cahn | Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version

Yaaay all around! I have posted a comment asking if Poniatowski was actually intended for this fandom. It's not impossible, especially if someone wants political fic, but it's worth querying. Algarotti, though... <33 ILU, whoever you are, nominator!

Soooo...you guys, something awesome happened today (besides the opening of the tag set). Remember my 2 physical books I was opening to a random page to get random facts on? One of them is on Kindle but too expensive for my current budget. Then this happened! Aka Rachel bought me the book for my birthday! So now I can read it properly and share trivia.

(seriously, every time I think the wild stories are done there is ANOTHER one)

I know, right?! It also helps that

selenak has a larger cast of characters as well!

Am so stoked about Algarotti's nomination that I went looking for more source material on him in hopes of inspiration for treat-writing. I've found that there's very little by way of material about his life, but there is one fascinating dissertation that's available online (!!) and which I am now reading. Table of contents suggests his relationship with Fritz was as volatile as Fritz's biographers claimed (without, of course, supplying much evidence--am hoping for the evidence here).

*having lots of fun*

Also, canon-divergent AUs for the win: I'm not sure I'm ever going to finish it, and it's certainly not intended for Yuletide, but it seems to be coming along, so it's not impossible it'll exist someday...I'm working on a "Five Ways Frederick the Great and Katte Cheated Fate" fic aka "Katte Lives Five Times Because Katte Can Never Live Enough Times." Except of course each of the 5 AUs wants to be about 3,000 words, because I'm me, so...anyway, I've got very rough drafts for 4 of the 5 AUs now and am waiting for inspiration on the 5th. I will probably ramble at you about them here, if you want to hear more. :D

Edited 2019-10-22 04:56 (UTC)

Sure, why not! :)

Okay, so one thing I want to ramble about that's tangentially related to my canon-divergent AUs is the fact that Peter Keith keeps showing up in them, which is why I nominated him for Yuletide. And a while back, I was digging around the internet looking for whatever I could find on him (not much, and much of it contradictory). Biggest find was that he seems to have been acquainted with Lord Chesterfield, who helped him in his flight from Wesel to the Netherlands to England to Portugal after Fritz's failed escape attempt. (One always says "the escape attempt" because Fritz failed, but one of the three did actually make it.)

Well, rough chronology is that he escapes in 1730, goes to Portugal, serves in the army for 10 years, comes back in late 1740/maybe early 1741, as soon as Fritz becomes king and pardons him. Fritz gives him some money and honors (the interesting one being membership in the Academy of Sciences), lets him get married (I wonder if Fritz was displeased with people getting married this early, or if he and Peter* just weren't close enough any more for him to care), and generally they have little to do with each other thereafter. Which makes sense. The last time they'd seen each other was 1728, when they were both ~16, I don't know if they had a chance to correspond after 1730, and drifting apart is to be expected.

* I have to call him Peter, because there were at least 5 Keiths in Fritz's life. That's too many!

So I keep reading that Peter was complaining until he died about not getting repaid enough for the sacrifices he made for Fritz. Now, he died in 1756, and the only documentary evidence I've found is a letter from 1741 saying that the cost of living in Berlin was so high that the money Fritz had given him wasn't enough. Is there any reason to believe Fritz was the kind of person who would have persuaded to give him more money? No, not likely, especially since I'm convinced that somewhere in the back of Fritz's head, maybe consciously, maybe not, a voice was yelling, "Katte DIED with JOY in his heart, and you lived and you're complaining about MONEY?!!" (It's not fair, but Fritz was traumatized, and since when is he fair on most subjects, much less this one?)

Anyway, either someone is extrapolating from 1741 to 1756 and not saying so, or there's documentary evidence for 1756 that they're not giving. Anyway.

The super interesting thing when I started digging was a letter from one of Fritz's friends to Fritz explaining that Keith, who is in Berlin while Fritz and the army are in Silesia, would like a commission. Because while he appreciates the great honor Fritz has done him and only wants to serve him obediently, all the other young men are joining the army for the First Silesian War, and Peter doesn't feel right staying home. (This is a very common phenomenon among young men in wartime.)

Given that Peter was a lieutenant in the Prussian army in 1730, and served in the Portuguese army for the last ten years, and given that there's a war on when he gets home to Prussia, the fact that he wasn't immediately assigned to a regiment and, in fact, is having to *explain* why he'd like to be in the army...

It feels very much to me, reading between the lines, that Fritz was trying to keep Peter safe. And given how extremely sensitive Fritz was about people not supporting his wars and how willing he was to use force to recruit (okay, these are early days, this isn't the Seven Years' War yet, but look at how upset he gets with Wilhelmine for not appearing to support his wars whole-heartedly)...that feels pretty exceptional. I know he pulled Fredersdorf out of the army and gave him a civilian role as valet, then as chamberlain, but that's the only exception that's coming to mind off the top of my head, whereas the number of times he went the other way ("help me fight my wars or else") is high.

The most natural way for me to read this is Fritz trying to keep Peter safe because he feels bad. Especially given the speed (<1 month) with which he started bestowing promotions and titles on Katte's dad as soon as he became king.

In sum, Fritz trying to keep Peter safe gives me sad shippy feelings. :/ Not OTP shippy feelings, but some regret that they drifted apart and never really did anything about it. (Because remember: 19-yo Peter *was* willing to risk his life for Fritz's plan and go into possibly permanent exile with him, and even Wilhelmine, who Did Not Like him, wrote that 17-yo Peter really was devoted to Fritz and not just because he was Crown Prince.) This is really unusual for me as a shipper; normally I want nothing to do with ships that start when people are that young. But Peter and Katte are kind of exceptions...because of reasons that I haven't quite figured out yet.

Anyway, poor Peter has one (1) fic on AO3, in German, a modern AU where he's apparently trying to help Fritz put together a surprise birthday party for Katte. I'm trying my darnedest to give him a fixit fic, even if just friendly ex in exile with the Fritz/Katte OTP. <3 ~~But really my brain is going straight to polyamory for maximum happily ever after, so sue me. :P~~

Edited 2019-10-23 21:09 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm having feelign about this too :P

This is really unusual for me as a shipper; normally I want nothing to do with ships that start when people are that young. But Peter and Katte are kind of exceptions...because of reasons that I haven't quite figured out yet.

Hmm. I feel like mostly people in RL, especially in this day and age, drift off from our early ships/relationships and never talk to those people again. (At least, I never talk to my early boyfriends, and my first one and I probably wouldn't even be friends now if we met for the first time in another context, although he's perfectly nice.) And in a lot of early YA-type ships there is a lot of... emo... going on. But here we have some evidence that Fritz remembered these relationships and had feelings about them through his life <3 And the relationships themselves are less about 21st-C-style emo and more about, well, trying to survive emotionally. (See also my own obsession with Fritz-Wilhelmine.)

/amateur psychology

Later references to Peter Keith.

In 1750, an English traveler reports that Fritz actually gave him a gift of more money (I was aware of the amount but not the timing--I thought it had been an up-front thing in 1740), with this little anecdote:

There was a military review that took place partly on the grounds of his mother-in-law's house. Though little or no damage was done (depending on who you believe), Fritz gave Keith a casket with 10,000 crowns inside and told him to give it to his mother-in-law. The casket also had a letter saying nice things about Peter.

Hilariously, our source on this is a guy who:

1) Doesn't think Fritz can possibly be a free-thinker "in the worst sense of the word," because he's so virtuous.

2) In 1753, writes that Fritz is so extremely non-Machiavellian that the Anti-Machiavel was written by him--or his favorite Voltaire, the author's not sure, but either way, it means Fritz is like the most virtuous monarch ever. In 1753!

3) Doesn't think war is going to break out between Prussia and Russia, because Russia's not going to fuck with Fritz, and also Fritz would probably lose from the sheer disadvantage of numbers, even if he won a battle or two. Man, dude is going to be in for a surprise in about 3 years, and again in 10 years.

Anyway, I don't hold people responsible for predicting very unexpected political and military developments, and everyone is going to be biased by their own perspective on religion, but where was he in 1740?? Haha.

However, I was interested to find that he moved to Lisbon in 1729, which means he was there when Peter Keith arrived in 1730/1731, and in fact he states that he was very well acquainted with Keith and had a high opinion of him.

Unlike one Thomas Carlyle, who did not know Keith (being born too late), but did not let a little thing like that stop him from disliking him. Observe: "At the name Keith, a slight shadow (very slight, for how could Keith help himself?) crosses the mind: 'Is this, by ill luck, the Feldmarschall Keith?' No, reader; this is Lieutenant-Colonel Keith; he of Wesel, with 'Effigy nailed to the Gallows' long since; whom none of us cares for."

Thank you, you cranky Scot, I definitely enjoy being told whom I do and do not care for.

The anecdote in which Carlyle passes judgment (well, not for the first time) against Keith is the one where there's a huge bitter academic fight at the Academy of Sciences in 1752. It will eventually suck in König, Maupertuis, Euler, Voltaire, and Fritz, and culminate in or at least contribute to the final big Fritz/Voltaire explosion.

Anyway, Peter Keith had been appointed a curator at the academy by Fritz a few years earlier, so he gets to collect votes, write letters, etc. Carlyle disagrees with the decision, so he announces that none of us like Keith anyway. He also trashes Euler in the same section with "great in Algebra, apparently not very great in common sense and the rules of good temper."

Now, I tried super hard to understand what Carlyle was upset about in this passage, but I was forced to admit defeat at the hands of paragraphs like this:

"THURSDAY EVENING, 13th APRIL, 1752, The Academy met; Curator Monsieur de Keith, presiding; about a score of acting Members present. To whom Curator de Keith, as the first thing, reads a magnanimous brief Letter from our Perpetual President: 'That, for two reasons, he cannot attend on this important occasion: First, because he is too ill, which would itself be conclusive; but secondly, and A FORTIORI, because he is in some sense a party to the cause, and ought not if he could.' Whereupon, Secretary Formey having done his Documentary flourishings, Curator Euler—(great in Algebra, apparently not very great in common sense and the rules of good temper)— reads considerable 'Report;' [Is No. 1 of— Maupertuisiana.—] reciting, not in a dishonest, but in a dim wearisome way, the various steps of the Affair, as readers already know them; and concludes with this extraordinary practical result: 'Things being so (LES CHOSES ETANT TELLES): the Fragment being of itself suspect [what could Leibnitz know of Maxima and Minima? They were not developed till one Euler did it, quite in late years!], [— Maupertuisians,— No. i. 22.] of itself suspect; and Monsieur Konig having failed to' &c. &c.,—" c.,—' it is assuredly manifest that his cause is one of the worst (DES PLUS MAUVAISES), and that this Fragment has been forged.' Singular to think!' And the Academy, all things duly considered, will not hesitate to declare it false (SUPPOSE), and thereby deprive it publicly of all authority which may have been ascribed to it' (HEAR, HEAR! from all parts)."

So I went and googled the affair. A much clearer source explained that König had attacked some principle of physics that Maupertuis considered one of his most important contributions, and furthermore said that Maupertuis didn't come up with it at all, but Leibniz did. A debate then ensued over whether the fragment König produced and claimed was written by Leibniz was real or a forgery.

Things escalated when Voltaire took König's side and attacked Maupertuis in a satire, and Fritz said, in effect, "Stop satirizing everyone at my court; only I'm allowed to do that!" and Voltaire said, "Fuck that, I'm a professional satirist! Satirize ALL the peoples!" and Fritz said, "Fuck you and the monkey you rode in on, and also give me back my book of satires I wrote about other people or I cut you." And the rest was history.

1752-1753, ladies and gentlemen. As we know, Algarotti skipped town in 1753 to avoid getting caught up in all this drama. Wise man. Also, total tangent, but it's hilarious to read in Wilhelmine's memoirs, ca. 1745, "My brother and I used to satirize everyone we knew as teenagers, but I outgrew that," and then several years later, Voltaire: "Women are better than men. Case in point: Wilhelmine, me, Fritz." [Fritz: "Pretty sure she's a man anyway." Wilhelmine: "You're not helping your case, bro."]

Anyway, my modern source concludes, "In the final analysis, neither of the protagonists prevailed, since most historians of science give the most credit for developing the principle of minimum action to Euler."

Whereas Carlyle seems to be mocking the point of view that gives Euler the credit, taking König's side, and upset with Keith and the academy for taking Maupertuis' side. Which makes me even less inclined to take at face value any of Carlyle's conclusions about whether we do or do not care for Peter on the basis of his participation in this debate.

That academic kerfluffle is the last bit of data I have on Peter Keith until his death on December 27, 1756. I haven't found a place or cause of death. It is after the Seven Years' War started, but the Prussian army was in winter quarters at the time, so there shouldn't have been a major encounter. Still, if he was in the army, there's lots of ways to die in the army, most notably illness (possibly responsible for more deaths than battle, I'm not sure). Anyway, if I find out more, will pass it on. Not that anyone else is as obsessed as I am, but I'm researching in hopes of future fic inspiration here.

Finally, Robert Keith, Peter's younger brother who betrayed the escape plan to FW, apparently got transferred to a regiment and then disappeared from history. The last trace of him that I or any biographer I've read (some state explicitly that he disappears) can find is November 1, 1730, when he wrote a letter thanking FW for ~~not killing him~~ his mercy. 5 days later, Katte is executed, and protests are felt as far away as England. I really have to wonder how the guy who went to FW and said, "Btw, it might interest you to know that your son is trying to escape ~~please don't kill me~~," fared in that regiment, with sympathies running so high for Fritz and the shock over Katte. If I were him, I'd keep my head low too.

ETA: I can't believe this only just occurred to me, but I wonder if he actually changed his name. Would that have been an option in the military?

Like, when Fritz came to power he famously did not punish anyone involved, but that's a long ten years before he's king to be in a violent environment and be known not just as a snitch, but as a snitch in a situation where the consequences were terrible. I'd change my name if I could.

Edited 2019-11-04 05:49 (UTC)

Hee, this is all very interesting. I should also brush up on my history of mathematics :P (I do feel like the rule is generally "If in doubt, ascribe it to Euler because he probably came up with it.")

Oh man, yeah, I wouldn't want to be Robert Keith after that.

it's hilarious to read in Wilhelmine's memoirs, ca. 1745, "My brother and I used to satirize everyone we knew as teenagers, but I outgrew that," and then several years later, Voltaire: "Women are better than men. Case in point: Wilhelmine, me, Fritz." [Fritz: "Pretty sure she's a man anyway." Wilhelmine: "You're not helping your case, bro."]

HEE.

Okay, here goes my 5 things WIP!

- Alternate universe #1 where everyone is at least incrementally more happy

Definitely the sappiest one: Fritz and Katte (and Keith, although so far all of his scenes have been cut, sigh) make it to England. Fritz marries his cousin Amelia as part of his grand plan to get England to back his triumphal return to Prussia. Of course, not all is sunny, since Fritz is worrying about SD and Wilhelmine*.

* Oh, speaking of, I ran across the direct discourse of FW's threats, which I had quoted a paraphrase of recently: "Your mother would have suffered enormously, because I would naturally have suspected her of having knowledge of the affair; your sister I would have locked up for life in a place where neither sun nor moon would have shone; I would have marched into Hanover with my army and put everything to the torch and sword, I might have had to sacrifice my own life and country. See that [would have been] the fruit of your Godless and unthinking behaviour."

Anyway, because this is a sappy fic, Fritz is tolerably friendly with Amelia and consummates the marriage, but he's still a gay boy in a political marriage he'd rather not be in, so he goes running back to Katte on his wedding night, and they read poetry aloud about how they're actually mostly all-intents-and-purposes married to each other, and it's lovely. <3

- Alternate universe #2 where everyone is at least incrementally more happy.

The Count Rothenburg fic! Not that Count Rothenburg,

selenak, his less well known French cousin the envoy to Prussia. (And yes, that was confusing to me at first.)

Rothenburg in canon:
- Hated FW and also tried to get the hell away from him for several years.
- "14-yo Fritz for King! FW for insane asylum patient!"
- Fritz spied on FW for Rothenburg, using an intermediary to avoid suspicion.
- Very cultured/educated/sophisticated guy.
- Wilhelmine says Katte was an intimate of Rothenburg, and credits Katte's unusual-for-Prussia sophistication to Rothenburg's influence.
- In 1730, Fritz may have been trying to escape to Rothenburg's estate on the border of France.
- May or may not have married late in life (my sources contradict each other), but definitely died childless.

So this AU practically writes itself. Fritz and Katte make it to Rothenburg's estate, Keith joins them from England, Fritz is disinherited, Rothenburg plays surrogate father to exiled Fritz. Canonically, Rothenburg dies "très riche," childless, and possibly never having been married, in 1735, and his wealth gets divided between his two sisters. My little-details question is about what and how much he can legally leave to Fritz. Since no one seems to know (I miss the days when that community was super active), will have to handwave so that the answer is LOTS. (I mean, if no one knows, no one can call me on it!)

Playing with the idea of giving Rothenburg homosexual inclinations. There are many reasons one might die unmarried!--if he even did, some of my sources give the name, pedigree, and date of marriage of his wife, which is extremely specific for someone who in other sources is stated never to have married--but he's kind of a stand-in for my other never-married wishful thinking surrogate dad candidate for Fritz, namely Eugene of Savoy. At any rate, he's going to be a sexually open-minded French noble and he's going to ship my ship and make sure my boys are happy.

- Alternate universe #3 where everyone is at least incrementally more happy

Katte talks Fritz into toughing it out at home instead of trying to escape, promises to help as much as possible, convinces him it'll be okay. To keep FW from getting suspicious about their relationship, they decide to play up the "Katte as good example" angle. Katte starts giving him one-on-one lessons in things like improving his horsemanship and shooting and fencing, to impress FW, while making these things that Fritz has to do anyway more bearable. It's not a great solution, but it's better than nothing.

And as Fritz's skills start improving (because he's marginally more willing to put in the effort), Katte starts dropping hints that Fritz does great with positive reinforcement. He can do this because his dad is one of FW's BFFs. That's actually how we got here in the first place.

Katte: Hey, Dad, can I be in charge of the Crown Prince's lessons, since I'm such an exemplary officer and he likes me?
Katte senior: Well, I certainly have no objection to my son being in a position of influence with our future monarch. I'll ask.
FW: Anyone who can get my wretched offspring to cooperate even a little bit has my thumbs up.
Fritz: I don't have to like it! I will complain constantly!
Katte: Remember, we don't want him sending me away like Keith.
Fritz: ...
Fritz: Okay, but you have to let me talk about my new favorite author Voltaire the WHOLE time. And as much touching as we can get away with.
Katte: Win-win? I don't see anything not to like here. :D

- Alternate universe #4 where everyone is at least incrementally more happy

This is the darkest one, and the increment is very small. This is the one where Seckendorf or someone convinces FW that keeping Katte alive means a permanent hostage for Fritz's good behavior. So any time Fritz tries to get away with something, Katte's whipped or starved or otherwise punished. And he's kept in solitary confinement at Küstrin with the threat of execution always hovering over his head like Damocles' sword, just stayed indefinitely at the pleasure of the King. Then FW dies and Fritz pardons Katte within 60 seconds of becoming king. They haven't seen each other in 10 years (Katte hasn't seen anyone except his rather sympathetic guards and chaplain.)

This one kind of wants to develop into a *thing*, but for my "5 Things" fic I think it'll just be 4 scenes: Fritz and Katte's POVs in November 1730, when Katte isn't killed, and Fritz and Katte's POVs in May 1740, when Fritz is preparing to free Katte but can't let on because what if FW gets better (the guy canonically was on his deathbed numerous times in the last 20 years of his life and kept getting better) and decides he'd better kill the prisoner while he still can? So Fritz does the best he can for Katte without Katte understanding why his treatment is suddenly better in surreptitious ways.

But in any case, this fic seems to want to be about the post-1740 period, when Katte's freed and he and Fritz have to work out their PTSD together and rebuild a relationship after 10 years of being separated yet constantly linked by trauma. So if I ever flesh it out, it'll be about that, not about the whipping boy decade (small blessings).

- Alternate universe #5 where everyone is at least incrementally more happy

TBD. Stay tuned!

Not that Count Rothenburg, selenak, his less well known French cousin the envoy to Prussia. (And yes, that was confusing to me at first.)

Given that better-known-Rothenburg was the one who gifted Fritz with Biche and Fritz said about his death "I lost a second Caesarion", I was confused, yes.

(BTW the English ambassador was less impressed by him and wrote about him when alive: "Count R. is lethally hated by everyone here; he specializes in the belittlement and slander of others." Thereby delivering another example of how everyone sees something else.)

Is there one AU in which FW actually goes through with his retirement plan (in which he also would have abdicated in Fritz' favour) and lives the religious hermit life in the country side, the one that Wilhelmine wrote about? (See, if Shakespeare actually would have had a shot at getting read at this point in Prussia I would have suspected someone of having told FW about King Lear about why this is not a good idea and if he thinks that his wife and daughters will actually play housekeepers for him in such a situation once he doesn't have absolute royal power over them anymore while Fritz does...) Since he had that idea for some months before he and Fritz visited Dresden it must have been when Fritz was 15 or 16? Since, however, Shakespeare was anathema to the lovers of French literature and not yet discovered by the German reading crowd when Fritz was a teen, FW must have reconsidered for other reasons.

Being an evil person sometimes, I also wonder about an AU in which Katte survives... but where FW actually does follow Philip II's example, though not Peter the Great's, has his son killed (though not tortured to death a la Peter). Maybe Katte survives because he got out of Berlin in time, or maybe FW needs to soothe his conscience about the son-killing by not pressing for a death sentence for Katte but accepts the original military tribunal sentence of imprisonment. But Fritz dies, and Katte survives. What would happen?

