cahn

On the one hand: if they actually had known each other in person for a few years, wouldn't both Fritz and MT be more aware of each other's character and abilities, and thus pre-warned? (Of a sort.) I mean, the British ambassador to Vienna at least gets points for figuring out that lack of parental training for the job or not, MT would be the one to rule, not Franz Stefan, while her Dad was still alive. (He wrote home in a dispatch: "This princess means to rule, to the point that she seems to regard her father as the administrator of her future belongings.") If he could see that, presumably Fritz would have done as well? Now presumably MT during the few years of marriage would have been dealing with Fritz, sensitive musician and lover of the fine arts more often than with future Machiavellian Fritz, but since Katte still was dead, he'd be a traumatized mess even under those more favourable circumstances, and she was a sharp-eyed woman; she'd at least known about his darker sides.