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.
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His side
Date: 2019-10-02 11:01 am (UTC)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.