Yeah, Rothenburg was tricky to research, not least because 1) more famous cousin, 2) no Wikipedia page that I could find on English, German, *or* French Wikipedia (oh, look, Polish Wikipedia has a one-line stub, haha), 3) only searchable by the French spelling of his name, whereas my Fritz bios used the German spelling, smh. Once I figured (3) out, the doors of Google were unlocked.

But then it was perfect, because I found just enough information to get inspired, but not so much that I can't write him as a basically original character, instead of having to do a ton of research to try to stay true to canon, or at least know when I'm departing for creative reasons. (This is exactly what I did in my last fandom too: took the characters who had 0-2 lines of dialogue in the novels, fleshed them out into half a million words of fanfic.)

Is there one AU in which FW actually goes through with his retirement plan (in which he also would have abdicated in Fritz' favour)

I hadn't thought of that one! Interesting idea. One of the main contenders was "FW *doesn't* rise from his deathbed during one of his many illnesses, and Fritz inherits young (enough that Katte's still alive)." But this one is interesting. I have to imagine step 1 is: Fritz summons Wilhelmine to court for Very Important Reasons and just never lets her go again.

Being an evil person sometimes

Caaaahn! Selena's being mean to my characters! Tell her she's being mean. :PPP

No, seriously, I am an evil person who killed off my main character in my last AU in an already tragic PTSD- and death-riddled fandom (Hunger Games) in which said character had already canonically died in a somewhat different way, but so far, all my instincts in this fandom are to put Fritz and Katte in a room together with a flute and pat them and never let them be separated again.

Katte may say that if he had a thousand lives, he would give them all up for Fritz, but I say if I have a thousand AUs in this fandom, I will give them all to reuniting Fritz/Katte. <3 (And unlike my last fandom, it still won't make an iota of difference to their reality. </3 )

Maybe Katte survives because he got out of Berlin in time, or maybe FW needs to soothe his conscience about the son-killing by not pressing for a death sentence for Katte but accepts the original military tribunal sentence of imprisonment.

Well. I'm going to say if FW has Fritz executed and has the power to have Katte executed, then he has to have Katte executed just to justify the decision to kill Fritz, i.e., be consistent about the severity of the offense. But, if we go with the story (which one of my sources says is apocryphal and not based on any contemporary documentary evidence) about FW drawing his sword and threatening to run Fritz through with it the first time he saw Fritz after the escape attempt (

cahn, one of FW's officers is said to have stepped in front of Fritz and said, "Kill me, Your Majesty, but please spare your son")...IF FW impulsively kills Fritz and then regrets it, then, yeah, I can see him being forced to back down and not kill everyone else.

But in this AU where Katte knows Fritz is dead, I say Katte gets the hell out of Berlin asap. Maybe IRL he delayed for reasons besides or in addition to not wanting to abandon Fritz, like hoping for milder consequences if he just didn't actually desert, but once the King has killed Fritz...well, idk, maybe those are the circumstances under which you don't do anything as risky as trying to flee, because look what happened to the last guy who tried to flee, and that was his own son. But maybe those are the circumstances under which you have nothing to gain by staying in the power of the bloodthirsty maniac running the country when your prince is gone, and you have nothing to lose by deserting now, and you might gain your life.

Could go either way, I guess. It's really hard for me to get inside Katte's head on that last day of freedom when he had his chance and didn't take it in time. Probably because there were so many reasons to stay and so many reasons to go that being in his head wouldn't have cleared matters up much: his head was probably whirling. ;)

But Fritz dies, and Katte survives. What would happen?

OMG. Who's incrementally more happy in this AU? Katte's family and friends? Not by much (see: successful desertion or imprisonment). Fritz might argue that he is, poor thing. :( Katte, idk.

As a side note, I actually kind of wonder, speaking of family and friends, what Hans Heinrich (and for that matter, the rest of the family) thought about his son's decision to accompany Fritz, since "please don't kill him" is such a low bar it doesn't give us much to go on. I mean, there's a long continuum from "OMG how could you disgrace the family like that; okay, execution is a bit much, but I raised you better than that!" to "Privately, I think the King is a terrible father* but you should never ever defy or even speak ill of the King, because he's the King and obedience comes first," to "You should definitely be punished, but at least I can still hold my head up among my fellow officers, because everyone knows you did it for love and pity, not anything worse like cowardice or venality," to "I and everyone I know are kind of silently WTFing at the way FW treats his son, so there were really no good choices there."

* After all, Hans Heinrich let (and by "let" I mean "paid for") *his* son attend university, study French, play the flute, paint, do the Grand Tour, etc., and apparently was okay with him not joining the military. So while he may have been a strict 18th century military dad, he seems to have been a socially conforming 18th century sane strict military dad, not a batshit "my contemporaries' values are all effeminate, burn ALL the books, smash ALL the flutes" Spartan dad. (ETA: Of course, some of Katte's activities he may have been sneaking around to do, such painting and the flute, but not, like, university or the Grand Tour. Those are harder to hide, and harder to do without at least some family member helping you out financially. Not to say it was necessarily Dad, but I'm not seeing any reason to believe otherwise.)

Now, here's an interesting avenue for Katte to survive in addition to the ones mentioned: that incriminating letter doesn't make it to FW, and Katte's never implicated one way or another. So he just silently lives with the irrational survivor's guilt of knowing he helped Fritz to his death, while trying to go about his normal life, keeping his secret bottled up, grieving, and not having the emotional catharsis of knowing he suffered as a result too (like I said, irrational). Even exile with Keith would give him a sense of "Well, we were all in it together, it failed, and we all paid the price."

:'-(

SO ANYWAY. I will be doing a completely different AU. Also, the series is titled "Five Ways Fritz and Katte Cheated Fate," not "Five Ways Fate Curb-Stomped Them Differently." :P (Yes, there's the "...and one way they didn't" format, which I have considered and so far always rejected.)

Edited 2019-10-24 06:03 (UTC)

One more angle on the "Fritz dies, Katte survives" idea: what does Wilhelmine do? Because the relationship with her brother was so absolutely quintessential to her life that I think one would be justified to let her do something radically different in such an AU. Such as running away herself. England (or at least Hannover) would have been an obvious destination; she was probably too much of a realist to expect being regarded as marriage material by the cousins under those circumstances (i.e. without a a dowery, and without being male, the crown prince and thus a useful political tool), but still, it was reasonable to expect them to take her in and give her a place at court.

Now, her pride wouldn't have dealt well with being the poor relation (especially at a court where she'd been raised to believe she'd be the future Queen), so she might not have remained long, plus maybe she deals with the terrible loss of Fritz by feeling vengeful. And FW prides himself on being the Emperor's loyal subject. So Wilhelmine decides to go to Vienna and make her case, accusing her father of point blank murder. There's medieval legal precedent here demanding a public hearing at last. Again, she's probably aware that this will not end in the Emperor doing something to actually punish her father, but the public embarassment as the Prussian royal family's dirty laundry is shown in front of the world? In great detail? In a world where dignity and representation means so very much? This is her avenging her brother.

And who should be another witness but a Prussian officer in exile, one Hans Herrmann von Katte.

Also, while she's in Vienna: of course she meets the two arch duchesses. Befriending ensues!

There's medieval legal precedent here demanding a public hearing at last. Again, she's probably aware that this will not end in the Emperor doing something to actually punish her father, but the public embarassment as the Prussian royal family's dirty laundry is shown in front of the world? In great detail? In a world where dignity and representation means so very much? This is her avenging her brother.

And who should be another witness but a Prussian officer in exile, one Hans Herrmann von Katte.

I am finding just reading this synopsis of an AU that never happened extraordinarily cathartic. GO WILHELMINE GO.

Also, while she's in Vienna: of course she meets the two arch duchesses. Befriending ensues!

I WANT THIS.

I thought you might. :) The medieval legal precedent involves a royal daughter accusing her father's murderer in front of the assembled princes. Wilhelmine, as a princess of two electorate princely houses (Brandenburg and Hannover) and a direct blood relation to the dead victim, himself a prince of said houses, would be entitled to bring her suit in front of the Emperor, who has to hear her out in full. (And in public.) And we know from the memoirs she had a way with words if she wanted to. And the theatrical instinct of an opera composer. Imagine all the anachronistic Verdi soundtrack you want. (He wrote some mighty vengeance tunes, after all!)

I, uh. Might have added this to my Yuletide letter as Another Thing I Desperately Want :P :D

Now that you mention it, I ALSO really want the Verdi opera (and possibly Schiller play) that the censors made him write about some other place entirely (probably set in Boston :P ) with MT-Wilhelmine duet, and MT-Emperor-Wilhelmine-Katte quartet in the climactic crowd scene. Sadly this would be somewhat harder to come by :)

And I guess in this universe we don't have Don Carlo(s), which... well, since we're making this up, I'm totally going to make up that Schiller wrote this play that was at least as good, and Verdi's opera based on it was also at least as good :)

Umm, for science, where can I get my hands on something describing this medieval legal precedent?

Haha.

Also, please don't read anything into ~~the number of times I keep adding prompts~~ the amount of stuff I have written for each fandom

:-P

I can't help it you guys keep coming up with the best prompts! If someone were coming up with awesome Cordwainer Smith prompts Every Day I'd be adding to those too :P :D

Precedent: Alas we run into the language problem again. The one that came immediately to my mind when thinking about this involved a murder thta took place in my hometown, Bamberg. This was at a time when two dynasties, the Welfen and the Hohenstaufen, were duking it out for the throne - think War of the Roses in England, or Game of Thrones, whatever you prefer.

Dead victim and one of the two German Kings (not yet HR Emperors, since each was claiming to be the true contender; both were already crowned as King, though): Philip of Swabia. About to win the struggle after years. Gets killed by one Otto of Wittelsbach, not to be confused with:

Otto IV, his rival, the main benefitter of Philip's death. He did make it to Emperor thereafter, but eventually was toppled by Philip's nephew, Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, every bit as interesting and complex a man as his Prussian namesake and not of impact to this story, since he was a child in Sicily when it took place.

Anyway. Otto the Rival and future Emperor of course was invested in proving he had nothing to do with Otto of Wittelsbach conveniently offing Philip in my hometown where Philip had been to celebrate his niece's wedding with a guy called, you guessed it, Otto (of Merano - I tell you, medieval name-sameness is infuriating). So Otto the not yet IV who was, btw, Eleanor of Acuitaine's grandson and Richard the Lionheart's nephew allowed Philip's daughter Beatrice to present her case against Otto of Wittelsbach at the Imperial Diet in Frankfurt, the very same where Otto the not yet IV, as the sole remaining contender for the throne, would be declared now undisputed German king and future Emperor. Beatrice (still a minor, btw) made her case and formal accusation against Otto of Wittelsbach, who was then declared a murderer and criminal and subsequently hunted down and beheaded by her dad's bff Heinrich of Kalden. To further win over any disgruntled followers of the House of Hohenstaufen and prove he's sorry about Philip, honest, Otto the finally IV declared he'd marry Beatrice.

Which he did, a few years later, since she hadn't had her period yet by the time her father was murdered. Poor Beatrice died 24 days after Otto made the marriage legal by having sex with her. Draw your own conclusions from that. It's a horrible tale and Otto deserved his own downfall courtesy of Beatrice's cousin Frederick, but that's neither here nor there and has nothing to do with Wilhelmine in the AU.

Anyway: that's the legal precedent I meant. I linked the English wiki entries for Philip and Otto (IV); the Frankfurt Imperial Diet where Beatrice made her case doesn't have an extra one.

And yes, Schiller and Verdi after him simply used another historical subject to diguise what they were writing about!

This is amazing and awesome, although terrible for Beatrice :( Thank you!

Also, this is why your synopses are WAY better than reading Wikipedia:

Otto was related to every other King of Germany. He married twice:
1209 or 1212 to Beatrice of Swabia, daughter of the German King Philip of Swabia and Irene Angelina.[32]
19 May 1214, in Aachen to Maria of Brabant, daughter of Henry I, Duke of Brabant, and Matilda of Boulogne.[33]
Neither marriage produced any children. [bolding mine]

YOU THINK?

Right? I looked at Wikipedia and got *nothing* out of it that even hinted there was anything nearly as interesting as her write-up.

Edited 2019-11-01 19:22 (UTC)

I may have done extensive research on the era for professional reasons. Also, like I said, 'twas my hometown Philip's murder took place in. The wiki entry on Otto (IV) at least mentions he got flogged to death at his own request to expiate for his sins, which certainly is one of the most flamboyant of our Emperors' deaths, but given Beatrice died 24 days after the marriage got consumated, my sympathy for him is, err, non existent. (He also raped at least one mayor's wife when he toured the German cities after finally making it on the throne.)

Another true story wiki barely hints at is that young Frederick, who'd travelled across the Alps with a small entourage which Otto sought to prevent, arrived just three hours before Otto did at Late Konstanz and thus literally sat down and ate the meal prepared for Otto. He got let in because he had the excommunication bill against Otto with him, which made 17 years old Federico Secondo the sole remaining legal King of the Romans, Germans and of Sicily. If he'd arrived three hours later, though, after Otto's men had already occupied the city, he'd have been screwed.

Otto had it coming there, too. The main reason why the Pope until then had backed Otto and the Welfs against the Staufen was that he wanted to prevent the Church territories being sandwiched between the HRE on the one hand and the Kingdom of Sicily (which covered a large part of lower Italy in addition to the island and belonged to the Staufen since Frederick's father and Philip's older brother had married Constance d'Hauteville, heiress to the Norman Kings of Sicily) on the other, and he'd made Otto promise Otto would never claim Sicily. Of course, no sooner was Otto crowned as Emperor in Rome by the Pope that he took the army he'd conveniently brought with him ("just an escort, your holiness, honest") and marched on Sicily.

Now, young Frederick, who'd been orphaned at age 4, had survived various regents and grown up in Palermo partly raised by the local population (Sicilian-Norman-Arab, and his life long affinity to Muslim culture hails from there), had started to rule Sicily at 14 (which was when Norman Kings come of age) and had no army to speak of. He'd been screwed if Otto had actually invaded. But that particular Pope was one of the most ruthless and inventive politicians of the middle ages. Sure, he'd had excommunicated the late Philip of Swabia and backed Otto in order to keep the Staufen from owning the HRE and Sicily both, but now that Otto had broken the promise under which he'd been made Emperor, well, Innocent III excommunicated Otto and basically told young Federico that if he could make it to Germany alive across the Alps (where Otto's men were stationed), Germany was his. Otto, instead of advancing further to Sicily, hastily returned to cover his home base, and that was his mistake.

(In his time as Emperor, years later, Frederick also got excommunicated, twice, by two different Popes. The first time this happened, he dealt with it by going on Crusade - excommunicated, mind - , negotiated a peaceful solution with the Sultan, and crowned himself - since no Priest was allowed to - King of Jerusalem right there without having had to fight a single battle. The Templars tried to kill him, though, and failed. Pope Gregory then had to end the excommunication on him.)

Edited 2019-11-02 13:47 (UTC)

Wooooow. This is amazing! Wow, Innocent III, way to... not live up to your name. :)

Pope Gregory then had to end the excommunication on him.

I might have actually laughed at that bit. Hee. Sorry (not sorry) Pope Gregory!

Omg, you know I hate killing off either of my pairing, but I LOOVE Wilhelmine avenging her brother. Maybe she and the Prussian officer can be platonic friends and bond in their grief?

Absolutely. In fact, since in this AU Katte was never found out because that letter didn't get into the wrong hands, maybe once he hears Fritz is dead he does the one thing he can be sure Fritz would want him to do, get not just himself but also Fritz' beloved sister away from FW? During the first part of the trip (Berlin - Hannover) he and Wilhelmine are still numb and shellshocked, but once in Hannover when the adrenaline from the escape has gone and the reality of Fritz' death really has time to sink in, that's when they start talking (and shouting, and crying), especially since Wilhelmine otherwise has to play nice with the Hannover cousins (or their representatives, depending who is there). Once she hits upon her vengeance idea and heads towards Vienna, she asks him to come along again (a noble woman travelling alone still needs an escort, and whether she admits it out loud or not, he's the last thing she has of her brother - and vice versa, I guess).

get not just himself but also Fritz' beloved sister away from FW

Oooooh. This is giving me *feelings*.

that's when they start talking (and shouting, and crying)

Yeah, when I imagined them hanging out immediately after Fritz's death, I imagined the situation as ripe for shouting and blaming, especially Wilhelmine -> Katte. But since this AU is already uber painful, they can have each other's backs even as they get the shouting out of their systems.

Oof.

I am having a TON of feelings about this too <33333

This is kind of my kryptonite, them having each other's backs. I suppose there might be some blaming, but underneath they know who's really to blame, and that they will be loyal to each other for Fritz' sake <3

heeeeee. I am also an evil person? So if Fritz is killed... is there any kind of anti-FW movement that gets started? (Guessing no, as Philip II and Peter the Great seem to have been OK after killing their sons.)

And then his brother becomes King when FW dies. (Does FW's abuse extend even more to his younger brothers if he doesn't have Fritz to kick around any more?) Then what happens?

Differences: Philip II may not have killed his son IRL, just locked up the crazy batshit guy. Peter, well, 1) Russia ~1700 is a little bit more anything-goes (Ivan the Terrible had earlier killed his son in a fit of rage), 2) Peter had more support for his decision and actually got a death sentence out of the court.

FW's court martial, as you may remember, was divided between death and life imprisonment for Katte (meaning the lighter of the two sentences won by law), and after he told them to vote again and come back with a death sentence, they came back with the exact same decision they'd made before, infuriating him and forcing him to pronounce the death sentence on this own. And even the ones who voted for death said, "Please consider how this will affect your son," which may have been the wrong thing to say. :/ FW: "How can I make this affect my son the MOST? I know, I'll have him watch, and tell everyone involved to make sure his heart is broken!"

(Fritz's heart: *is broken*)

And the court martial point-blank refused to have anything to do with judging Fritz.

Would there have been an actual overthrow? FW had been worried about one for a long time; that's partly why he overreacted so badly to the escape attempt, especially when he discovered that foreign powers were involved. I think I've read that earlier that year there was an actual treasonous plot (not directly involving Fritz) that FW had uncovered and he punished the offenders.

Would Charles VI and the Imperial Diet have had something to say about FW if he'd had his son killed? Presumably. Would they have *done* anything to the point of supporting an overthrow? Eh. Charles had tried to protect Peter's son too, but sure as hell wasn't invading Russia over it. That said, the Charles-FW dynamic is very different than the Charles-Peter dynamic, especially with FW and his Imperial leanings.

One problem for anyone supporting an overthrow is that the next candidate after Fritz is killed is only 8 years old. (I mean, that could be an appeal, if you feel like you can become the new power behind the throne, but it's a different kettle of fish than supporting 14-18-yo Fritz as new king.)

I suspect it makes a big difference if FW loses his temper and runs Fritz through with a sword on the spot, then is publicly penitent afterward, vs. if he issues death sentences to everyone.

Here's an evil AU for you: Katte escapes; therefore Fritz is killed. There are people who think having another, more acceptable target made FW more likely to get his thirst for blood out of his system so that he came down on the side of a pardon for Fritz. Pure speculation, and I personally think there were too many other factors for FW to decide in cold blood have his son killed even without Katte to punish, but AUs are for people making different decisions than they did in real life!

Totally forgot to address the second part. I don't know the FW-AW dynamic in enough detail to have an informed opinion, but from what little I know, AW was pretty willing to go along with what Dad wanted: wear uniforms, play with soldiers, not sneak off and do all the forbidden things, etc.

You know how I think I had more conflicts with my parents than my siblings did, because my unshakeably strong sense of self and belief that my parents were stupid meant that I was willing to stand and die by my convictions, instead of playing along? I think Fritz might have had more conflict with FW than his siblings not only because he was the heir (which is related to why, say, Wilhelmine didn't get the focus of Dad's abuse), but because he and FW shared that terrier aspect to their personalities.

Whereas AW might have been like, "Yeah, sure, Dad, whatever you say. Sounds great," after Fritz was dead, and FW might have had some relief (mixed up with all the guilt and defensiveness) that things had worked out in the end for the benefit of Prussia. And maybe even (because humans are great at rationalizing, watch Fritz rationalize everything ever) convinced himself that Divine Providence had a hand in Fritz's death, thus absolving FW. How convenient!

Btw, I have read (I need a Turkish particle for this) that after the escape attempt, FW said no more education for AW, because French and philosophy had led Fritz astray.

Me: *facepalm*

Then, of course, when Fritz came to the throne, he was like, "Okay, younger bros, you're all getting educations now, which I will generously micromanage! Just think how lucky you are now that I'm in charge. In *my* day, we didn't get educations, and if we did, we had to see to it ourselves, no help from the monarch. I'm sure as adults, you'll all proceed to demonstrate your undying gratitude toward me for overseeing your education like this."

"Our Insane Family: The Next Generation" ensues.

Speaking of insane families and generations, I was looking at

selenak's YT letter, and this line about SD jumped out at me: "emotionally abusive, too, especially towards her daughter. She also had had a traumatic childhood herself"

*sings, Lion King-style*: The ciiiiiircle, the ciiiiiircle of abuse!

/o\

Yeah, no kidding. When I read about SD the Older trying to run away with her lover, getting locked up for life with the lover killed and SD the younger growing up being told her mother was an evil slut who deserted her station and kids, I thought: makes perfect sense of SD the Prussian Queen‘s behavior. (Including conspiring with her kids against FW in the sense of pushing the English marriage projects etc., but NOT by, say, doing the Catherine II approach of locking him up and getting him killed. ) And her pointedly NOT visiting her imprisoned mother when she could have later is definitely the same woman who curses Wilhelmine as a betrayer for giving in to FW‘s marriage demands.

