You said everything I was thinking. I was going to reply to your previous command and say that "Oh Fritz, oh Wilhelmine" pretty much sums it up. :-( I feel sorry for Wilhelmine and Fritz and everyone who had to deal with Fritz at close range after he became king.
Speaking of his correspondence in the other thread, apparently his idea of a condolence letter was "I am so sorry your brother died in one of my battles...but I just have to take advantage of this opportunity to say I TOLD YOU SO. I've been saying over and over again that he was going to get himself killed unnecessarily, I'm only surprised it didn't happen sooner."
He wrote this letter to EC about her brother's death *and also* to EC's surviving brother.
Um, Fritz? I'm notoriously bad at condolence letters, but even I know THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DO IT.
In a way, that's even worse than his "but don't be too sad, my problems are much bigger" condolence ("condolence") letter to his own brother Heinrich after their brother Wilhelm's death 13 years later.
Both EC and Heinrich then wrote to their surviving brother, both named Ferdinand, expressing their fury at the "condolence" letters they got from Fritz. I don't have EC's letter, but all my sources agree that even she got mad. Saint EC!
She may have gotten her revenge, as one of my sources says *she* later blurted out the news of Friedrich's mother's death in a letter to him that she sealed with a red seal, instead of one of the black ones indicating bad news, and that's how he found out. Now, I don't have documentary evidence on any of this, and even if it's all thoroughly based in fact, I don't know to what extent she was familiar with the practice of preparing the King for bad news with a different seal, but...after watching him not learn how to write a condolence letter in 13 years, I think it was time for him to be on the receiving end of some insensitivity.
Fritz, unlike every historian ever, I don't expect you to interact with your forced-marriage wife or really any of your family you didn't choose. PLEASE DON'T INTERACT with your forced-marriage wife or really any of your family you didn't choose!! It works wonders for me.
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Re: Prussian sibling correspondance
Date: 2019-10-12 04:15 am (UTC)Speaking of his correspondence in the other thread, apparently his idea of a condolence letter was "I am so sorry your brother died in one of my battles...but I just have to take advantage of this opportunity to say I TOLD YOU SO. I've been saying over and over again that he was going to get himself killed unnecessarily, I'm only surprised it didn't happen sooner."
He wrote this letter to EC about her brother's death *and also* to EC's surviving brother.
Um, Fritz? I'm notoriously bad at condolence letters, but even I know THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DO IT.
In a way, that's even worse than his "but don't be too sad, my problems are much bigger" condolence ("condolence") letter to his own brother Heinrich after their brother Wilhelm's death 13 years later.
Both EC and Heinrich then wrote to their surviving brother, both named Ferdinand, expressing their fury at the "condolence" letters they got from Fritz. I don't have EC's letter, but all my sources agree that even she got mad. Saint EC!
She may have gotten her revenge, as one of my sources says *she* later blurted out the news of Friedrich's mother's death in a letter to him that she sealed with a red seal, instead of one of the black ones indicating bad news, and that's how he found out. Now, I don't have documentary evidence on any of this, and even if it's all thoroughly based in fact, I don't know to what extent she was familiar with the practice of preparing the King for bad news with a different seal, but...after watching him not learn how to write a condolence letter in 13 years, I think it was time for him to be on the receiving end of some insensitivity.
Fritz, unlike every historian ever, I don't expect you to interact with your forced-marriage wife or really any of your family you didn't choose. PLEASE DON'T INTERACT with your forced-marriage wife or really any of your family you didn't choose!! It works wonders for me.