teacher panicking and looking at *me* to bail her out, LOOOL. Unfortunately for her, I was such a prude at that age that even though I knew the answer, I said, "Don't look at me!" So she was forced to address the question while trying to keep the class from getting out of control. Older me would have happily bailed her out, but she got sophomore and sophomoric me, alas.

I was surprised then and I'm surprised now, not that she knew that I knew, because of course I knew virtually everything that came up in that class from my extensive reading, but that in her moment of panic she turned to me. And then I let her down. I'm sorry, Mrs. R!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, hey, they like us!

Thank you! The category works. We may need to come back to you during tag approval depending on exactly what's nominated - and if other people have nominated overlapping categories or figures, but otherwise, this seems fine.

Of course they like us. We have a top-notch fandom. :D Good choice with "Frederician",

selenak! And good write-up,

cahn.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

changing schools in eleventh grade meant I basically led to my skipping all of the world history classes

Skipping classes because you changed schools, lolsob, you don't know how lucky you were, you sweet summer child.

I can't remember if I've complained about this before, but I very narrowly escaped repeating freshman math and freshman English, in junior year, while I would have simultaneously been taking senior math and AP English, because I'd changed school systems between junior high and high school.

Because I'd taken freshman math and English during junior high in a school system in another state that allowed that, so my high school had no record of me taking those things. Which they discovered at the end of my sophomore year.

Naturally, the fucking guidance counselor (whose stated goal was to hold me back in all possible ways) refused to acknowledge my arguments that having blazed through sophomore and junior math and English with high As, while crying from boredom at how easy it all was, before she noticed the lack of freshman courses on my record, meant that maaaaaybe I had mastered the freshman skills and shouldn't be repeating freshman year. SMH. So much damn hate.

I don't know what I would have done if my mom hadn't gone to bat for me and jumped through all the hoops to get my records transferred. Pulled a Fritz and run away, I don't know. The thought still gives me the shudders. She was inconsistent in her willingness to support my academic needs, but she saved my sanity that time.