Re: AW-FW relationship, both real and AU, I don‘t know too much about it in rl, either, beyond that it was supposed to be good (for FW). AW comes across as affable, wanting to be liked by his family and with a sense of humor in the letters of his which are in the Wilhelmilne‘s Travelling Adventures collection, but then relations to your rarely seen older sister and her husband aren‘t comparable to father/son relationships, especially if the father is FW. Two this to consider, btw:

1.) I‘m not sure FW would have been able to rationalize his killing Fritz after actually doing so. His brand of Protestantism came with a heave sense of guilt Iremember, that retirement plan came because a preacher had convinced him he wasn‘t Christian and good enough), and without the possibility a Catholic ruler would have had of confession/penance/absolution. And a guilty FW believing himself cursed might have had a complete mental breakdown. Whether he‘d still continued ruling, with his ministers covering for him, or wether Grumpkow & Seckendorff would have tried to go for a regency with of course themselves, not SD as regents until AW had grown up, I don‘t know.

2.) In rl, AW‘s reaction when Fritz put the blame of losing the early 7 years war battles on him, shamed and humiliated him in public tells me that he wouldn‘t have been able to survive the full FW treatment for oldest sons, either. As you say, FW and Fritz both were terriers, so Fritz was scarred by the abuse, but survived. AW, otoh, comes across as a spaniel to me.

Lastly, one bit from Fontane‘s Neuruppin entry in the „Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg“ I forgot to mention shows FW actually considerate of Fritz‘ feelings. There was a gallow on which army deserters were hung at Neuruppin, Fontane quotes an FW letter/order for said gallow to be removed and all traces to be erased before the Crown Prince entered Neuruppin, so there was no chance of him seeing it. I‘m just letting that stand there.

And a guilty FW believing himself cursed might have had a complete mental breakdown.

Oh, that's an extremely likely possibility. It's also not mutually exclusive with later rationalization. Humans are extreeeeemely good at rationalization, often while madly repressing or even expressing contrary feelings. I agree, he might have stopped at "cursed" and never recovered. But he might not have.

Also, the FW we know is the FW who *didn't* kill his son. The FW who did is at least slightly OOC vis-à-vis the canonical FW, someone who was able to rationalize doing it in the first place, if only for a split second. And if there was no Katte to make an example of, maybe he rationalizes that he has to make an example of *someone*, or everyone in the army will think desertion pays. (Remember, his rationale for executing Katte was that he'd never be able to trust the Gens d'Armes again.)

Besides, he did ask the court martial for a verdict, and got mad when they didn't want to judge the Crown Prince. What if they had come back with a death sentence, especially in the absence of a successfully escaped Katte?

I'm just letting that stand there.

*nod* It's not inconsistent with his eventually letting Fritz have some creature comforts and flute music at Küstrin. He seemed to want to walk that line between breaking Fritz's will and breaking his mind, especially once he decided to keep him on as heir.

he wouldn‘t have been able to survive the full FW treatment for oldest sons

You may have a point here. On the one hand, I'm reasonably sure that even promoted-to-heir spaniel AW would have gotten better treatment than "I will die on every single hill" terrier Fritz, just because he wouldn't have gotten locked in that unrelenting vicious cycle with FW. On the other, I doubt FW could have consistently managed to never abuse even his spaniel son, and AW might have snapped.

Then again, Fritz had a lot of resentment against AW to begin with, and maybe FW would have been more easily appeased? I'm not entirely sure.

A moment of sympathy for the abuser here: this is Fritz talking about his shortcomings shortly after he's been grieving AW, regretting the falling out and that he didn't make up, berating himself for his temper, and recounting his not-always-successful efforts to control it (combined with a hell of a lot of blaming of everyone except himself): "If they had sought to raise me in my youth rather than humiliate me, believe me, my dear sir, that I should be worthier than I am; but they neglected my education; I had to undertake it myself, and I have only accomplished it in part, and always with some remembrance of the humiliations I had suffered."

Now, it's not an excuse, and this kind of partial self-awareness is not uncommon on the part of abusers in therapy who make very little progress toward actually changing, but at the same time, it's also almost certainly true as far as it goes, because that's how the cycle of abuse works. (Where we differ is that my opinion is that if you're aware that you have a problem that harms other people, you need to make more strenuous efforts to come up with new methods to protect those people, instead of stopping at "Well, I try self-control, and it doesn't always work, but I'll keep trying.")

AW, otoh, comes across as a spaniel to me.

Hee -- this does seem consistent with everything you've told me!

It makes sense to me that AW might not have been able to cope with being the oldest son (had he been born first instead of Fritz), but I wonder if stepping into that position, with a penitent FW, and not having terrier tendencies, might actually work not terribly for him (as in, he could roll with FW's weirdness instead of digging in his heels).

+1

Haha, I was just glancing at

selenak's tv series post again when reccing it, and saw, "'Bring back Katte!' would still be the overwhelming cry."

Look, this trope is written in the stars, nothing I can do. ~~1000~~ 5 ways "Katte/Fritz 4ever" happens, and no ways that it doesn't. :-P Bring back Katte! (Oh, man, my 15-yo self cannot believe my 36-yo self's priorities and vice versa. "Forget Katte! Why can't Fritz have Bohemia and Saxony too? Write *that* AU!")

Also, "Fritz/Voltaire snark-and-sex stories would outstrip Fritz/Fredersdorff h/c and curtain fic in number, though neither would ever gain the popularity of Fritz/Katte," hahaha, this is so true. I'm now imagining curtain fic, that's hilarious. So many opportunities! Rheinsberg and Sanssouci being the big two, of course.

I'm kind of torn on whether to hope this happens. On the one hand, I used to look in vain for Thorin fic, and now it's everywhere. On the other hand, the film got Thorin terribly wrong, and also as a result of the film, all fic is now Thorin/Bilbo and very wrong. At least Fritz/Katte (and to a lesser extent, Fritz/Voltaire, Fritz/Fredersdorf) would be the right ship, but who knows what the show and fanon would actually do with it. (The show might do what I'm told that recent musical did and ship Katte with Wilhelmine, like really, wtf. At least we could be sure fandom would quickly straighten that out, but I'm sure it would have a lasting impact on the kind of fic produced, namely that there would be good chunks of Wilhelmine-hating, love triangles, and incestuous threesomes.)

I have to google that recent musical, but I'm not really surprised. I very dimly recall a tv miniseries when I was a teenager which gave Fritz a heartrendering romance with Dorothea Ritter and shipped Wilhelmine/Katte as the secondary couple. (Googling, I see that it was called Der Thronfolger, broadcast in 1980 and was vaguely based on Jochen Klepper's Der Vater, though I don't recall either relationship from Der Vater (the late 1930s FW novel I had mentioned eons ago). RL basis for this: for Fritz/Dorothea, that FW certainly suspected poor Dorothea (a theologian's daughter who was very musical and had sung with Fritz a few times, plus they'd taken some strolls together, entirely supervised, I might add, they were never alone together) of having had sex with his son, had her arrested and had her publically whipped as a whore for that reason ( German wiki as opposed to English wiki has the exact order - "...dem Hoff Rath Klinte, daß er Morgen die in arrest allhier einsitzende Cantors Tochter soll auspeitschen laßen, und soll dieselbe alßdann ewig auf Spandow in das Spinnhauß gebracht werden, erstlich soll dieselbe Vor dem Rathhause gepeitscht werden, hernach vor des Vaters Hause, und dann auff allen Ecken der Stadt", which is Rokoko German for "tell Hofrat Klinte that tomorrow he's to have the imprisoned Cantor's daughter whipped and then put her forever in the women's work house; firstly she shall be whipped in front of the city hall, afterwards in front of her father's house, and then in all public squares of the town". Oh, and he had her examined by doctors who discovered that she was virgo intacta.

(FW: never let it be said that he wasn't awful to his son's (suspected) het interests, too. Poor Dorothea. She might not have been beheaded in front of Fritz, but public whippings and three years in Spandau - she was released in 1733 after her father petitioned for mercy - for the crime of having taken a few strolls and having made music with a man was terrible. And just for added kicks, German wiki mentions Voltaire made fun of her. He checked her out when visiting Berlin and described her to his readers as "a tall woman, thin, resembling a sybil, and not blessed with the kind of looks that would have made her deserve a whipping for a crown prince's sake".)

Meanwhile, the entire justification for anyone assuming Wilhelmine/Katte I can see is that Katte did have a double portrait of both siblings, but against that is Wilhelmine's stated distrust and antipathy and, well, Katte's everything else. Not that reality ever stopped any shippers. Or tv executive. Der Thronfolger certainly had a great cast for 1980, which I see included Jan Niklas as Katte (he'd go on to play young Peter the Great in the Peter the Great miniseries (where Maximilian Schell was older Peter), Maria Schell as Sophia Dorothea and Günter Strack as FW. But it faded out of public consciousness; I don't think I've seen it repeated in the last few decades.

Anyway, for our fictional five-seasons-of-Fritz, you know some incest shipping would happen these days regardless, even if the producers scrupulously adher to the non existence of any het romance for Katte. Because I haven't seen a fandom with two close siblings which let that opportunity pass, orientation be damned.

Speaking of fictional incest, though, how about this trivia:

Voltaire: writes a tragedy "Semiramis" which is supposed to be staged celebrating the birth of the French Dauphin's first son (that would be unfortunate future Louis XVI whose birth gets celebrated here, I suppose).

Voltaire's rival Crebillon: has already written a tragedy "Semiramis" some years ago and has just secured the post of censor and Royal Librarian

Crebillon: So let me get this straight: in your version, Semiramis has killed her husband, and is in love with a guy who turns out to be her long-lost son, and who kills her, thus avenging his dad. The last words are "tremble, oh royals, for fate's justice awaits! And you're considering this suitable to celebrate our future king's birth why? *forbids production, authorizes parody just to add saltÜ

Voltaire: See if I care. I have now a prominent fanboy. Dear fanboy of mine, here's the ideal play to conmemorate the dead of the War of Austrian Succession, how about producing it? Have a copy.

Fritz: Thanks for the copy, great genius. No production right now, but I've handed it over to my sister who is also a fan.

Wilhelmine: Love the play. I'm writing an opera version!

The Margrave: Um. Haven't you already written this opera Argenore where the heroine discoveres the man she loves is really her brother? I don't want to curb your artistic endeavours, especially when they distract you from me cheating on you, but I'm spotting a trend here.

Wilhelmine: Look, Argenore was me venting, and if the heroine and hero hadn't been secretly brother and sister the titular King couldn't have sung the final aria about how he tried his best to destroy both his son and daughter and deserves to die. Semiramis is different, the plot is entirely by Voltaire and doesn't reflect on rl at all. Now can I have the money to produce my opera version?

Voltaire: Love that you're writing an opera version, your highness, but meanwhile, who is staging my original play? Luckily, I also have a fangirl on the throne.

Catherine: If you think I'm staging a play about a female ruler who killed her late husband and gets killed by her son, you've got another think coming, Maitre.

Voltaire: Back to the Comedie Francaise it is, then.

Edited 2019-10-28 07:50 (UTC)

Yeah, poor Doris Ritter. She really deserved better, and she definitely deserved to have come up in our anecdotes much earlier in these discussions. My bad. :'-(

Oh, Voltaire. But him being an asshole is to be expected. MacDonogh, in 1999, writes, "It is highly doubtful that she in any way merited the savage treatment meted out to her after Frederick’s flight." I mean...what exactly do you think would have merited that savage treatment, author? Murder? If you mean "she didn't do the things FW thought she did," say so. This is at best a very infelicitous phrasing; at worst, you and I have radically different values.

you know some incest shipping would happen these days regardless

Oh, of course, and I'm fine with it being a niche interest. I just don't want it being one of the major ways fandom has to deal with a no-homo-ing canon. (Suspect it'd still be a minority approach, but probably more common than if canon left out the Wilhelmine/Katte pairing.)

Meanwhile, the entire justification for anyone assuming Wilhelmine/Katte I can see is that Katte did have a double portrait of both siblings, but against that is Wilhelmine's stated distrust and antipathy and, well, Katte's everything else. Not that reality ever stopped any shippers.

Very true. The real reason here is "heteronormativity."

I've often wondered about that double portrait. Platonic admiration on Katte's part? Attraction? (She and Fritz had enough in common, especially at that age, that if you like one, you might well end up liking the other, platonically or romantically.) Trying to make nice to her because she's so important in Fritz's life? Seriously worried about her ability to turn Fritz away from him?

Love the Voltaire anecdote, thanks for sharing! I am now through the first ~18 months of Fritz and Algarotti knowing each other, and will try to put together a summary soon that's informative, if not entertaining. (And entertaining if the muses are with me; otherwise, you get copy-pasta from a dissertation.)

Catherine: Lol!

Oh, Voltaire. But him being an asshole is to be expected.

Well, naturally. At my conference, I talked with Mr. Pleschinski some more, the Fritz/Voltaire correspondance translator mentioned below, and he totally ships them, not least because "They so thoroughly deserve each other".

MacDonogh, in 1999, writes, "It is highly doubtful that she in any way merited the savage treatment meted out to her after Frederick’s flight." I mean...what exactly do you think would have merited that savage treatment, author? Murder? If you mean "she didn't do the things FW thought she did," say so. This is at best a very infelicitous phrasing; at worst, you and I have radically different values.

No kidding. Public whippings and three years harsh imprisonment are barbaric by any standard. I just hope Doris Ritter was happy with her spice trader later and not too bothered by voyeuristic tourists like Voltaire showing up.

Now, YouTube turns out to actually have Der Thronfolger, albeit sans English subtitles, 60 minutes per episode, two episodes uploaded into one folder (so YouTube has two, read: four parts). I checked out the first sixty minutes, seeing it for the first time since 1980, and it turns out to be actually pretty good, heteronormativity aside. (Which of course is a big aside. Peter Keith does not exist, for example.) It starts immediately post Katte's execution, with the Küstrin pastor writing to FW the "for God's sake, relent on your son" letter, while the camera pans to a devastated, silent Fritz lying there, and then we get the entire rest of the show in flashback, so to speak, going back to child Fritz. The childhood section ends at about 13 minutes and does a good job getting across Hohenzollern (and Hannover) dysfunctionality. It goes thusly:

Little Fritz: flawlessly declaims a section from the gospels about Jesus subjecting himself to the well of his father

FW: *is pleased with his son, for the last time in a loooong while*

Morning breakfeast chez Hohenzollern: *marital warfare ensues, SD and FW use Fritz and Wilhelmine as weapons against each other, the argument also is exposition for why SD wants those British marriages so much*

FW dines with army chaps and male courtiers and a visibly ever more uncomfortable Fritz, extolling on manly virtues

George I: *state visits*
SD: This is my daughter, Dad, the future queen of England!
G1: A bit strong for her age.
SD: But Dad, you know I used to have the tiniest waist in Europe! (Notes to self: make Wilhelmine lose weight.)
G1: you want to be queen of England, girl?
W: Yes.
G1: Despite not having met my no good grandson, offspring of my lousy son?
W: Yes.
G1: Hm. And you, Fritz, what do you want from your future?
F: I want to be a philosopher.
G1: Well, that would be a first in both our families, eh, son-in-law?

FW: *has been seething in the background so far, but as soon as G1's back is turned* *explodes*

FW: *shouts at Fritz' tutors, fires one, pus the other on notice*

F: *sneaks out of his rooms at night, which btw shows that princes don't sleep alone but with household staff present, meets up with Wilhelmine, a book and a candle*

F & W: *read together from a French play on a classical subject*

*camera transitions from them as children to them as teens - F is 15, W is 17, soon to be 18 - declaiming the same lines at each other (the transformation into older F & W also gives them pet dogs without this getting pointed out)*

If you want to watch those first 13 minutes as a kind of silent-to-you movie, here they are. (BTW, lol at whoever filed Der Thronfolger under "German fairy tale movies and movies for children".

The rest of the first episode goes thusly:

SD's salon, with W & F playing music, SD schemes with British ambassador, French ambassador talks to both F & W about Voltaire, F when French ambassador slightly chides him for not taking royal duties serious enough says au contraire, he's got plans "which will surprise a lot of people* before going back to beind a wide eyed Voltaire fanboy*

*Seckendorff & Grumpkow: meet up and scheme, in an exposition scene where we learn about the Austrian interest, why they're anti British marriage project, and Prince Eugene & Emperor Charles (MT's dad) being willing to spend money on foiling same.

Seckendorff: proceeds to broadly hint to FW his wife is scheming against him with the Brits

FW: I hear you.

*another dysfunctional Hollenzollern family breakfeast with marital warfare and F & W used as weapons: *ensues*

FW: *inspects his latest Long Fellows*
F: *all but signals he finds this boring*

FW: *loses temper*

FW: Here are two manly chaps from my army, not long fellows but good Prussian nobility, who are supposed to teach you how to value the militar more, Lieutenant Forget About Him and Lieutenant Katte!

Katte: *as soon as FW has left, casually drops hidden Voltaire volume from his waistcoat*

F: OMG you like Voltaire, too! *heart eyes* (This meeting happens around 30 minutes into the first ep, but Katte only has this and one more scene in this first episode)

SD: Schemes some more with British ambassador*

F: *secretly visits guy who buys forbidden to him books for him*

Guy: I've got two more volumes, but then I ran out of cash.

F: And I'm already in your debt! Damn, I need to find a source for money somehow!

Katte: *enters secret book hideout with his second scene in this ep* Good news! Your father takes you on the state visit to Dresden, your highness, King August insisted! You'll finally get a break from Prussia. And it's carnival at a Catholic court, too. You'll have fun. "The King and the crown prince of Sparta will visit Athens." (Literal quote from episode)

F: Hooray! My life is finally getting better, Hans. (Yep, this is another version where he's Hans-ing him to signal to the audience they've become friends; Otoh, Katte says "my prince" and "your highness")

State visit to Dresden: Ensues, complete with party times and orgy in as much as German 1980 tv law allows

FW and F: *are wide eyed, with even FW enjoying himself at first*

F: *also says hello to Quantz, introduced at this point as working in Dresden*

Orzelska: *is also introduced to the audience by gossiping courtiers as both August's bastard daughter and mistress*

Orzelska & Fritz: *catch each other's eyes while their fathers have a drinking competition*

August: *presents anonymous nude lady*

FW: *makes a step in her direction*

F: *makes two steps in her direction*

FW *has belated reality check* OMG! Fritz, avert your eyes! *drags his son outta there* OMG! Fritz, this is a really evil place! I only was playing along to be diplomatic, don't forget that when your mother asks!

F: Right. BTW, can't help but notice everyone is happy here.

FW: They're decadent. Also, Prussia is a poor country and we could never afford throwing money around like that. *Passes out*

Court dwarf: *beckons F to O*

F: imitates a French Rokoko novel in his instant Orzelska wooing; since he doesn't sound like that in the rest of the episode, including in his subsequent scenes with her, I'm assuming this is an intentional signal on the script's part that he's quoting and while being attracted essentially role playing*

F & O: *have sex, not shown, it's just signaled by closing bedroom door*

*transition to*

F, gleefully telling W about his Dresden adventures: ...and then August practically offered all the pretty women of the court to me if I leave Anna alone! He regards me as a rival!

W: So she's his mistress.

F: Yep.

W: While being his daughter.

F: Indeed.

W: That's disgusting.

F: *shrugs* Anything goes. I'm a sophisticated man of the world now, I don't mind. Hey, how about a pillow fight, sis?

F & W: have a pillow fight and general kid around, until footsteps are heard, annoucing FW with doctor in tow is on his way:

F: *poses as being ill* I know August will state visit soon, but I feel so exhausted from that decadent court, Dad, I'd rather not see all those immoral people again. I'm really ill!

FW: *has the second time in this ep where he approves of Fritz* Finally, my moral lessons bear fruit! Good boy. Recover soon!

W & F: *break into giggles once he's gone; F reveals how he faked his fever via heating stone*

W:... but why did you bother, I mean, don't you want to see her again?

F: Yes, but in secret and alone. Please give her this letter.

O: *shows up dressed as a man a few hours later*

F: *in pointed contrast to earlier novel phrases* Wow. Anna. I say.

O: *does look very hot indeed in male attire, ravishes him*

F: I love you, please stay.

O: As what, exactly? Your mistress? In this state?

F: Um. As my wife? I'll totally marry you!

O: You're sweet. Leaving aside that you can't, since I'm a bastard...

F: I'd change the law!

O: You know what, you actually might. But not for me. You hardly know me.

F: Well, you can't go back to Dresden, can you? I mean... you can't.... "Do you love your father?" (*literal quote from episode*)

O: "Do you love yours?" (*also literal quote from ep*)

F: *says nothing*

O: Look, I brought you a farewell present! *calls Quantz into the room* (footnote: I assume this means Quantz has patiently been waiting the whole time in the antechamber?)

F: You're the best. *exit Orzelska from tale*

*transition to*

F, W & Quantz playing music together*

FW: *catches them at it*

FW: *explodes, abuses F both verbally and physically, ending with the infamous "you're a coward without honor, if my father had done this to me, I'd have killed him!"

W: *tries to comfort F*

F: I'll... do something. I don't know what yet. But something!

*End of first episode*

In addition to Fritz-at-Küstrin opening and childhood sequence covering the first 13 minutes, later particular points of interest:

26:46: Second dysfunctional Hohenzollern family meal of the ep begins (ends at 29: 58 when FW beats F out of the room)

30:35: Enter Katte

50:40: Fritz tells Wilhelmine all about being deflowered, totally beating August the Strong at sex, goofes around with his sister and fakes being ill for his father*

57:53: Orzelska presents Quantz as a farewell present, transition to F, W & Quantz getting caught by FW, FW losing it and W trying to comfort F as the first episode ends*

Edited 2019-10-28 14:24 (UTC)

he totally ships them, not least because "They so thoroughly deserve each other".

Really? OMG, haha! I can totally see where he's coming from and that's hilarious, but my desire to Fix Everything in this fandom means I just want to give them both therapy and Remedial Interpersonal Relations 101 and let them try again. ;)

If you want to watch those first 13 minutes as a kind of silent-to-you movie, here they are.

This is awesome, and thanks so much for your summarizing/translation efforts! That's going way above and beyond for us non-German speakers. <3 I might check it out, even with the heteronormativity. It does sound like it manages to get a lot of things across.

Also, I have to say I laughed out loud at "silent-to-you movie." You know my foibles so well. ;)

sneaks out of his rooms at night, which btw shows that princes don't sleep alone but with household staff present, meets up with Wilhelmine, a book and a candle

Oh, good, yes. The difficulty of sneaking out to read is an important part of Fritz's childhood; he talks irl about how he got caught once, talked fast and gave the usual child-out-of-bed-after-hours excuse of "I needed to relieve myself" and didn't get in trouble, but didn't dare do it again, but then tried to make up for lost reading time in future years at Rheinsberg. Poor woobie teenage Fritz. I also used to sneak reading in at night, but at least my parents approved of my education in general, for the most part, and when they didn't, I only got yelled at, not beaten.

ending with the infamous "you're a coward without honor, if my father had done this to me, I'd have killed him!"

Ooh, interesting. The version I've always heard (aside from "I'd have run away") is "I'd have blown my brains out." FW taunting Fritz into killing *him*? FW, you are playing with fire and you are seriously lucky your son isn't Alexander and your wife is Olympia, not Olympias. ;)

BTW, lol at whoever filed Der Thronfolger under "German fairy tale movies and movies for children"

Uh, lol?

FW: Here are two manly chaps from my army, not long fellows but good Prussian nobility, who are supposed to teach you how to value the militar more, Lieutenant Forget About Him and Lieutenant Katte!

Katte: *as soon as FW has left, casually drops hidden Voltaire volume from his waistcoat*

F: OMG you like Voltaire, too! *heart eyes*

Hahahaha, omg, "Lieutenant Forget About Him" and also I love how FW is always trying to get people to either abuse his son or set a good example or both, and it almost never works, because FW is trying to swim upstream against the norms of his place and time. (I have a WIP where FW is like, "Look, this is Lieutenant Katte, who *used* to like literature and stuff, but now has gone straight and is here to show you the futility of your ways," and Katte is all, "So forbidden books, you acquire the money, I'll smuggle, we'll read together, cool?" Not knowing what's coming, they snicker at FW's obliviousness, because Katte is a very good chameleon, much better than Fritz.)

"I needed to relieve myself" is actually in the episode as an excuse. I've now seen the second episode, and it turns out I have misremembered about Katte/Wilhelmine as an official secondary pairing; they're just having A Moment at one point. Also, there are only two parts, the rest of the two folders are filled with repeats.

So, here's what happens in part II

Fritz: *tries to have a serious conversation with his father which starts with both of them attempting to reach out to the other and ends with FW exploding again, because the moment Fritz tries to proclaim his filial love, FW, who until that point actually has made an effort to explain royal responsibility and how Prussia is still a small state and what he hopes for the future, suspects his son is secretly mocking him, a lying liar who lies and starts with the abuse again*

FW: *orders F to come along on the next big hunting expedition*

F: *starts to get drunk on said expedition, grabs Seckendorf and plainly asks whether the Emperor would help him by inviting him or ordering him to take a journey RIGHT NOW*

Seckendorf: Um. Sure, we could do that for you. And help you out with some money for books. But you know what else would be cool? For you not to marry the King of England's daughter.

FW: Fritz, come here, be a man, drink some more!

F: *gets totally drunk, calls the Prussian uniform he wears a Sterbekittel (deathbed shroud), then declares he loves his father the tyrant anyway, really, DAD I LOVE YOU! *passes out*

FW: What the hell was that?

F: *is at secret hideout with books, meets Dorothea "Doris" Ritter*

D: I live downstairs and heard your wonderful flute playing. Let's make music together! I also write poetry.

F: You have great taste in music. From you, even German poetry is okay by me.

*Romance "The Prince and the shy, musically gifted middle class girl" ensues*

SD: My children, my day of triumph has finally dawned. Today, your father will receive the English ambassador and make both your marriages definite.

F: Err.

W: Fritz, this is our day! Freedom at last! They're going to make you governor of Hannover and you'll be away from Dad's supervision for good!

F: *does not protest or mention Doris to anyone ever again*

British ambassador: So, instead of us paying Princess Amelia a big dowry, she's getting Hannover itself in that your son is going to run it for us. Otoh, you won't have to pay a dowry for your daughter, either.

FW: Sounds good to me. You know, if you'd offered those terms, you could have had my daughter three years ago when she was a bit fresher and prettier than she's now. Women age so quickly, eh?

British ambassador: ...also, since we're doing all this in the spirit of British/Prussian harmony: dismiss Grumpkow, please. He's totally bribed by the Austrians and always hanging out with Seckendorff.

FW: How dare you insult my loyal servant Grumpkow!!! The marriages are off! *assaults British Ambassador, has to be pulled off him*

Katte: Bad news. Your father just assaulted the British ambassador.

F: Okay, Hans, get me a chat with the British ambassador alone, I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE.

Katte: Dear Sir, before you talk to the crown prince: please keep him from doing something stupid.

F: So, if I were to, say, run off, and come to Uncle George, would you help me?

British Ambassador: Youth can be so romantic. I wish you all the best, your highness, but we're not starting a war with Prussia over you.

Keith: *exists after all, but only in this second part*

FW: *gets drunk with Grumpkow and Seckendorff*: You know, I actually regret that British marriage didn't work out. I hate him, he hates me, him being in Hannover would have given us a break from each other. Grumpkow, I don't get people. I wish I was a simple landowner, I could do that. Just as long as I don't have to understand what the hell that boy is thinking!

F: *thinks*

Katte: Your highness, here's a letter from your brother I wasn't supposed to give you until he's off with the King.

W: *reads* ZOMG! Oh no! What if he does do it this time!

Katte: Don't worry. I've told him how dangerous and ill advised this plan is. And then I took drastic measures. I'm his bff, after all, he won't desert without me, and I'm staying right here in Berlin. Which he knows. So he won't desert.

W: *literal quote* "You are very sure of my brother, Katte." ("Sie sind sich meines Bruders sehr sicher, Katte.")

Katte: Well, yeah.

W: *another literal quote from episode*: "Why is there all this bitterness between us, Hans?*

(Me: Okay, now you're Hans-ing him, too? And this Moment must be what I was misremembering.)

Katte: *touches her shoulder, sort of murmurs in her ear* No bitterness on my part. I have only respect for you*

*end of moment*

Meanwhile, on the road:

F: So, Keith, organize an escape horse for me. We're deserting.

Keith: *gulp*

Escape attempt: *fails*

Keith: *confesses all to FW*

FW vs F confrontation: *happens in several parts, including an almost son-stabbing prevented by loyal officer*

FW: *shows up at his wife's palace two minutes after his courier who was supposed to deliver a "prepare the Queen: this happened" letter to Frau von Ramen does, thus catches wife and daughter unawares*: Your son is dead!

SD: *breaks down*

FW:...to me, I mean he's dead to me!

W: what happened to Fritz?

FW: You are a traitor, too! *lunges, hair drags*

Frau von Ramen: Don't go Philipp and Peter the Great on us, your highness.

FW: I respect you for saying that. Take care of the queen. But as for you, Wilhelmine, punishment awaits!

*sadly, this is the last we see in this miniseries of Wilhelmine, this is how we leave her*

FW: *arrests Katte*

Katte: *is calm and loyal, but inadvertendly manages to let it slip Fritz owns books; Detective FW is on the case*

FW: *finds secret book hideout with poor Doris Ritter* : WHORE! Doctor and midwife, pay test that theory for me.

Doctor and midwife: Sorry, Sir, she's a virgin like she said she was.

FW: She stiill gets whipped in every public place in Potsdam and then locked up for life.

Doris Ritter: *exits this story*

FW: *paces up and down, and we soon realise he's waiting for a message from the war tribunal*

Grumpkow: Sorry, your highness, they sent it back again with the same conclusion.

FW: *has dialogue with Grumpkow consisting of literal quotes from his letters to the war tribunal*

Grumpkow: I just realise I'm the closest thing you have to a therapist in this tale, your majesty, and I'd just like to say, this isn't what I signed up for. Also, don't kill your son. I just think he'd make a better successor than the nice kid which comes next.

FW: But he needs to finally learn his lesson. Okay, I'll send some instructions with the Katte sentence.

F: Is sullen and pissed off but not repentant and clearly not expecting anything worse to happen than him getting locked up for a few months, until FW's letter arrives, upon which: NOOOOOOOOOOOO! I'll resign my sucession rights, I'll do anything! Let me talk to my father again!

Küstrin staff: Sorry, but that sentence will get carried out tomorrow morning.

Katte: *arrives at Küstrin*

Pastor from opening scene: *tries to comfort Fritz, then Katte*

FW and SD: have their only scene in both parts where they're not wearing wigs. Instead, a sleepless, dishevelled FW shows up in his wife's bedroom for the first time since years:

FW: I can't bear to be alone anymore. I only meant for the best, Fieke (Prussian nickname for "Sophie"), do you understand that? I only ever meant for the best. ("Ich wollte doch nur das Beste.") *stars sobbing*

SD: *stares in disbelief, relunctantly embraces husband*

A few hours later, Küstrin, early in the morning:

Fritz: *has to be dragged to the window, sobbing*

Katte: *is calm and collected*

Fritz: Forgive me!

Katte: No forgiveness necessary. This is God's will.

(Me: "This is God's will?" what happened to "I die for you with joy in my heart" or "It's easy to die for so sweet a prince"?)

Fritz: *faints*

Executioner: *swings*

Opening scene with the Pastor writing his letter to FW: *is repeated, ending on the close-up of Fritz' tormented face*

Credits: Tell us Fritz became King ten years after, and for the rest of his life was lonely and paranoid and the ruler who made Prussia into a European superpower with questionable means.

Scenes of particular note:

6:36: Fritz gets drunk at the hunting, talks to Seckendorff, gets more drunk and has his "I hate my life! I love you, Dad!" outburst. (W & SD are also present and watch with rising degrees of horror)

(30:50: the other drunk scene, FW with Seckendorff and Grumpkow has his "how is this my life? I don't get people" moment)

36:26: Wilhelmine and Katte are having their chat

44:07: First post-escape attempt FW vs F confrontation

50:52: FW shows up at SD's to arrest Katte and to deliver his "your son is dead" declaration

58:05: FW paces, waiting for Katte's sentence by tribunal, reacts when Grumpkow passes it on

107:18: Katte arrives at Küstrin.

Part of me is all "wow, this really sucks for the women characters!" and the other part of me is like, "...kind of like real life, it's not like Wilhelmine's life got better after this (although I guess less on the physical abuse), so might as well leave her there as any other place?"

True. I urge you to watch the Fritz and Wilhelmine post Dresden sequence in part I that I marked, because that's the one scene where they're both just happy and having fun, and even the fact FW shows up in between doesn't spoil that as they get to trick him and return to having fun once he's left.

Wow, you are the LITERAL BEST. I might do the silent-to-me film thing, this actually sounds like it follows canon reasonably closely.

Except for the "God's will" thing, way to cut out the part where he's dying FOR LOVE OF FRITZ. *frowny face*

F: *gets totally drunk, calls the Prussian uniform he wears a Sterbekittel (deathbed shroud), then declares he loves his father the tyrant anyway, really, DAD I LOVE YOU! *passes out*

Ugh, I hate that this basically happened irl. The version of the story that I've encountered is that FW forced him to drink, which seems in character, but I don't have it from a reliable source. Either way, poor Fritz. It pretty much tells you at this age he was going around repressing the urge to do just this when sober, which you could almost guess even without this episode.

Keith: *exists after all, but only in this second part*

Just Robert Keith, or are they conflating the two? Speaking of all the "Hans"ing going on, how *did* someone of Fritz's rank distinguish between Peter Keith and his brother Robert Keith in the 18th century?

Once again, thank you for your write-ups!

I think they've conflated the brothers; the character is only ever referred to as "Keith", but he's also presented as the only one Fritz recruits for his escape plan.

Speaking of all the "Hans"ing going on, how *did* someone of Fritz's rank distinguish between Peter Keith and his brother Robert Keith in the 18th century?

If they had additional titles - like Baron of X, Freiherr of Y -, there was the option of referring to them by said title. (A bit like "my Bayreuth sister", "my Braunschweig sister" etc.) So say one Keith is also the Freiherr of Eckingen and the other the Freiherr of Keferloh, they'd be Eckingen and Keferloh. (Both places are real but to my knowledge unconnected to the Keith clan, I just picked them at random.)

There was also the possibility of nicknames, like Fritz calling Keyserling "Caesarion". If you invent these, I'd go for names of either Greek mythology or French drama & novels.

The drunk scene in Der Thronfolger is visceral to watch, like watching a public breakdown. Which it was, of course.

(within the two parter, there's also the narrative irony that during the childhood section, at the end of the first dysfunctional Hohenzollern family meal, when FW is mid explosion and WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THESE CHLDREN, SD yells back "They're afraid of you!" and FW yells "But I don't want you" - he uses the German plural now, meaning he's adressing not SD or just F & W but them all - to fear me, I want you to love me!" His entire family: *stares*

(And of course the first time F does try a love declaration, in part II, his father thinks he's faking it and secretly mocking him, and the second time, during the drunk scene, he's just going "what even was that?" Watching, I was also reminded of the nightmare Fritz told Henri de Catt about mid 7 years war, of dreaming Wilhelmine was chiding him of not loving their father enough. The layers here - both to the accusation itself and Fritz' subconscious having Wilhelmine, who in rl sided with him, making it, thus siding with FW - are obvious.)

Conflating the brothers in a movie makes perfect sense.

Nicknames and titles: agreed, I was more wondering about the specific case of teenage Peter and Robert, since Fritz has to talk a lot about them in escape attempt fanfics. I suppose in 1730, Peter's a lieutenant and Robert's not, which helps. But still. "Keith (Robert)" and "Lieutenant Keith (Peter)"? "Keith (Peter)" and "Keith's brother (Robert)"?

The drunk scene in Der Thronfolger is visceral to watch, like watching a public breakdown. Which it was, of course.

It's visceral even to read about, which is why 1) I didn't watch it, 2) if I ever do Yuletide and request fic, my letter as drafted contains a request not to depict this scene (referring to it, h/c the next morning, etc. is fine).

As far as I know, Fritz was consistent for the rest of his life about never getting drunk again.

Totally facetious note on Der Thronfolger: I watched the execution scene, because of course I did, and I've now seen three depictions of it on the screen, and of all of them, the only one where the director decides to go with the historically accurate aspect of Katte taking off his shirt is the one where the actor has Those Pecs \o/. Artistic decisions, lol.

FW yells "But I don't want you" - he uses the German plural now, meaning he's adressing not SD or just F & W but them all - to fear me, I want you to love me!"

Oh, lol, I think that might be based on this anecdote!

"Apart from being mean and short-tempered, Frederick William was for ever wielding his stick or crutch or dismissing a courtier or subject with a few well-aimed kicks. He had mixed views about the Jews, who settled in increasing numbers in Berlin in the course of his reign. He none the less believed that the state behaved justly towards them and felt that they should acknowledge his generosity in their turn. When one cowered in his presence, Frederick William set about him with his cane, shouting, 'You should love me!, not fear me. Love me!'"

Me when I first read that: *stares*

The layers here - both to the accusation itself and Fritz' subconscious having Wilhelmine, who in rl sided with him, making it, thus siding with FW - are obvious.)

God, yes. Every time Fritz's subconscious makes an appearance: the drinking episode, this dream about FW, the other dream about FW...it's just so painful.

When one cowered in his presence, Frederick William set about him with his cane, shouting, 'You should love me!, not fear me. Love me!'"

Wow.

And yet... I feel like this is a common abusive dynamic :(

Yup. Also:

(seriously, every time I think the wild stories are done there is ANOTHER one)

YUP.

This sounds amazing and also kind of painful. I am adding the link to the large-number-of-things-I-have-to-watch-probably-after-Yuletide on that post-of-links.

From everything you've said, this sounds generally speaking pretty true to history? I'm... not used to that from history-ish movies :P

Well, it is somewhat based on Klepper's novel, and Klepper did his research, poor guy. (You could blame the lack of gay on his writing in the late 1930s in a dicatorship with his time running out, but the two parter was made in 1980.)But yes, aside from that, it's pretty good sticking to the facts. The biggest "no way!" liberty I could see was Fritz playing flute in public while in Dresden without FW hitting the roof, but hey, FW is busy drinking with August.

(BTW, you can tell this is a West German movie made during the Cold War by the fact it can't use any original locations (including Potsdam, which was in GDR territory); whenever the action moves, we can a sketch of the relevant palace supposed to look like an ancient litography.)

Yeah, I can't blame anyone writing in 1930 for lack of gay, really. But in 1980, well, all right, it's still not surprising exactly.

(BTW, you can tell this is a West German movie made during the Cold War by the fact it can't use any original locations (including Potsdam, which was in GDR territory); whenever the action moves, we can a sketch of the relevant palace supposed to look like an ancient litography.)

Ohhhh interesting!

(Me: "This is God's will?" what happened to "I die for you with joy in my heart" or "It's easy to die for so sweet a prince"?)

Idk, after watching it, maybe "Katte looks old enough to be Fritz's dad" happened to it? Is it just me being used to young characters being played by actors ten years older, or does Fritz look 15 in this? I looked up the actors, and Fritz is actually played by a 20-yo, and Katte by a 33-yo (that's still almost double their rl age difference), but wow Fritz looks young to me.

Also, as someone who's actually watched the movie and not as a silent-to-you 2x speed film, would you say the actors have the chemistry to sell one of the original lines for Katte's last words? They didn't seem to have many scenes together, but with good acting and screenwriting you can do a lot with a little, I guess.

I thought their first meeting, especially once FW has left the scene, had meet-cute type of chemistry, but subsequently there was more of an older friend and mentor vibe, true. Re: Fritz' actor - who btw is the greatgrandson of Käthe Kollwitz, legendary Weimar artist - true, he does look young, especially in the execution sequence, but then after the childhood sequence we do skip to a point where Fritz is 15, and as you say, the actor was 20 at the time, i.e. fitting with Fritz' age when the story ends. He does look more mature in his scenes with both the ambassadors (when he cryptically say "oh, I have plans alright" (for when he's king) and with Doris Ritter (not just because the actress plays her as shy while Fritz is confident but because of the way his hair is pulled back and the face is lighted (from below, not above), plus he's in "civilian" clothing whereas in his scenes with FW he's in uniform 99% of the time, which in addition to the difference in physical mass emphasizes his youth. Mind you: given Fritz was young, really, really young, it's fitting.

Re: Jan Niklas being 13 years older - he played young Peter the Great (from 18 to his early 30s, then Maximilian Schell took over) six years after playing Katte in "Der Thronfolger", so presumably tv producers thought he was looking youthful enough when casting him and only later once the actors actually played together thought they just didn't look like within the same age group?

and he totally ships them, not least because "They so thoroughly deserve each other".

LOL forever. He's not wrong?

Man, this is a work of love; thank you! <3

He's totally not wrong. BTW, he also told me a dastardly tale of intrigue involving how his translation was originally presented, but that was sort of confidential. It does prove that rp'ing Fritz and Voltaire can, err, have interesting results.

And you're welcome.:)

BTW, he also told me a dastardly tale of intrigue involving how his translation was originally presented, but that was sort of confidential.

I'm all for keeping confidences, but, um, would DMs perchance satisfy your scruples?

ve often wondered about that double portrait. Platonic admiration on Katte's part? Attraction? (She and Fritz had enough in common, especially at that age, that if you like one, you might well end up liking the other, platonically or romantically.) Trying to make nice to her because she's so important in Fritz's life? Seriously worried about her ability to turn Fritz away from him?

A bit of all of the above? I also considered he might have wanted to distract from him and Fritz, but then discarded that, because paying court to the unmarried oldest princess in FW's eyes would have been almost as dammable as being bff plus with the crown prince, and if Wilhelmine had been seen as compromised by this, he'd have ruined her marriage prospects, and thus any chance she had to get away from her father. I don't see Katte as calculating and cold enough to do that to throw up a smoke screen.

Whereas it makes far more sense for him to try and win her (platonic) favor, to convince her at least there's no need to compete for Fritz' time and attention. I mean, Katte was a bit older than the siblings, wasn't he? So he could have been emotionally wise enough to deduce where Wilhelmine's disapproval of him came from.

paying court to the unmarried oldest princess in FW's eyes would have been almost as dammable as being bff

No kidding. And given the propensity of women to get pregnant, I think it would have been six of one, half a dozen of the other, in terms of which one FW would have considered worse. And given that historical FW accused W of sleeping with Katte *and* suspected him of sleeping with Fritz, I'm not sure adding more candidates to the list of illicit affairs would have occurred to Katte even if he had been cold and calculating. It's not either/or; once you're depraved enough to sleep with the Crown Prince, what's stopping you with the Princess?

And no, I don't see Katte as cold and calculating. Quite the opposite; I think he let his emotions get the better of his better judgment where Fritz was involved. :(

Katte was a bit older than the siblings, wasn't he? So he could have been emotionally wise enough

Yeah, 8 years older than Fritz and 5 years older than W. Older, more experienced in the world, and less traumatized. In my fic, I like to make him more emotionally wise (turns out being traumatized is also bad for your emotional awareness) and occasionally biting his tongue when Fritz, W, and Keith are being immature and thinking, "Remember how young they are!" And though he might not be able to articulate "Abuse is not great for acquiring emotional wisdom," he does get as far as, "S/he's going through a lot," especially with Fritz, and cuts them some slack. Which helps his relationship with a young and already-traumatized Fritz.

Dorothea :(((( So from your next comment it sounds like she at least got to marry a spice trader and possibly live a little more happily ever after?

If you think I'm staging a play about a female ruler who killed her late husband and gets killed by her son, you've got another think coming, Maitre.

BWAAHAHAHA. This whole thing was hilarious, but it's also just hilarious that Voltaire actually thought this would fly.

Um. Haven't you already written this opera Argenore where the heroine discoveres the man she loves is really her brother?

Oh Wilhelmine :( One of those things that's both hilarious and sad. :(

Dorothea: yes, German wiki says she married a spice trader named Franz Heinrich Schommer and had six kids by him. She died in 1762, in Berlin, Behrensstraße.

Yes, Voltaire offering this play to Catherine, of all the people, was...special. This trailer, btw, for the Russian Catherine miniseries does a superb job of wanting me to watch said show and sum up her rise to power. (Oh, and the nominated Poniatowski also shows up, identified by name in the trailer.)

I would be curious what you think, if you do watch it. I'm about halfway through the first season, mildly enjoying it so far.

alley_skywalker, that Peter III fan who's always requesting Yuletide fic about him, has *opinions* about the show that are far more informed than my own.

Oh, I think when I very first heard about this show, although it didn't register with me at the time and it was only when I was looking for stuff about Peter that it registered on my radar, was in reference to Fritz's sexuality. Someone on tumblr had mentioned that Fritz showed up in two recent productions about Catherine, and someone else asked, "Being Russian productions, they probably ignore his sexuality?" "One does, the other has someone speculate that while Peter III was imitating his hero Fritz, maybe he picked up the sodomy vice as well." "...It's better when they ignore it."

Well, now that I've gotten to the episode where Elizabeth is concerned that Catherine is still a virgin and asked her advisors if maybe Fritz is indirectly to blame, I'm like, "Oh, *this* must be what that person was talking about, although those months ago."

I did remember Poniatowski's name flashing through the credits and wondered if the show (presumably in a later episode than I've gotten to) was what inspired someone to want fic about him, but why on earth he wasn't nominated in the already existing Ekaterina fandom, if not the 18th century Russian history fandom...we may never know. So far, you're the only one who's requested or offered (I assume) our Frederician fandom, although there's still several days to go.

~halfway through the signup period, selenak and I are the only ones (and she is the only one signed up for writing), but many people do sign up at the last minute, so we'll see...

I'm sorry I fail at Yuletide! At least I'm co-authoring crackfic here (and that MT AU a while back) to entertain you. :D

Looks like a third person requested, although they didn't offer (unless they made a bucket offer, which seems unlikely given the wide range of characters). I hope it's the person who requested Fritz 3 years running and didn't get it! No letter yet, so I can't tell.

ETA: The 3rd requester is not the person who got the 2 lovely Fritz/Katte fills last year. They've decided to go for Edward II/Piers Gaveston instead, which is a fine second choice as far as I'm concerned. ;) Also, I notice that only 1 person offered Fritz last year, and there were 2 fills, so maybe there's hope for extra treats this year. *rubs hands gleefully*

And I still want to know who the mystery Algarotti nominator is, omg! Come be our friend, nominator!

Edited 2019-11-02 23:49 (UTC)

Ooh! Well, all requests are going to come out Real Soon Now (as soon as assignments go out, I believe - SO GLAD yuletide made that change), so we'll find out :D

True! Though we still may not find out who the nominator is, if they weren't a requester. I mean, it's not like someone is going to discover my role in nominating when requests go out. (I'm glad they made that change too, especially as a hopeful writer of treats.)

Someone offered at the last minute! 3 requests and 2 offers at T - 6 hours.

I was wondering about our chances of an invisible bucket offer, and imagining what kind of guts it would take to offer any combination of characters. You'd probably have to trust your recipient not to be trolling you--some of these people weren't even alive at the same time!

And then I came up with this set of lists:

Birth
Sophia Dorothea of Hanover 1687
Voltaire 1694
Hans Hermann von Katte 1704
Anna Karolina Orzelska 1707
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf 1708
Wilhelmine von Preußen 1709
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith 1711
Friedrich II von Preußen 1712
Francesco Algarotti 1712
Elisabeth Christine von Preußen 1715
Maria Theresia 1717
Catherine the Great of Russia 1729
Stanisław August Poniatowski 1732
Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor 1741

Death
Hans Hermann von Katte 1730
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith 1756
Sophia Dorothea of Hanover 1757
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf 1758
Wilhelmine von Preußen 1758
Francesco Algarotti 1764
Anna Karolina Orzelska 1769
Voltaire 1778
Maria Theresia 1780
Friedrich II von Preußen 1786
Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor 1790
Catherine the Great of Russia 1796
Elisabeth Christine von Preußen 1797
Stanisław August Poniatowski 1798

Lifespan
Hans Hermann von Katte 26
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith 45
Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor 48
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf 49
Wilhelmine von Preußen 49
Francesco Algarotti 51
Anna Karolina Orzelska 61
Maria Theresia 63
Stanisław August Poniatowski 66
Catherine the Great of Russia 67
Sophia Dorothea of Hanover 70
Friedrich II von Preußen 74
Elisabeth Christine von Preußen 81
Voltaire 83

P.S. I'm too sleep-deprived this weekend to do non-mechanical things, but I am thinking about our crackfic RP and have some notes. ;)

A 4th requester at T - 7 minutes! We have 4 requests and 2 offers.

I selfishly hope one of the requesters is the one who asked for 3 years running 2015-2017, and the other is a Fritz/Katte request. :P But we shall soon find out!

ETA: Sign-ups closed! 4 requests and 2 offers.

Conveniently, we're going to need a new post soon, O Gracious Hostess. Maybe we can hold out until requests go public? I can't believe we hit 300 comments (I mean, we haven't, but we will) in just 2 weeks. I haven't even gotten to my promised Chronology of Fritz's Emotional Isolation comment yet! (It's in draft form. I take no responsibility for my crazy. :P)

Edited 2019-11-04 11:49 (UTC)

We've hit 300 now that I'm actually able to reply to everyone's comments :P I'd expect requests to go public in the next couple of days, a good chance even of today, so, yes, let's wait until then :)

ETA: Four requests and 2 offers!! *high-five* SUCCESS!

ETA2: I was reminded that if you end up writing a pinch hit, there is a post that goes up later on with links to requests from pinch hitters. So if one of those four requests goes up on the pinch hit list and you grab it (Yuletide pinch hits go REALLY FAST, especially at the beginning), you may have a chance to upload a request (and at that point you aren't affected by needing four or anything).

Edited 2019-11-04 20:06 (UTC)

ZOMG, I woke up to 11 comment notifications! It was like Christmas!

Re pinch hitting, that's true. I was thinking more in terms of treats, because if that person doesn't sign up again (I checked and they didn't last year), or doesn't request Fritz, than any treats have to go to the NYR collection, which is less exciting. But I'm sure they'd still be happy to receive a NYR treat. :D

We'll find out soon!

LOL, I have been feeling like this (look at all these comment notifications! it's like Christmas!) pretty much every day for the last couple of months :D

Yeah, it looks like that person will be an NYR. But I'm sure they will be happy to receive it! :D ~~And you have a couple of months to think of some Fritz/Voltaire~~

Hahaha, I'm glad. Today I woke up to *13* comments! :D

Yeah, it looks like they didn't participate in Yuletide this year or last year. NYR it is, then! ~~Hush your mouth, my list of potential treats is already WAY too long!~~ ~~Also, my concentration has been *shot* this week. I open a file, stare at it, cry, and close it.~~

Also, I was looking at your old Tillerman posts, and for a moment I was convinced I had the wrong ones, because the comment counts were so low and I remembered (what felt like) a lot of discussion! Haha, the bar has been raised. 27 comments? Surely you mean 270!

Hee! Yeah, I am just... kind of amazed by this whole thing! I feel like if it were any two of us it would have died after "a lot of discussion" possibly meaning tens of comments, but somehow there is some magic alchemy here :D

Yes, I've got in both my official request and letter that I only expect all three characters to be mentioned, because in half the prompts they're not actually all alive!

Oh, hah, look at me not clicking on the link until now. *Different* Russian Catherine miniseries, lol.

Anyway, in the one I'm watching, Poniatowski just showed up. In his first thirty or so seconds, he's managed to be young and good-looking, avert a diplomatic crisis during Elizabeth's declaration of war on Prussia, snark at the Prussian ambassador, and wink at Catherine. It was an eventful intro, is what I'm saying. (Peter the not yet III is looking unhappy in the background, as well he might.)

Will keep an eye out for potential Frederician fic prompts re Poniatowski. The Seven Years' War has just begun.

Lool, one thing I love about this show is the number of times I can predict what's coming because people are so in character with their historical selves.

Fritz: *is playing the flute*
Official: *approaches*
Me: Don't interrupt him!
Official: Your Majesty, an urgent message. Russia has declared war on Prussia!
Fritz: I told you not to disturb me with trifles when I'm playing.
Me: Told you!
Official: *huge OMGWTF look*
Me: No, but seriously, official dude, that was predictable.

Mind you, I experienced this a couple days ago with an actualfax biography, of one of his generals.

Fritz: *gets thrown by his horse during a military review*
Me: Pretty sure the right move now is everyone pretend nothing happened.
Me: *waits for the explosion when someone ignores my advice*
New guy: OMG, should we call the surgeon? Surely we should we go help him!
General Seydlitz: No. We pretend nothing happened.
New guy: But what if he's injured?! We can't just leave the King lying on the ground, that's not a thing!
General Seydlitz: No, see, he's getting up. He's fine. He won't thank us for going over there.
New guy: Okay, but...should we bring him another horse? His seems to have run away.
General Seydlitz: Look at the experienced general on the horse next to him. Observe how he is pretending nothing happened. Observe how there is a unanimous conspiracy of LALALA NOTHING TO SEE HERE going on. Capiche?
Fritz: *stands on the ground watching the review through his spyglass*
Everyone: *looks the other way*
15 minutes later...
Some guy: *finally brings Fritz his runaway horse so he can get back on*
General Seydlitz: You have now been inducted into Fritz's army, New Guy. I hope you were paying attention.
Me: Wow, people who had to live with Fritz actually knew him as well as I do! At least some of them, some of the time.

(I wasn't actually expecting them to pretend nothing happened, because so many times I read anecdotes where people don't, and it ends badly, which is how I formed my opinion about what the right move would be--well, that plus a smidgen of neuropsychology. I was tickled pink to see it actually work out when tried.)

ahahahaha, it's always great when one's reactions line up with canon line up with the fanfic (fan video?) of the canon :D

It was independent confirmation that all my Fritz psychologizing is at least somewhat on target and I actually do have some insights into what went on inside his brain!

Am absolutely thrilled we got a fellow Frederician on board!!! We're going to have so much fun!

morbane confirmed that Stanisław August Poniatowski was nominated for this fandom specifically :) So... King of Poland and lover of Catherine the Great, eh? How does he fit in, and does this have to do with Fritz carving up Poland with MT and Catherine?? ~~am I gonna have to request him~~

Honestly, I don't know more than what his wikipedia entry says. Though a man whose election (Poland's was a electable monarchy) to the throne was Russia sponsored might bring certain unfortunate associations these days. *veg* (Which would probably be unfair to him, he sounds much brighter than that in his Wiki entry.)

Okay, so if even *you* don't know anything about how Poniatowski fits into Fritz's life other than the First Partition of Poland, then I'm even more inclined to think this might have been a straight-up Catherine the Great request.

I *still* think it's a very real possibility someone saw our Catherine nomination and wanted Catherine/Poniatowski fic, because "Historical Royals and Their Favourites" didn't exist until like yesterday.

But if somebody wants Poland/Prussia politics fic re partitioning, or if Fritz and Poniatowski had interactions that I don't know about (I mean, I had no idea Franz Stefan was charmed by Crown Prince Fritz before the whole Silesia thing *cough*), then I can't wait to see what they come up with! I'll be keeping an eye out for a request with Poniatowski in it. (I realize nominating doesn't mean someone's going to request it, so we may never know what they had in mind.)

As you may have gathered from Wikipedia, Poland had an elective monarchy, Catherine used her influence to get one of her boytoys elected, and he surprised everyone by having opinions of his own and trying to actually do right by Poland from time to time. But he was defeated by the combined strength of Russia, Prussia, and Austria and didn't end up putting up a fight during the partition. I don't think even Fritz was winning that three-front war (Poniatowski was king of a very weak state) under those circumstances, though I think he might have put up more of a fight (but that depends entirely on his background in this AU and how he ended up king, because it sure wasn't by being Catherine's lover!).

But there's a freaking "18th Century CE Russian Royalty RPF" category! Why not in that one? I guess Poniatowski wasn't Russian... (Perhaps next year we'll see Catherician RPF :D )

I keep wondering about that. Maybe because he wasn't Russian royalty?

...Or maybe someone just really likes the Polish partition! Or we're all going to be surprised!

There is the Catherine miniseries, although, as noted by Selena, so far dominated by Peter III fans.

Looks like "Ekaterina Alexeyevna | Catherine II of Russia (Catherine TV), Elizaveta Petrovna | Elizabeth of Russia (Catherine TV), Pavel Petrovich | Paul I of Russia (Catherine TV), Pyotr III Fyodorovich | Peter III of Russia (Catherine TV)" got nominated under "Екатерина | Catherine (TV 2014)".

Gotta admit, Elizaveta is my favorite character in the show so far. Also, thanks to the show, her name is now Elizaveta in my head.

It's also weird how foreign names get represented in your brain, and when and how you translate them vs. keep them in the original. Fritz's brother is largely Henry in my head, because that's how I mostly encounter his name outside our comment threads here, but Katte's dad is Hans Heinrich, and a couple days ago, when I saw him referred to as "John Henry," I about flipped out at the wrongness.

Well, if it‘s any consolation, Fritz‘ brother signed himself „Henri“, too, like Fritz signed himself „Frederic“. Whereas Katte‘s dad, while of course being fluent in French like the rest of the nobility, definitely signed himself Hans Heinrich.

Re: translation of names, I learned about, say, Heinrich VIII (Tudor), Karl I (Stuart) or Franz I (Francois Premier de France, not Leopold‘s kid) in school, don‘t know whether they changed this by now. The only names that didn‘t get adapted from their own language were Italian ones, so Lorenzo de‘ Medici, not Lorenz.

definitely signed himself Hans Heinrich.

Interesting, even when writing French? As far as I can tell, Fritz signed himself "Federic" (the lack of 'r' surprised me when I first encountered it, just because I always see it "Frédéric le Grand" in modern French, and I hadn't realized his own usage was different) in French and "Friedrich" in German (e.g. when writing to Fredersdorf). Now I'm curious who rendered their name how in what language. :D

Is it true that Heinrich didn't even know German, not even at the level Fritz did?

Italian names: Hm, I hadn't noticed, but yes, they aren't usually adapted to English either, whereas French, German, and Russian ones are. Huh. Although especially in French, individual names sometimes get their untranslated form registered in my brain as their "normal" one, e.g. Henri Quatre, Marie de Guise.

Heinrich's German or lack thereof: couldn't say, as Eva Ziebura's Heinrich biography is still on my to-be-read-list. The books (none of which were about him as a central character) I did read didn't mention how much or little he spoke. Given he was 14 when FW died, though, I doubt FW would have let him get away with no German at all. There's also the practical issue of being in the field a lot - his officers would be fluent in French, of course, but messenger boy x? (Or for that matter sexy violinists and pages?)

AW signs himself "Guillaume", for the record. Wilhelmine, though, never seems to have considered Guillaumette or whatever the French version would have been, or a latinized Wilhelmina, she signs herself Wilhelmine in all the facsimiles I've checked.

Meanwhile in Austria: MT, joking aobut her weight gain, in one later life letter signs herself "Therese la Grosse". FS - who actually did have French literally as his mother tongue, his mother being Liselotte's and Philippe's kid - adressed her as "Chère Mitz" in an engagement letter, whle he's "cher Mäusl" to her. "Mitz" for Maria Theresia strikes me as a (cute) French-German nickname.

(MT's Dad called his wife, Elisabeth Christine, aunt of the later EC, "Liesl". I very much doubt that would have occured to Fritz even if he'd liked her better.)

Katte's dad and signatures of same: have never seen any facsimiles, I was actually assuming based on his petitions for mercy.

BTW, elsewhere you wondered where, death situations excepted he was on the spectrum of supporting his son to just being a bit less awful than FW: don't know any more than you do. Though I was irritated by Zeithain making him into yet another evil Prussian father, because it felt gratitious to me and reflective of the author's issues more than of reality. (Since present day Philip Chandos' father is also an evil Prussian dad.) Sure, it's a novel, the author can do anything, but I haven't seen a quote anywhere by either Katte or his father indicating they had a bad relationship, plus I'm assuming Fritz wouldn't have favored Katte Senior the month he came on the throne if he'd had "our fathers, ugh!" type of conversations with his beloved.

Edited 2019-10-28 08:30 (UTC)

Eva Ziebura's Heinrich biography is still on my to-be-read-list

Oh, right! Do let us know when you do; I'm terribly curious about him.

Given he was 14 when FW died, though, I doubt FW would have let him get away with no German at all. There's also the practical issue of being in the field a lot - his officers would be fluent in French, of course, but messenger boy x? (Or for that matter sexy violinists and pages?)

Agreed, the source in which I read that is unreliable, and it raised an eyebrow on my part, which is why I wanted a second opinion.

Though I was irritated by Zeithain making him into yet another evil Prussian father, because it felt gratitious to me and reflective of the author's issues more than of reality.

Right? I'm not saying FW was the sole individual who thought his son shouldn't play the flute, but he was definitely swimming upstream. This wasn't Sparta, he just wanted it to be! (FW: born in the wrong place and time.)

Katte's dad and signatures of same: have never seen any facsimiles, I was actually assuming based on his petitions for mercy.

Oooh, but if that was to FW, that would have been written in German, right? As noted, Fritz signed himself Friedrich in German. Or, at least, I haven't seen a facsimile, but the transcription uses Federic for his French letters, and switches to Friedrich for Fredersdorf, so I'm assuming that's accurate, since I *have* seen facsimiles of his French letters (of which there are many more).

I'm also sure I've seen a facsimile of Katte's signature, but I don't seem to have saved it, dammit. I have a facsimile of a snippet of a letter in his handwriting, but not his signature. I'll see if I can dig it up. I can almost visualize it, but I can't remember if it was "HH v Katte" or if he spelled it out, and if the "HHv" is from a fic.

I haven't seen a quote anywhere by either Katte or his father indicating they had a bad relationship

Same, although limited evidence, etc. The one quote I've seen is that Katte at school wasn't really religious but pretended to be because he wanted to please his dad (another reason I think the death scene recantation might have been aimed at Hans Heinrich et al. instead of being spontaneous).

plus I'm assuming Fritz wouldn't have favored Katte Senior the month he came on the throne if he'd had "our fathers, ugh!" type of conversations with his beloved.

Excellent point, and yes, if Katte Senior had been anywhere near FW levels, no, I don't think he's getting made a count and a field marshal as high priority to-do items for the new king. I think it's safe to say whatever Katte Senior was doing wasn't shocking his contemporaries like FW.

But I'm assuming Katte Senior could have been awful by modern standards, and Katte could have shrugged it off as "normal" and "not that bad" and not trash-talked his father to Fritz. He's already presumably having to hide his religion and sexuality, maybe he has to hide other things in order to keep his father's love. Maybe he doesn't think that's a failing on his father's part. Maybe most people don't. Maybe he's better at hiding than Fritz (he almost certainly is) and maybe that's responsible for a lot of his stable relationship with his father.

Maybe he did have an awful home life growing up, but doesn't trash-talk his dad to Fritz precisely because he hears stories about dinner plates being thrown in Fritz's face and servants having to pry FW's hands off Fritz's throat and starts thinking he's really lucky. This is extremely common among abuse survivors. Plus a lot of survivors are trained from birth never to talk about what goes on at home; Fritz's case was a bit special because the family was so public.

I'm also sure Fritz dominated most of the conversation with Katte in the one to two years (with interruptions for travel) they had to get to know each other; so if his beloved didn't talk much about his father and just gave off the same vibes of "trying to please him" that we're getting 300 years later, Fritz might well have parsed that as "do something nice for Katte Senior to make up for what happened to Katte Junior."

Or maybe Hans Heinrich was pretty chill, and happy to pay for his son to try to make it as an intellectual and aesthete, and then got him a place in an elite regiment when FW made the army the only real option.

WIDE RANGE, is what I'm saying, and I suspect all of it short of plate-throwing gets Katte Senior a guilt promotion in June 1740. (I kind of wonder if he and Fritz ever met face-to-face after the promotion and if so, how stilted that was.)

cahn, when I say "guilt promotion," I'm referring to the timing and the fact that he gets made a count too; there's every evidence that Katte Senior was actually a very good officer (much better than his son) and that the promotion to field marshal was deserved and not just nepotism.

Independently of what kind of father he was, or at least semi-independently, I wonder what Katte Senior thought of his son's role in the escape plan. Because you can be a super liberal dad by FW standards when it comes to letting your son go to university and do the Grand Tour like all the other noble sons in Europe, and still be HELL NO about treason and attempted desertion. Especially in a family with a tradition as military officers. Or you could be privately sympathetic and just never ever going to say that out loud. Or anywhere in between.

Btw, on the opposite end of the extremes in fictional depictions of Hans Heinrich as a father, there's a fic on AO3 in which Fritz and Katte start having explicit sex on the desk in Katte Senior's office, but he comes back sooner than expected, catches them, and then surprise! Announces that he's gay too, have fun, use his office any time. Which makes me roll my eyes in the other direction, but just goes to show how much flexibility there is for authors in terms of the available evidence.

I personally aim somewhere at the middle; decent, somewhat aloof, but willing to demonstrate an occasional bit of pride or affection, as long as you hide the right things.

Okay, okay, I'm losing my mind here. The Katte Ordre und Kriegsartikel book seems to have a wealth of information, and it's even available as a PDF, but between it being in German and me trying *not* to spend more money on this fandom, I've had it on my "if I ever get back to work and have income again" wishlist for a long time. But then, while looking for that facsimile of Katte's signature, I ran into someone else who'd read this book talking about its contents, and then this...

"For example, at one point (early 1729), he went on vacation. First, he went to Paris, because his father wanted it. Then, he went to Madrid on his own and after that, he went to London.

"Apparently he stayed (even though his vacation time was long over) and he planned to just leave Prussia and the army for good (he never wanted to be in the army anyway, apparently) and stay in England instead.

"His father was kind of against that though (huh, I wonder why), writing a quite enraged letter saying that he should get his ass back to Prussia asap."

I...WHAT? In 1729? He was a lieutenant! This was way after his Grand Tour. You can't just overstay your leave in the army even in today's military! WTF. And announcing that you plan to desert? How the hell were there no consequences for this in 1729 but death penalties in 1730? I mean, announcing that you plan to desert in a private letter to your dad who doesn't tell anyone, maybe. Coming back late without a castiron excuse for everyone else? Now I'm imagining Major General Katte going, "He's extremely sick, can't travel, stuck in London, might be on his deathbed! (GET BACK HERE YOU YOUNG INFIDEL)" at his son's commanding officer. Also, how do we know this, because if I were either of them, I would have destroyed those letters asap.

Dammit, I need to get my hands on this thing. It's not that expensive (she says, about 100 inexpensive books). I need to know if this story is legit or if we're playing a game of telephone here. Katte escapes to England the year before Fritz tries, comes back, meets Fritz, advises him not to try to escape to England, but eventually agrees to go along with it? This story is getting weirder. Does anyone who knows German *cough* want to acquire a copy and set the story straight for us?

(If it's true, I need to take back what I said about Goldsmith overinterpreting the evidence in her claim that Katte hated the army, but then...SO MANY MORE QUESTIONS.)

Also,

cahn, for wacky anecdotes, the following story I'd run across before, probably ultimately from this same source: "The book I own doesn't say much about it and I have no way to check whether this is true, but oh well. So Hans Hermann wanted to visit his cousin. When his cousin then entered her living room to say hello to him, he was sitting on a white horse.

"Yeah, he just casually rode into his cousin's living room on a horse. Freaking Hans Hermann. (I somehow hope that it's just weirdly written and I misunderstood something, otherwise… Hans Hermann, why…?!)"

Can anything in this book be believed at all? Halp.

ETA: Why yes, I *am* this worked up about something that may or may not have happened 300 years ago. :P

Edited 2019-10-28 18:49 (UTC)

This sounds all very unreliable to me, but right now I have three lectures to write and a lot of other books to read first, so alas, acquiring a copy and check it out for you will have to wait. But you could give me a link so once I have a bit more room, I can follow up on it.

Right? It's the most unreliable-sounding thing I've encountered since we started. As someone once said in something I was reading recently, "If you say you have a cat in your backyard, people will be inclined to believe you. If you say you have a zebra in your backyard, they're going to want more evidence." This is a zebra! More evidence required.

Sure thing, here you go, and thank you very much.

The horse in the living room thing I'm willing to accept as either possible or apocryphal, as the sort of hijinks young people get up to. Just like Fritz's guards on his potato fields. But secret escape attempt to England in 1729 that neither you nor I have ever heard of...I need to see some facsimiles of the documents containing the evidence.

Yes, I remember back in Beatles fandom dozens and dozens of people (who hadn't read them and were just paraphrasing other people) insisting that Joe Orton's diaries include a description of attending a gay orgy Brian Epstein (the Beatles manager) threw. Having read the diaries, I kept saying: "No he doesn't. Orton's description of the party in question makes it sound eminently repectable and really really dull. (And Orton wasn't averse to describing gay orgies!) People did not believe me, because the other story was just more interesting. And thus it went.

Anyway, having read the summary of the content and the press voices: seems Kloosterhuis (the author/editor) came to the same conclusion like Fontane, only more so, i.e. that FW, not the military tribunal, was the one following the law as it existed then, and meant his "fiat justicia" etc.; by "only more so" I mean that one press excerpt adds that by ordering Katte's execution in front of Fritz, FW was doing further justice to Katte by showing all the world who the true criminal and the one guilty of Katte's death was, i.e. his protected by royal privilege son. (This was definitely not Fontane's interpretation, though he also thought the tribunal's lighter sentence for Katte was clearly informed by both consideration of the crown prince and that by the letter of the law, Katte was guilty was charged. (But then so was Fritz.)

There's no mention in the press excerpts and summaries of an earlier attempt at desertion by Katte, but then, there wouldn't be, since the key question the book seems to be revolving around was: was FW justified in his actions? (With Klosterhuis' answer being, yes, he was.)

ETA: Forgot to say: note that in all these discussions I've read as to what motivated FW and whether he did, by his own standards and the rule of the land, do justice in the Katte case, no one mentions poor Demoiselle Ritter, simultanously condemmned to public whippings and a life time imprisonment for the the crime of taking a few strolls with the crown prince and playing music with him. Possibly because FW bending the law (of his time, not the modern one) in this case is impossible to deny. Yes, Prussian law did have a clause about public whippings for prostitutes. (That wasn't much practised, but was there.) But he'd just had confirmed Dorothea Ritter was a virgin. Hence no debates about the legality of her conviction, or the impetus behind it.

Edited 2019-10-29 10:53 (UTC)

Yeah, I am just so very not impressed with FW all around. And it's also clear to me that pretty much no one in this situation is thinking purely legalistically. Some people are pitting the law against their conscience and choosing their conscience, other people (FW) are picking and choosing when the law suits them and overriding it when it doesn't.

I've even read (untrustworthy source) that he later spared the life of a Potsdam giant who deserted because his *favorite* son asked nicely. Which, if that story is true, must have *rankled* with Fritz.

In the inspection of the Long Fellows scene from Der Thronfolger, this happens:

FW: *pleased at one particularly tall guy* Your name, fellow?

Soldier: Claude Martin.

FW: Ah, a Huguenot. Don't worry, in my country you're safe to practice your religion. And you get to serve your King! Aren't you happy?

CM: No.

FW: Don't be impudent. What more can you want?

CM: My freedom. *stretches out arms so we can see his wrists bear the marks of iron cuffs* I was kidnapped and dragged here against my will.

FW: *frowns* Report to the army physician to get a balm for that. Fritz, this is why a King must always talk to his soldiers... Fritz?!?

F (has almost managed to sneak away, as the Giant inspection was boring him)

FW: *explodes*

CM: *might get a balm, but is still in the regiment against his will*

Mind you, gangpress soldiers was something all most of the kings and princes did in that century. (Hence the famous scene in Kabale und Liebe.) How the legalities of kidnapping were, God knows.

Here's a premise for a crackfic: During his undercover time working at a shipyard, Peter the not yet Great but definitely Tall gets kidnapped by FW's people. He reveals his true identity, but is not believed and instead ends up in Berlin. Does he a) successfully escape, b) murder FW, c) have an affair with SD, d) have an affair with teenage Fritz instead, or d) all of the above?

Oh, hahaha, I have long loved the crackfic premise of Peter as a Potsdam giant. You have to fudge the chronology to make it work, but for a crackfic, that's perfectly acceptable!

d) all of the above.

I also like the converse crackfic premise where he's working in the shipyard insisting that he's *not* Peter the not yet Great but definitely Tall, and nobody believes him precisely all the other tall guys in Europe have already been kidnapped. Long fellow outside of Potsdam? Only one person it can be.

as the Giant inspection was boring him

ahahahaha this is the part that made me laugh out loud (and then feel guilty about laughing). Oh Fritz, I love how you are just not into FW's fetishes.

I AM ON BOARD WITH THAT CRACKFIC

(I also vote all of the above!

...Although perhaps in the opposite order. Affair with Fritz, affair with SD, during which he murders FW and escapes in the resulting pandemonium. Afterwards, Fritz sends him a suitably cryptic thank-you letter that has historians going "...so what EXACTLY was he thanking Peter for??" for the next hundreds of years.)

Oh Fritz, I love how you are just not into FW's fetishes.

I couldn't resist. I screenshotted the relevant bit for you. It's too good; I was laughing out loud even while watching it silently at 2x speed. It's such a teenage moment, reading a book in the background while your parents drag you along to their latest boring interest.

~~Man~~ teenager after my own heart!

AHAHAHA OK I am totally watching this first when I finish my backlog. That is awesome! SO teenage!

*highfives*

ZOMG if you are wise in the art of the screen shot, could you do one of kid Fritz and Wilhelmine secretly reading together?

wise in the art of the screen shot

Hahaha, lol, yes, ma'am! Gladly. Would you like to give me the hour-minute-second marker you want? Otherwise I'll hunt for it based on the markers you gave in your (wonderful) synopsis.

And why yes, I am very wise in the art of the screen shot! That's how I put the Fritz/Katte/Sanssouci slideshow together. :D

I wasn't sure which moment you wanted screenshotted, so I did three. One, two, three. I figured no one would object to three shots of the siblings being cute and literary together, after all.

Okay, everyone, come one, come all, I'm taking requests! For this and any other Fritz-related videos you may want screenshots of. *grin*

Oh, speaking of, someone else screenshotted this Fritz/Katte bit from a documentary, with the English subtitles, and captioned it, "The moment when Frederick decides to wear that uniform for the rest of his life." And yes,

cahn, Fritz is played by a WOMAN in this documentary (two, actually, mother and daughter, for Old Fritz and Younger Fritz). And yes, the documentary really did have Katte telling Fritz he looks good in uniform.

I'm not aware of any historical basis for this exchange, but if there is, someone needs to tell me, asap. :P (I mean, teenage Fritz hating his uniform, obvs. Katte telling him he looks good in it...I want this to be real.)

I feel like Fritz getting played by women (btw, the Thalbachs are pretty famous actresses over here) and Austrians is the best karma ever.

Also, thank you so much for the screenshots. The last one was what I was after, but the others are adorable, too.

Katte responsible for Fritz changing his mind from "Sterbekittel" to "what I'm wearing for the rest of my life" - sounds plausible enough to me!

In 1729? He was a lieutenant!

Correction, he was not a lieutenant until August 1729, according to my sources. In "early" 1729, he would still have been a cornet. (He appears to have spent a long time as cornet, from 1724-1729, then gone very quickly from lieutenant to first lieutenant (July 1730). Nobody I can find is sure what's up with that, but I feel like there's got to be a story we don't know.)

Regardless! I don't think cornets get to come back late from leave going, "Never mind!" and then get quickly promoted twice in the next year, even if their dad and granddad are high-ranked officers, and even if they didn't engage in treasonous correspondence with the British on behalf of the Crown Prince.

Speaking of Katte and dates and evidence, Fontane places his birthday on February 21, and cites documentary evidence: "Hans Hermann von Katte wurde den 21. Februar 1704 zu Berlin geboren. Diese Zahlen sind zuverlässig. Auf dem Familiengute Wust findet sich folgende bald nach der Geburt Hans Hermann von Kattes in das dortige Kirchenbuch eingetragene Notiz: »Anno 1704 den 21. Februar ist des Herrn Obrist-Wachtmeisters (von Katte) Söhnlein zu Berlin geboren und den 22. getauft und mit Namen Hans Hermann benennet worden." With a little help from Google translate: "Hans Hermann von Katte was born February 21, 1704 in Berlin. These numbers are reliable. On the family estate Wust the following note, soon after the birth of Hans Hermann von Katte, can be found in the local church register: 'Anno 1704 the 21st of February was born to the Colonel (von Katte) a little son in Berlin and baptized the 22nd and given the name Hans Hermann.'"

So now I'm not sure where the Feb 28 date in Wikipedia comes from.

Also, turns out the horse story that I've seen in a number of places also makes an appearance in Zeithain. Haha. Whether or not it's apocryphal, I hope (and believe) that RL Hans made Fritz laugh a lot. :D <3 In the short time they had together. </3

Yeah, besides the obvious Anglicization wrongness, John Henry has connotations for an American audience, lol.

Right? Granted, this may not have been an American writing, I no longer remember where I read it and cannot check. But regardless, *the* John Henry popped into my head too!

Plus it's just so *wrong*.

Well, having read up on wiki: he did meet some of the players and locations of interest, as in:

"He went on his first foreign trip in 1748, with elements of the Imperial Russian army as it advanced into the Rhineland to aid Maria Theresia's troops during the War of the Austrian Succession which ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). This enabled Poniatowski both to visit the city, also known as Aachen, and to venture into the Netherlands. On his return journey he stopped in Dresden."

His affair with Catherine predates her husband's death and thus her ascension; he did propose when she got on the throne, and she basically replied: "You're pretty, but not that pretty."

He was distantly related to the Stuarts (which wasn't useful in the century where they fell from power early on), and given Fritz' opinion on Poles, if they did meet there would have been either fireworks or a lot of testy silence, because, to copy paste wiki again:

"Frederick had despised the Poles since his youth, and numerous statements are known in which he expressed anti-Polish prejudice,[63] calling Polish society "stupid" and stating that "all these people with surnames ending with -ski, deserve only contempt".[64] He passionately hated everything associated with Poland, while justifying his hatred and territorial expansion with ideas of the Enlightenment.[65] He described Poles as "slovenly Polish trash";[66][c] referring to them in a letter from 1735 as "dirty" and "vile apes",[67] and compared the Polish peasants to American Indians.[68]
King Frederick II, by Anna Dorothea Therbusch, 1772

Frederick undertook the conquest of Polish territory under the pretext of an enlightened civilizing mission, given his disparagement of Poland and its ruling elite, all of which provided a convenient entree for the "sanguine meliorism" of the Enlightenment and heightened assurance in the "distinctive merits of the 'Prussian way'".[69][70] He prepared the ground for the partition of Poland-Lithuania in 1752 at latest, hoping to gain a territorial bridge between Pomerania, Brandenburg, and his East Prussian provinces.[71] Frederick was himself partly responsible for the weakness of the Polish government, having inflated its currency by his use of Polish coin dies obtained during the conquest of Saxony in 1756: the profits exceeded 25 million thalers, twice the peacetime national budget of Prussia.[72][73] He opposed attempts of political reform in Poland, and his troops bombarded customs ports on the Vistula, thwarting Polish efforts to create a modern fiscal system.[74] As early as 1731 Frederick had suggested that his country would benefit from annexing Polish Prussia in order to join the separated territories his own kingdom.[75]

According to Scott, Frederick was eager to exploit Poland economically as part of his wider aim of enriching Prussia. Scott views this as a continuation of his previous violations of Polish territory in 1759 and 1761 and raids within Greater Poland until 1765. "

Also, another possible connection: according to one of my biographies, Fritz brought up a possible three part Poland partioning first to Joseph when meeting him at Neisse, and Joseph told MT afterwards.

Yes, interactions like that are the only kind I'm aware of, so I'm wondering what kind of *fic* this person wants. "Having inflated its currency by his use of Polish coin dies" is not your average Yuletide fic!

Admittedly it's the *exact* kind of fic I was writing for that novel in high school, which had very few character interactions and lots and lots of military history, politics, and economics. :P

...you know, I would be all over a fic that hinged on the dastardly plan to inflate currency with Polish coin dies. I get a huge kick out of plotty economics!

I guess it's probably good we're not the average Yuletide fandom? :D

Poniatowski actually met Fritz twice in the 1750s on his travels. He went on something like a Grand Tour, except that not for Italy for culture, but for more politically minded development, to Austria, Saxony, Prussia, England, France. It comes up in his biographies, he wrote about it in his memoirs, so obviously some time after the fact.

He writes that Fritz was in Electoral Prussia when he himself arrived and came back after three weeks. They met twice and both times Fritz talked to him. He wasn't that impressed. Fritz had "the appearance of a troubled person, who feels that he must always speak better than others and fears whether he will succeed" and also "a very anxious look", "an uncertain manner" and "dirty clothes". "I heard every day in Berlin his subjects of various rank and stature talking about him in very uncomplimentary terms and even rather loudly. Fryderyk apparently knows this well and has become accustomed to it, but he does not care about it." Under Fritz's absence, Poniatowski also visited Charlottenburg, Potsdam, and Sans-Souci, including Fritz's rooms, which were a mess, books and papers all over the place, everywhere fragments of poems written in his hand. The women showing them around said they were ordered to leave things as they were left by the king, so in Charlottenburg the marble head of Julius Caesar lay under a couch, and in all of his bedchambers there were coats they said he never wore. In Sans-Souci there were two small beds in the bedchamber, almost next to each other, about which "all sorts of things" were said in Berlin, but the castellan said that Fritz was changing beds in the middle of the night because he got too hot. She also said that the room Fritz stayed in in the summer was south-facing but there was hardly a day where Fritz didn't have the fire on, so sometimes people would faint there from the heat.

Poniatowski didn't really like Berlin as a whole. The ladies of Berlin were too obsessed with Voltaire and he found them, hmm, unnatural about it (in the tryhard/pretentious sense). But he met Hanbury-Williams there, because he at that time fairly briefly the envoy to the Prussian court.

Anyway, hi! Really what I want is fiction about the Partitions, broadly understood.

*waves*

Hello there, and welcome! Also, I clearly must read those memoirs, because that’s one divine diss, almost Voltairian.

Btw, I continue to be fascinated by the fact that in the late 18th century, you could just wander into someone else’s palace and private rooms, sightseeing, without bothering to ask the owner for permission. (Goethe did it, too, after all.) It’s one thing to read about Elizabeth Bennet dropping by at Pemberley sightseeing a generation later, that’s fiction, and another to get this real life examples of how this was handled.

Hiiiiii welcome, this is awesome! :D Thank you for hanging out and telling me about Poniatowski :D

I hope you get fic about the Partitions, that sounds really cool.

Resuming the trivia from my current reading material.

1) FW and SD are having trouble producing a male heir that survives infancy. Hence all the inspecting of bb!Fritz like he was some kind of backward worm. FW's father, Frederick I, is still alive. Well, if his son and daughter-in-law can't do it, he'll give it the old college try himself! Frederick I marries a third time, hoping for a male heir pretty much right up until his deathbed (bb!Fritz is one year old and sickly when Grandpa Frederick kicks it).

But apparently the third wife had some...mental health problems. Bipolar with psychotic breaks? Total guess on my part based on one paragraph in Wikipedia.

So then this happened:

"On a February night his insane wife, in a fit of religious frenzy and convinced that she was being divorced to be married to the Sultan of Morocco, burst through a glass door into his [her husband's] apartments. Bloody and disheveled, wearing only a white shift, she flung herself on the dozing monarch. Mistaking her for 'the White Lady,' who traditionally appeared just before the death of a Hohenzollern, Frederick lapsed into a coma and shortly died."

Wikipedia gives a somewhat less dramatic rendition of the episode: "One night the queen, dressed only in her white nightclothes and with loose hair, rushed through the gallery which connected her apartments with those of the king, burst through the glass door in to his room and, covered in blood from the wounds afflicted by the broken glass door, attacked the king and screamed reproaches at him. The suddenly awakened king, who suffered from fever, imagined in his confusion that she was the legendary 'White Lady' who would foretell his death, and screamed until his attendants appeared, causing a scene. Sophia Louise was reportedly not aware of what she had done."

Deciding which one to believe is left as an exercise to the reader.

A bit of background on Frederick I: the first king in Prussia (remember, king "in", not king "of" yet, as explained here), patronized the arts, really liked French culture, spent gadzooks of money on his palaces and other luxuries. His son FW, as we all know, was the diametric opposite; Fritz a mixture of the two. Perhaps surprisingly, Fritz was full of vitriol about his grandfather lack of talents as King*, and was much more positive about his abusive father's awesomeness as ruler.

Later generations of historians, as I gather, were all, "Yeah, whatever Old Fritz says! Frederick I sucked!" and only after a while started looking at Frederick's reign on its own merits and not through the lenses of his opinionated-about-everything grandson.

2) From my 18th century military history book, talking about the demographics of the officer class. While it was normal at the time for officers to be primarily nobles, there was a lot of flexibility in places like the German countries about who counted as a noble, and some opportunities to rise in the ranks. Whereas in France: "In the expeditionary corps that went to bring freedom to America in 1780, about 85 per cent of the officers were of the nobility, and among these the leadership was clearly exercised by the 30 per cent whose titles dated from the middle ages. The newcomers who went back only as far as the sixteenth century were at a severe disadvantage, and they were virtually barred from becoming colonels."

France briefly experimented with bourgeois officers, but not for long. One such lieutenant, formerly a merchant, was on leave when he got this incredibly condescending letter from his commanding officer, informing him that he'd been replaced by a noble: "You are well-off and young, and you will not be without an occupation as long as you devote yourself to the kind of life which was followed by your ancestors—it is a perfectly acceptable one when it is pursued honourably. However, by desiring to serve in the army you are out of your sphere; go back to your former condition, and you will be happy. I know, Monsieur, that high birth is the result of chance and that it should not be the object of vainglorious pride. But birth brings privileges and rights which cannot be violated without disturbing the public order."

Okay, guys, good luck with that meritocracy.

This reminds me, btw, of Louis XV getting all huffy about Prussian upstart Frederick daring to write to him as an equal, and cuttingly referring to Fritz as the "Margrave of Brandenburg," which makes me laugh every time I see it. Sorry, dude, you have the ancestors, but Fritz gets it done.

3) Still in Algarotti's early years in the dissertation I'm reading, haven't gotten to the part where he meets Fritz yet. Absolutely fascinating stuff so far, though.

Of possible characterization interest, he's from Padua but hates it there, went to Venice but hated it more, went to Florence and fell in love with it, for two months, then decided the Florentines were "unbearably pretentious" and "pitiful," so he wrote a satire about them. "In it, he depicts them as forever boasting about all the insignificant things they wasted their time learning instead of using their time to learn things that actually matter. Algarotti confided to Francesco Maria Zanotti that he would find Florence insufferable were it not for the presence of so many foreigners."

Then he goes to Rome. "Initially, just as had been the case with Florence, Algarotti was delighted with Rome...After being pressured to eat with two [church]men one day, he reported to Francesco Maria Zanotti that he found the experience so disagreeable that he would even have preferred to dine with ten Florentines, each of whom had ten pieces of news to tell him."

So now he's off to Paris!

And I'm thinking...who does this remind me of? The falling passionately in love with something/someone only to be disillusioned shortly thereafter, the writing off of entire demographics, the satirizing, and of course the specific opinions about Italy.

P.S. If, perchance, you read a Yuletide fic where Algarotti and Fritz meet and immediately hit it off with satires of present-day Italians, you know who wrote that fic. :P

And now we know who turned (or helped turn) Fritz off going to Italy. "Look, sis, I heard it from the horse's mouth! It's terrible there."

4) Algarotti's family: "You NEED to get married. We need the money and alliances."

Algarotti: "Marriage = DEATH."

[Actual quote: "Algarotti was steadfast in his refusal to submit to his family‘s desires, however, telling his brother Bonomo that marriage would be like death for him." He never did get married.]

FW and SD are having trouble producing a male heir that survives infancy. Hence all the inspecting of bb!Fritz like he was some kind of backward worm.

Hence also Wilhelmine's own terse description of her earlier arrival as a disappointment in her memoirs. She must have heard that a lot early on, because decades later, when announcing the birth of her granddaughter to Fritz, she still makes a salty joke about it, saying the new arrival is "of that gender first cursed and reviled as a disappointment and later put on a pedestal and bartered away".

The White Lady signalling death to the Hohenzollern: supposedly during some of his nervous breakdowns near the end of WWI, Willy saw her, too. He lived on for decades more, though.

Perhaps surprisingly, Fritz was full of vitriol about his grandfather lack of talents as King*, and was much more positive about his abusive father's awesomeness as ruler.

Yep. All the excerpts from his memoirs go "Grandpa sucked as ruler, whereas Dad rocked". This being written decades after FW was dead and at a point where Fritz himself had nothing left to prove and had become a living legend to eclipse all the other monarchs, people tended to take his word for it.

French army and its (lack of) meritocracy:

cahn, the deserved bad result from this is also why everyone was caught by total surprise when the ill-equipped French Revolutionary army not only beat back the Allies (mainly Austria & assorted German principalities, with some help from the Brits) attempting to invade them after Louis & Marie Antoinette got executed but then, once Napoleon had worked his way up to the top, proceeded to beat everyone else in continental Europe for years and years. With the obvious difference being that first, there were hardly any nobles in it anymore, they were motivated as hell (that's when the Marsellaise was written; the bit about the blood of the enemies drenching the fields of the fatherland was referring to said allied armies), and later, Napoleon, no fool he, kept the "anyone can go from dishwasher to marshal in MY army" principle. By that time, the Prussians were resting on their "but we are the army of Frederick the Great" laurels and suddenly found themselves to be the old fashioned, out of date and out of luck bunch. Defeat ensued.

Algarotti: good lord. Yep, it's clear where Fritz has his "here's why you shouldn't enjoy your Italian vacation" opinions from.

(BTW, if one reads 18th and later 19th century travel journals/books on Italy, it's glaringly obvious everyone found there what they wanted to find, both in the good and the bad sense. Those like Goethe and later Byron who really had had it with their places of origin at the point of departure loved it best, of course.)

the new arrival is "of that gender first cursed and reviled as a disappointment and later put on a pedestal and bartered away".

Aww, Wilhelmine! :(

Heh, yeah, I was reading that "disturbing the public order" thing and being all... yeah, now we know what happens if you say that too loudly to the non-nobility...

Also random facts gathered from the estimable Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger:

Context for soon to be quoted quote for

cahn: The outcome of the 7 Years War was an utter PR desaster for MT. Now, she might have lost the first two Silesian Wars, too, but back then, she'd won a lot of respect and sympathy, and while everyone had been impressed by Fritz' military skills they were also somewhat horrified at his ruthlessness, whether or not they joined in wanting a piece of the Austrian cake later. But in the 7-Years-War, he in the public pov was the underdog against whom MT had allied herself with France and Russia, thereby evoking bad memories of the 30 years War and several nations duking it out on German soil. He was the David winning against Goliath, and, depending on one's priorities, the Defender of Protestants against Catholic tyranny (both Habsburg and Bourbons being Catholic dynasties; the Romanows sure weren't, but that was incidental) and/or the Defender of Germans against the Evil French and Russians whom traiterous MT had instead befriended. This was the era in which baby Schiller (from a Würtemberg, not Prussian family) was named Friedrich after him along with hundreds of other babies in the country. Decades later, Goethe (who was Hessian, not Prussian, either), who was eight years old when the war ended, writes about being a Fritz fanboy (which he totally was at that age, along, again, with about 90% of German speaking boys):

"And thus I was a Prussian, or rather, a Fritzian partisan; for what was Prussia to us? It was the personality of the Great King which had everyone excited. I joined my father in exulting over his victories, jotted down the victory songs and even more enjoyed jotting down the taunting songs about the opposition, as silly as those rhymes were. That there were parties, or that he was partisan was beyond the boy I was. On the contary, that boy was all the more certain to be in the right and to be fair since he acknowledged Maria Theresia's personal goodness, her beauty and her other virtues."

(And yes, Goethe does write "Fritzian", i.e "fritzisch".)

Less fun was that a lot of pamphlets followed Fritz in pointing out that it had been three women (MT, Madame de Pompadeour and the Czarina Elizabeth) allied against him. A pamphlet concluded:

"As the holy apostle wrote: A woman should not talk in the community. Many people exclude the female line completely from succession and don't allow female regents, either. The great misery often caused by womenfolk surely has merited this habit. While it can't be denied that good things, too, have been achieved by some women, these are the few exceptions that prove the rule. Now that war bears the names of Maria Theresia and Elizabeth, everyone may judge for themselves. As the poet says: Intolerabilis nihil est quam femina dines." (Nothing is more unbearable than a powerful woman.)

Edited 2019-10-23 06:41 (UTC)

(And yes, Goethe does write "Fritzian", i.e "fritzisch".)

Haha, I had just run across that yesterday in my 18th century military history volume: "The manifestations of faction, as here described, stood at an important remove from political commitment. Zeal for the cause of Frederick outside Prussia had nothing to do with a desire to become his subjects (God forbid!). Goethe and his young friends were first and foremost ‘Fritzians’, and not proto-Prussians."

Similarly, I can't find the quote because it's in a non-searchable actual paper book and my back pain won't even allow me to flip through and find it, but some contemporary said that with most countries, you want to see the king because you're in love with the country, but the only reason you want to go to Prussia is to see Old Fritz. [If he lets you, I might add. One guy apparently bribed the porter at Sanssouci to let him hide behind a fence and watch while Fritz was carried outside in an armchair.]

Now that war bears the names of Maria Theresia and Elizabeth

I should be used to it by now, but it always baffles me when a woman does something that men do all the time, and it's cast as an indictment against the whole sex. I end up reminding myself of this quote from a Jewish memoirist: "Why my new husband didn’t believe that German blood was stronger, that the child would always be an Aryan by virtue of his father’s participation, I will never understand. When an idea is idiotic to begin with, its applications never make any sense."

with most countries, you want to see the king because you're in love with the country, but the only reason you want to go to Prussia is to see Old Fritz.

LOL. Almost, but not quite true. He was definitely the main attraction, though. Because every bit of Goethe's life is even better researched than Fritz' life, we have his exact tourist program for his one and only visit to Berlin:

Opera house, St. Hedwig's Cathedral, painter and litographer Daniel Chodowiecki (1727-1801) who lived in the then called Großen Frankfurter Straße (a member of the academy of the visual arts, that one was allowed to have Germans and Poles, thanks, Fritz). Dinner at Prince Heinrich's (well, Carl August had dinner with Heinrich and brought Goethe along.) Nightly stroll through the Tiergarten, the relatively new Berlin Zoo. Visiting the then famous writer Anna Louisa Karschin (1722-1791), the Hessian composer Andräe, and the famous philospher Moses Mendelssohn. (Yes, grandfather of the composer, whom Goethe would in his old age watch perform as a Wunderkind and be reminded of Mozart.) And Sanssouci. (Apparantly when Fritz wasn't in residence, it was relatively easy to visit there for a, err, fellow citizen.) Writes Goethe to a friend later about his Berlin visit:

"Berlin I visited in spring. (...) We were just there for a few days, and I just caught a glimpse here and there like a child does with beautiful rarity box. And you know how much I live by viewing; a thousand lights have been sparked in me. I got pretty close to old Fritz, even, for I had an impression of his character, his gold, silver, marble, monkeys, parrots and torn curtains and have listened to his own dogs bark reasonably about the great man."

I should be used to it by now, but it always baffles me when a woman does something that men do all the time, and it's cast as an indictment against the whole sex.

I hear you. No one would have written "now that war bears the name of Friedrich" even during his original Silesia invasion. (Well, except Isabella of Parma in her "all men are bastards" mood. :) )

LOL. Almost, but not quite true. He was definitely the main attraction, though.

No, of course, it's hyperbole, but like much hyperbole, it gets at a real phenomenon. :D Fritz the Great Tourist Attraction.

You know...I bet Fritz could do the world's ultimate "Get off my lawn" when he was feeling antisocial.

No one would have written "now that war bears the name of Friedrich" even during his original Silesia invasion.

That's because war already bore the name of all the other men who had started all the other wars!! I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but omigodwhattheFUCK kind of reasoning is that?

In this particular case, it‘s doubly annoying because you just know that if Elizabeth had lived just two years longer, MT would have been praised for her masterful diplomacy getting this particular alliance (Austria-France-Russia) together, keeping it together and getting her provinces back.

New amusing factoid learned by biography: as part of her „come on board the anti Fritz train“ long term charm offensive that started long before war, MT asked Elizabeth to be godmother to her latest kid, which was Leopold. Elizabeth said yes, but wanted the kid to be called Peter after her father, Peter the Great. Which is why Poldl, alone of all MTs kids who have the generic Habsburg names that drive on insane in their repetition, has a new one - he‘s actually Peter Leopold and ditched the „Peter“ part only once he became Emperor. To this day, I think remains the sole Peter in the Habsburg clan.

his gold, silver, marble, monkeys, parrots and torn curtains

For clarification for others, "monkeys, parrots" refers to the decoration in what is now called the Voltaire Room (Voltaire's bedroom when he was staying at Sanssouci), not (as far as I know, and I would expect to know by now) actual living monkeys and parrots. You can see them in the pictures here.

Ironically...or not, idk..."monkey" was something Fritz used to call Voltaire. Meaning "mischievous, always causing trouble." It was not a compliment.

I don‘t think the dogs would have taken to rl monkeys, and vice versa, so yeah, I‘m thinking Goethe meant the decorations. :)

It constantly amazes me how there can be biographies of Fritz that I've read cover-to-cover multiple times and constantly picked over for data, and I still completely forget little tidbits like...

Fritz actually had a pet monkey, not at Sanssouci (that I know of! but apparently that means nothing) but at Rheinsberg! I've often wondered what the dog situation was like at Rheinsberg, for, um, fic purposes, but have not found out. Anyway, the monkey was named Mimi, and he comes up in the following anecdote, which is recounted by Fritz himself in a letter.

Fritz is reading Wolff¹, the German philosopher. In French translation, because of course he is. Then he goes to eat dinner, but while he's eating, Mimi sets the manuscript (fortunately just a copy) on fire, and celebrates watching it burn. Fritz writes, "Our wits maintain that the monkey wanted to study the Metaphysics and, being unable to construe a word, put it to the flame. Others aver that Lange [a Pietist] had corrupted him, and that he played that turn from motives of zeal inspired by the prig. Finally, others said that Mimi was annoyed at the number of prerogatives which Wolff accords to man over beast, and offered up to Vulcan a book which denigrated his race."

Omg. Every time *I* think the the wacky anecdotes are done, there is ANOTHER one! I would have liked to be a fly on the wall at Rheinsberg, with all those wits.

Naturally, I had to go check out Fritz's correspondence, and found only one more reference to Mimi, in a letter to the same person only a month later. Fritz says he can't find it in him to blame Mimi "for having tried to consign to the flames the immortal work of the divine Wolff, since I find it extremely natural and extremely ingenious that this poor animal had tried to get rid of a paper that so often prevents his master from playing with him and enjoying his antics. It seems to me that in his place, even with all my reason, I could not have reasoned better, and I would have done the exact same thing." (Translation mine.)

On Fritz as a monkey, Voltaire would have agreed. I'm finding on google a number of anecdotes that all agree Voltaire kept a monkey that used to bite him a lot ~~because monkeys aren't pets~~. He called it Luc...except when he was calling it Frédéric II. Conversely, apparently he would refer to Fritz as Luc in letters to friends (not to Fritz's face), and he said, "Fritz is like my monkey; he bites the hand that caresses him."

Now, about Voltaire's room, I couldn't remember whether Fritz had put Voltaire in the room decorated with monkeys, or decorated it with monkeys after he left. Apparently, the latter. "Frederick had Voltaire's rooms redecorated after he left. They were painted yellow, the colour of envy, and the walls were decorated with grimacing monkeys, proud peacocks and venomous snakes and toads, all attributes of the departed trouble maker."

Way to go with the passive aggressiveness, you guys. I rather you got therapy and Remedial Interpersonal Relations 101, 102, 201, 201²..., but failing that, you totes deserve each other, and feel free to have snark/hate/frenemy sex any time, since you both give as good as you get. :P

Voltaire to Fritz: You realize we're exactly alike?
Fritz to Catt: Can you BELIEVE what he said? About ME?!
[Catt: Oh, no, Sire, nobody but very foolish persons could imagine such a thing. *cough*]

Self-awareness: Voltaire 1, Fritz 0.

1. I'll probably talk about Wolff and Leibniz and their connections to the Hohenzollerns at some point, if

selenak doesn't beat me to it (and you're welcome to, especially if you know more than I do).

2. Some people Fritz didn't get along with would only require a 101 course to mend matters. Voltaire...I think they'd both need at least a master's degree in interpersonal relations before they could live together without explosions. ;) AT LEAST.

Just to clear this up, Mimi was a male monkey?

Also, lol about the redecorating of Voltaire's room after he already departed from it. Must have been around the time Fritz had this exchange with Wilhelmine (writing from France):

Wilhelmine (literal quote from letter): "I don't think my beautiful eyes are why Voltaire wanted to see me." (end literal quote). It's all about you! He's realllllly sorry and says to send lots of love! He still wants you!

Fritz: He's faking it, sis! He wants my money, that's what he wants. He's made the mistake of lending your son-in-law Carl Eugen some and now Carl Eugen refuses to pay him back. Well, if he thinks I'm going to call in that debt for him he's got another think coming. Why oh why must such a genius be such a jerk!

(Voltaire: The Margravine stopped by and I was gracious enough to let her. I mean, she's nice. Why oh why must her brother be such a jerk!)

Re: Wolff - the English version of the wiki article is pretty informative,

cahn, though I can make it even shorter and excerpt the Hohenzollern relevant bits for you:

"His enemies had gained the ear of the king Frederick William I and told him that, if Wolff's determinism were recognized, no soldier who deserted could be punished, since he would only have acted as it was necessarily predetermined that he should. This so enraged the king that he immediately deprived Wolff of his office, and commanded him to leave Prussian territory within 48 hours or be hanged. (...)The Prussian crown prince Frederick defended Wolff against Joachim Lange and ordered the Berlin minister Jean Deschamps, a former pupil of Wolff, to translate Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt into French. Frederick proposed to send a copy of Logique ou réflexions sur les forces de l'entendement humain to Voltaire in his first letter to the philosopher from 8 August 1736. In 1737 Wolff's Metafysica was translated into French by Ulrich Friedrich von Suhm (1691–1740). Voltaire got the impression Frederick had translated the book himself.

In 1738 Frederick William begun the hard labour of trying to read Wolff. In 1740 Frederick William died, and one of the first acts of his son and successor, Frederick the Great, was to acquire him for the Prussian Academy. Wolff refused.(...)

(Who can blame him? Better to stay away from Hohenzollerns.) (However, he did lecture elswhere, for:

When Wolff died on 9 April 1754, he was a very wealthy man, almost entirely due to his income from lecture-fees, salaries, and royalties. He was also a member of many academies and probably the first scholar to have been created hereditary Baron of the Holy Roman Empire on the basis of his academic work.

Just to clear this up, Mimi was a male monkey?

Well, this is an excellent question. That first passage I pasted was translated either by a biographer or someone the biographer was quoting. I was a bit surprised to see the "he/him" myself, so I went and looked at the original. Fritz definitely uses "il", but since "le singe" is masculine, that could just as easily be grammatical gender as biological. I stuck with "he" in my translation of the subsequent passage, just to be consistent with the first and in case somebody knew something I didn't, but, yes, I did raise an eyebrow, and I did check first, before deciding to just go with it.

In 1737 Wolff's Metafysica was translated into French by Ulrich Friedrich von Suhm (1691–1740). Voltaire got the impression Frederick had translated the book himself.

I mean, he hadn't met Fritz yet? If he was still making this mistake in 1753, then I'd be worried. :P But yes, the reason Fritz had Suhm (the recipient of the Mimi letters, btw) translate it was because he didn't feel his German was up to the task of reading philosophy.

Speaking of translations and going back to the Algarotti discussion: Émilie du Châtelet's 1749 translation of (and commentary on) Newton's Principia is still the definitive French translation today, because it's such a difficult text to translate. An impressive feat from an impressive woman.

All right, I have GOT to check out the Fritz-Wilhelmine letters, every time you quote from them it's just amazing.

...Why do I get this impression that Fritz was more understanding of his MONKEY than he was with the actual PEOPLE in his life?

OMG. He was *way* more understanding with animals than with humans. Dogs, monkeys, horses, you name it. He was opposed to hunting for pleasure, but not warfare for fame and glory. There is a whole class of people like this (at whom I am very head-shaky. Humans come before animals in my code of ethics.) I've seen various quotes from him that I would have to track down, but basically to the effect that dogs are morally superior to humans.

In fact, yesterday I found my first anecdote of him possibly hitting an animal (horse), which I raised an eyebrow at and have mentally placed a question mark next to. Admittedly he was much older in that anecdote, and Old Fritz is much more ruthless than Young Fritz, but this is the guy who, when asked why he wouldn't wear spurs, supposedly asked the questioner to pull up the bottom of their shirt, jabbed them in the exposed flesh of their stomach with a fork and said, "That's why."

Okay, I found the exact quote, and yes, it's less hyperbolic than I made it, but the gist is the same:

"Other monarchs acquire importance from their station; this prince gives importance to his. The traveller in other countries has a wish to see the king, because he admires his kingdom: here the object of curiosity is reversed: and let us suppose the palaces, and the towns, and the country, and the army of Prussia ever so fine, yet your chief interest in them will arise from their belonging to Frederick II, the man who, without an ally but Britain, repelled the united force of Austria, France, Russia, and Sweden."

Also, in flipping around trying to find this page, I found the last sentence of the acknowledgements page: "As King Frederick would have insisted, any remaining errors are the fault of cruel Providence." Ha!

Ha indeed. :)

Dr. Johnson re: Frederick supposedly called him „the only true king of Europe“ (so much for Mr. Hannover on the British throne, I suppose?).

Did Isabella of Parma intersect with Franz Stefan at all? Because I'm kind of leaning towards her having a point for all the guys around her except for him :P (Well, you know I have a super soft spot for Joseph! But I could see how even if he were quite nice to her that it would grate a lot to be married to him / have to have sex with him while being reeeeally not into it.)

Franz Stefan outlived Isabella, in fact, but if they had significant interactions, the biographies don‘t mention it.

Re: the Isabella/Joseph marriage, you also have to consider: in a total of three years marriage, she had one surviving child, two miscarriages, and a fourth pregnancy during which she contracted smallbox, had yet another miscarriage and died, painfully. 19th century biographies: „She appeared melancholy.“. Yeah, no kidding. I‘d be screaming from the rooftops, never mind sexual orientation.

I have a big soft spot for Joseph, too, but he and Isabella illustrate the big difference gender and the resulting power imbalance made. When Joseph finds himself in a marriage with a partner he does not want to be married to, for whom, in fact, he feels physical revulsion (i.e.his second wife), he avoids the woman in question. He can do that, because he‘s a) a man, and b) the co-ruling Emperor. And when after her death his mother wants him to marry a third time, he can point blank refuse. MT isn‘t happy, but as it‘s the aftermath of FS‘s death and Leopold has already produced male Habsburgs of the next generation, this is not a fight she keeps fighting. Both these actions would not have been possible for a woman, including MT herself when young. If FS had died during his ill-fated attempt at military heroics early in their marriage, with „just“ one or two daughters there, she‘d have had to marry again, no matter her grief. And she would have had to have sex with whoever the choice would have been.

So, in a fairer world Isabella wouldn‘t have had to marry Joseph to begin with, or at least could have told him that he might have fallen in love with her post-wedding (pre-wedding, before they met, he was nervous and really sceptical about marriage, which comes not just with being an 18 years old but an 18 years old Fritz fanboy) but she didn‘t love him), but she didn‘t feel anything of the sort for him, instead of having to fake love and joy. In the world they actually lived in, the odds were completely staked against Isabella, and like I said - I‘d have screamed from the rooftops.

(Footnote: I don‘t think Isabella would ever have confided into either FS or MT, not just because her own parents had been an example of everything bad a marriage could be, but because the whole point of Isabella being Joseph‘s wife ultimately was to produce an heir for the Habsburg dynasty (and to further the new Habsburg/Bourbon reconciliation). If not as Joseph’s wife, say, in the unlikely case of an anulment, there would have been no justification for her being there (i.e. with the yet unmarried MC) at all. Now if Joseph had been awful to her, or had avoided her (she wishes) the way he would his second wife, then she could have complained to his parents. But since he was being attentive and worshipping the ground she walked on, there was nothing she could have said that to an 18th century mentality would have justified a complaint.

In this context, it‘s worth noting that an older Joseph did go to the trouble during his visit to France to not just have that sex advice talk with Louis and the not listened to warning about the state of France to both Louis and Marie Antoinette, but he also when his sister first confided into him, and spelled out not just the excruciating details but basically depressedly went „maybe it‘s me, maybe I‘m just not hot enough or good enough“; he did try to cheer her up, build up her spirits and soothe her feelings by praising how elegant and beautiful a princess and hostess she was, and awkwardly told her that if she weren‘t his sister, her existence would totally convince him to change his mind about never marrying again. He was able to recognize unhappiness then, and that MA‘s problem wasn‘t just that she and Louis hadn‘t been able to have a child (though that was a big one for both political and personal reasons, obviously).

(Mind you, the next sister Joseph visited on that particular journey had worse. That was Marie Carolina who‘d married the King of Naples. I am still at the conference, but when I‘m back home I must quote you from Joseph‘s letters to MT about this fellow‘s sheer ghastliness. (None of them had met him previously, the marriage had been made via negotiations and proxy.) He was into cruel pranks and exposing his penis in society, among other things. BTW, if you‘ve ever read a novel or watched a film featuring the Nelson/Lady Hamilton tale, that was the court of Naples Sir William Hamilton was the British Ambassador at, and the Queen of Naples Emma befriended. Anyway, the reason I mention it is that an older, more mature Joseph - possibly due to his five ladyfriends, possibly simply due to more experience - does display a bit of a clue of how unfair life can be for a royal woman, and who knows whether or not he‘d have figured out how Isabella really felt and/or would have least tried to make everything a bit more bearable for her. But not at age 18 - 21 he wasn‘t. Without any bad intentions on his part, he was instead what she resented most about her life.)

in a total of three years marriage, she had one surviving child, two miscarriages, and a fourth pregnancy during which she contracted smallbox, had yet another miscarriage and died, painfully.

:( Man, just from this part I'd be screaming from the rooftops (never mind melancholy) even if I did love my husband. Like you say, never mind sexual orientation, although that adds yet another layer of suck. I didn't realize the timeframe at all, for starters. (being a non-royal, 21st-century female, I am used to reproductive things taking a very long time, which in principle I know doesn't apply to these people at all, but in practice I forget I'm making all these assumptions.)

I don‘t think Isabella would ever have confided into either FS or MT

Oh, sure -- it doesn't make any sense with her personality, at least as far as I understand it, as she would have known it wouldn't make a lick of difference, at least positively. I could imagine that if she'd brought up any kind of complaint, MT might commiserate with the pregnancy thing, and maybe even the sex thing, but would almost certainly be all "but that being said, you have to suck it up, like I did/do," so, from Isabella's standpoint, what would even be the point?

awkwardly told her that if she weren‘t his sister, her existence would totally convince him to change his mind about never marrying again.

Aww, Joseph. I think I mostly like him because he's such an awkward nerd, which I think is funny because I glommed on to Isabella immediately because she seems so smart. ~~matriarchy AU where Isabella gets to rule!~~ It's good that he got a bit of a clue later on, although too late to be of any use to Isabella, which on one hand is super awful for her, and on the other hand it's hard to blame him at age 18. :(

Time frame: yep, that doesn't naturally occur to us, living (thankfully) in a very different society. And how young everyone was. Isabella and Joseph were both 18 (six months apart), MC aka Mimi was 17. (Yes, she and Joseph were born not even a year apart.) (During the first Silesian War. As I said: MT must have had a consitution of iron.)

And now for the MT daughter who had it worst in terms of husbands. Now, even young Mozart was shocked when he visited Naples, and if you shock Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of the scatological jokes and sex talk, well. Carolina was the sister closest to Marie Antoinette in age and emotionally, and when she heard about MA getting married, she wrote to their shared governess: "When I imagine that her fate could be the same as mine, I want to write entire volumes to her about this, and I wish she finds a confidant like me in her new home, for without one, I shall be frank, it drives you to despair, and you endure true martyrdom. (...) I know what it is like, and I pity those who have yet to experience it. (...) If my faith hadn't told me to think of God, I'd have killed myself."

(Luckily for MA, Louis wasn't a bad fellow. Lethargy and sexual ignorance was the worst you could accuse him off, and he was a loyal husband even when people everwhere made her their go-to-hate-person to blame for all that was wrong in France. Not coincidentally, I think, MA refused all escape plans for herself alone, come the revolution, and insisted he had to be saved as well.)

So when Joseph did his "check on my sisters abroad" tour, and came to Naples, this resulted in an absolutely scathing letter about this particular brother-in-law. Starting with his exterior: according to Joseph, Ferdinand was revoltingly ugly to look at, with a shrill voice. He kicked and punched people around (literally), when he was feeling nice pinched and tickled the ladies at court at random, was into pranks involving throwing living mice at ladies and marmelade at courtiers, lived with lots of animals shitting all over the place in his palaces, made people watch him when he relieved himself, wanted to make Joseph the witness when he, Ferdinand, was fingering Joseph's sister Carolina, didn't read, did barely know how to write, couldn't list the ten commandments, had no problem lying, stealing, and having people killed. An utter incomprehension of morality rather than deliberate menace, tough, and a childlike mind.

(Why yes, Naples had a revolution in its future, too. One that was bloodily repressed by Horatio Nelson because Emma asked him to, who in turn wanted to save her friend the Queen. This being after Caroline's sister MA had already been executed, you can imagine what Caroline feared. But the beating down of the revolution was still so brutal that even the anti-revolution-minded British public got queasy and held it against Nelson for a while until more anti Napoleon heroics on his part ensued.)

His sister, otoh, Joseph described only in positive terms, virtuous, smart and modest and while not able to love her husband for obvious reasons, having developed more compassion than loathing for him.

Anyway, since talking to his brother-in-law was pointless in this case and annulment was out (they already had had kids, plus the Naples marriage had had strategic reasons), Joseph basically reccommended that his sister should get rid of Tannucci, the most powerful minister in Naples who profitted from the King's infantile mind leaving a power vaccuum, familiarize herself with all the details and basically take over government herself.

One more bit of trivia: Carolina was accused to have had a lesbian relationship with Emma, Lady Hamilton, though this might just have been the British press having a go at Emma who'd become the go to hate person for them, the one dragging national hero Nelson down, etc. It might also have been a reflection of a popular accusation the French Revolutionaries had flung at her sister (Marie Antoinette had been accused of having slept with at least two of her ladies in waiting in addition to having male lovers). But it's still worth noting three of MT's daughters were rumored to have had female love interests.

A footnote on Joseph and younger sisters who weren't Mimi: he had stood in for Marie Antoinette's various official godparents and had carried her when she was baptized (remember, she was the last but one of MT's children), and he always felt a bit extra protective of her. When MT had died, MA wrote to him: "Crushed by the most dreadful misfortune, I cannot stop crying as I write you. Oh, my brother, oh, my friend! You only are now left to me in a country which is, which will always be, dear to me! Take care of yourself, watch over yourself (…) Adieu, I no longer see what I write. Remember we are friends, allies; love me."

In the end, she outlived Joseph, but she and Louis were already under house arrest by the time Joseph died, and he'd been involved in early rescue plots. Leopold, otoh, was more reluctant about this. (That MA kept trying to contact her Austrian family encouraging them to invade was one of the things condemning her to death in the end, though the terreur being what it was, it probably would have happened regardless.

Edited 2019-10-28 18:20 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for that background, it makes perfect sense but (as you know :) ) it's not something I knew before.

Wow, that Goethe quote is hilarious, I love that wry self-awareness in it. On the contary, that boy was all the more certain to be in the right and to be fair since he acknowledged Maria Theresia's personal goodness, her beauty and her other virtues." Heh :D

...not even gonna touch the pamphlets, though. Blergh.

(Totally randomly, just because your icon reminded me: I consider it all your fault that I am so weirded out that there's a German Lit RPF category for YT and Goethe is in it but not Schiller!)

(Totally randomly, just because your icon reminded me: I consider it all your fault that I am so weirded out that there's a German Lit RPF category for YT and Goethe is in it but not Schiller!)

Same on all counts!

Trust me, I‘m bemused as well. I mean, the Romantics who are listed are an interesting bunch as well, but the connection seems to be this: Bettina von Armin, born Bettina Brentano, was one of our liveliest female writers, but also the Goethe fangirl to end all fangirls. She started a friendship with his mother. After his death, she wrote „Goethe‘s correspondance with a child“ (meaning herself), which is basically RPF with Bettina/Goethe as the main pairing. (How do we know it‘s RPF? Because while he did write her a few letters eventually, she also used letters he wrote to other people (we have the originals), some of the anecdotes her mother told her, and some stuff from his works. There‘s a famous scene where she climbs on his knees and they start to make out. What her husband, who was already her husband when this supposedly happened and definitely was her husband by the time she published this after Goethe‘s death, made of that literature never learned, but then her husband, Achim von Armin, also had an intense passionate friendship with her brother Clemens Brentano.

Anyway: as far as we know, Goethe for a while was amused by Bettina - he‘d had a mild flirtation with her mother when he was young - and did answer a few letters, but when she showed up at Weimar and picked a fight with his wife Christiane, he cut off relations to both her and her husband (who also was a Goethe fan and had written a „your wife insulted my wife“ letter). Important to know background: before becoming Goethe‘s wife, Christiane had lived with him and their son unmarried for 18 years, to the great scandal of Weimar. Christiane being lower middle/upper working class and having worked at a factory for artificial flowers, she was regarded beyond the pale, and Weimar society was much disgruntled when they finally had to receive her as Frau von Goethe. When the Cristiane/Bettina fight happened, everyone other than Goethe sided with Bettina and said it must have been the fault of that vulgar lower class woman, of course.

Deciding which one to believe is left as an exercise to the reader.

wooooow. I am totally taking the first one, since I am a gossipy sensationalist :PP That is amazing.

...disturbing the public order, yeah, the non-nobility did eventually figure that out :P

The love triangle that I've mentioned before. I'll just copy-paste the soap opera verbatim from the dissertation, shall I?

"Algarotti had conquered the hearts of both Lord Hervey and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu during his time in London. This had caused a rivalry between Hervey and Wortley Montagu to win Algarotti's love, a rivalry that became all the more bitter when Algarotti announced his decision to leave the city.

"Hervey and Algarotti had had an instant rapport, a rapport that led Hervey to fall madly in love with Algarotti. Even before Algarotti had decided to leave London, Hervey wrote to the Venetian to say he would never forget him for as long as he lived. Wortley Montagu, too, was entirely enamoured with Algarotti within only two weeks of meeting him, in spite of the considerable age difference between them: Wortley Montagu was forty seven years old, and Algarotti, twenty three, the same age as Wortley Montagu's son.

"In her letters to him, Wortley Montagu tried to impress Algarotti with her learning. She also made use of her letters to confess her love to him. Writing to Algarotti in August of 1736, Wortley Montagu declared that her feelings for him had become too strong for her to hide. By September she told him she would love him all her life in spite of both his impulsiveness and her good sense. She informed him that he should be happy to be loved in so desperately. Whether or not he was happy to be loved with such profundity, Algarotti did not return Wortley Montagu's feelings.

"Algarotti had tried to use romance to get ahead before: during his time in Bologna, he had professed his love to influential promoter of Italian intellectuals Elisabetta Ratta. Although she did not return his feelings, his efforts were not entirely without consequence, as it was she who had paid for his Rime to be published. Perhaps he hoped that his two well-placed London friends, Lord Hervey and Wortley Montagu, would be even more inclined to help him advance his career if their interest in him went beyond admiration of his talents. It is not clear whether Algarotti had actively sought to encourage Hervey or Wortley Montagu to confess their undying love to him. However, once they had, he certainly did not take steps to discourage these feelings in either one of them.

"When Algarotti decided to leave London, Wortley Montagu was plunged into the depths of despair. Hervey, too, was quite broken up about Algarotti's departure. Shortly after Algarotti left, Hervey wrote to Algarotti to say, 'I love you with all my heart and I beg you never to forget the affection I have for you, nor let the affection you have expressed for me grow weaker.' Indeed, Hervey missed Algarotti so terribly that he fell into a depression.

"The circumstances surrounding Algarotti's departure and its aftermath caused a great deal of friction between Wortley Montagu and Hervey. On his last night in London (September 5, 1736), Algarotti dined with Wortley Montagu, at her invitation. Algarotti told Hervey, who had also extended him a dinner invitation for that evening, that he could not accept because he had already agreed to dine with Martin Folkes. However, his choice of companion for his last night in London did not mean that he preferred Wortley Montagu to Hervey. Algarotti had promised to write to Wortley Montagu once he had reached Calais, but did not. Rather, he wrote to Hervey. Having discovered in whose company Algarotti had actually spent his last evening in London in the meantime, and wanting to get revenge on his rival, Hervey boasted about having received this letter to Wortley Montagu. Desperate to hear news of Algarotti, Wortley Montagu coerced Hervey into meeting with her. However, still resentful over not having Algarotti's first choice during his last evening in London, Hervey made certain not to share any information on their mutual love interest at this rendezvous.

"The more he ignored her after leaving London, the more desperate Wortley Montagu's love for Algarotti became. She continued to write him sentiment-laden letters in which she complained bitterly that he never wrote back. When sending him a portrait of herself proved not to be enough to persuade him to write to her, she wrote to express her anger at this latest evidence of his callousness. However, her anger was not great enough to induce her to forget about him; quite the contrary, in fact. In this same letter, she told him that, if he could not arrange to return to London, she would arrange to join him in Italy. She would make good on this promise in 1741, much to Algarotti's chagrin."

Wow, everyone is so...mature!

Well, quite. I knew Lady Mary Wortley Montagu only as a traveller (one of the earliest English female travel describes to the Middle East) and because she supposedly brought the innoculation method (against small pox) from Constantinople to Britain.

BTW, speaking of inocculation, given both Isabella and only a few years later Maria Josepha, Joseph‘s second wife, as well as a child daughter and other relations of MT died of smallpox, she showed her mixture of practicality and ruthlessness the following way after Josepha‘s death:

Dr. Van Swieten (brought by FS to court): There‘s this new method that sounds daring but actually possible and, if working, will immunize your remaining family, including your younger children who are still, well, children.

MT: What‘s the downside?

Dr. Van Swieten: If it doesn‘t work, your children will catch smallpox for sure and possibly die of it.

Clergy: this method is off the devil. Proof: the King of Prussia is for it! Don‘t do it, your highness.

MT: Right. I‘ll be careful.

Clergy: That means you won‘t do it?

MT: No. It means this Dr. Van Swieten will first try the method on these poor orphan boys who will, of course, be financially compensated, whatever happens. If it works, my kids and the rest of the family get inocculated as well, and ditto for the rest of the realm. Start praying for the boys.

Dr. Van Swieten: That would work, but...huh. Not sure what the ethics here are. Thankfully, we‘re living a few centuries before human experimentation becomes a definite crime.

MT: I‘m not volunteering my kids as the first to try this new method on, but I see your reasoning that it needs to be tried. Onwards!

Haha. Yeah, that's pretty much how it went with Jenner's first cowpox vaccine tests at the end of the century. "Here's some kid from the lower classes; let's see how it goes."

Hee, I love MT being all 18th-C not-particularly-concerned-with-ethics-at-all-but-still-meeting-noblesse-oblige-economically. (Also: not listening to the clergy's argument that it's devilish because the King of Prussia is for it! Obviously she didn't hate him, silly essay/bio writers, she just thought he was a hot mess who kept picking wars with her!)

If I had ultimate power and grew up with 18th Century mores, I'd be totally on the human experimentation bandwagon! Perhaps a good thing no one is trusting me with ultimate power :)

NOBODY should have absolute power, especially me. I would never have invented "human experimentation is wrong" morality on my own. It's for science!

Yes, died, and poor EC, losing not one but two brothers in Frederician battles...

Oh, no, it's even worse than that!

For context, the battle of Soor is in 1745, Second Silesian War, Fritz wins the battle but loses his dogs (gets at least one of them back), EC's brother Albrecht dies, Fritz writes condolence letters to two of Albrecht's siblings saying, "I'm only surprised he didn't die sooner!" *facepalm*

Well, from one of the military history books I'm reading: "No less than three ducal brothers of Brunswick were fighting on one side or the other at the battle of Soor in 1745. Ferdinand was a brigade commander on the Prussian left; Ludwig was facing him on the Austrian right; the third brother, the young Albrecht, was killed on the Prussian right."

Fritz, what have you done?!

At least Ferdinand and Ludwig didn't get killed in his battles. And the youngest brother who got killed at Hochkirch was too young to be at Soor.

Re Albrecht, my book provides this additional context:

"Volunteers were individuals who attached themselves to the army or a regiment, without making any claim to pay or rank from the force concerned...Typically the volunteers were types like high-spirited young gentlemen, clerks or schoolmasters in search of adventure, card-sharps, fugitives, or foreign princes completing their knowledge of the world.

"A number of the volunteers made themselves genuinely useful. However, most of the surviving evidence indicates that the tribe was a nuisance. The volunteers got in the way of busy men. They occupied accommodation which might otherwise have been available for the wounded, and their horses chomped through precious forage. They were accused of seeing too little, and getting themselves killed for no particular reason, like young Duke Albrecht of Brunswick at Soor."

I mean, Fritz, I never said you were wrong about this guy, just that announcements of his death purporting to be condolence letters to his nearest and dearest may not the place to go, "See? See?! I told you so!"

Now for some military history background for

cahn.

On the subject of 2 of EC's brothers dying in Frederician battles, Fritz had a pretty high turnover among his officers, because 1) he had high casualties in his battles (one reason people are starting to put question marks around "???great tactician???"), 2) he insisted on his officers leading from the front lines, so they were part of those casualties.

Now, one of the things Fritz got a lot of respect and even acclaim for from contemporaries and posterity was his commitment to leading from the front himself. Not in every engagement, he considered that blatantly irresponsible (you need continuity of leadership to win a war, and the general at the top can't be getting himself killed every day), but he always said, when the going got tough, the men needed to see that he wasn't asking them to do anything he wouldn't do. And he lived on campaign, was always on site, never stayed home and told his army to go win his wars for him.

He was grazed by bullets (and I think was knocked out once), had several horses shot under him, had bullets tear through his clothes...the fact that he didn't get killed in one of his own battles was just sheer dumb luck. This is part of why he was constantly writing wills and writing letters to AW going, "If I kick it, you're in charge." And he was doing all this campaigning with numerous health problems that would have me calling in sick at work.

This kind of behavior was not usual for reigning monarchs in the 18th century. Maybe MT would have done it if she'd had the chance, George II was present at at least one battle that I can name off the top of my head, but it was definitely exceptional.

(It's also dumb luck that none of Fritz's brothers got killed, especially Heinrich. Heinrich, if he wasn't leading his own forces independently--and granted, he was less engagement-happy when it came to deciding to give battle in unfavorable circumstances--was usually on a horse near his brother in the same battles.)

It has been argued that leadership traits like this helped Fritz compensate for his "I see no reason not to engage with the enemy today and lose 10% of the army again but declare it a victory" approach to tactics that had people like Heinrich constantly facepalming. And while delegating to better tacticians would have been an A+ leadership move, imo, it's also worth noting this is the same decision-making process as "I see no reason we can't win this three-and-a-half front war."

Less fun was the part where Fritz used to drag musicians on his campaigns. They weren't meant to go anywhere near combat, but they had to endure the privations of campaigning, and still be expected to perform up to his exacting standards. I gather it was not considered enviable to be selected to accompany the King to war.

Oh, I can't leave this discussion about Fritz fighting in the front lines without bringing up the infamous topic of Mollwitz. It was Fritz's very first battle, he did not show well, and (in part due to what my biographers have attributed to Austrian propaganda), he took a lot of heat for it. What happened was he made bad tactical decisions at the beginning, things started to fall apart, and young Fritz panicked. He was apparently darting here and there and everywhere on the field, in the thick of the fighting, trying to rally everyone, not demonstrating cool-headed leadership.

One of his most experienced generals, Field Marshal von Schwerin, took him aside and said, "Your Majesty, you're going to get yourself killed, and then where will we be? Please leave the battlefield so we can regroup and live to fight another day."

Reluctantly, Fritz let himself be talked into leaving. They were, of course, in enemy territory (you know, like you are when you invade your minding-their-own-business neighbors), so he wandered around for a while, looking for safety and narrowly avoiding being captured, and spent the night hiding out and depressed that he had lost his first battle.

Next day, someone finds him and informs him that Schwerin turned things around and won the battle in his absence, oops.

Friedrich's feelings were, as you can imagined, MIXED. MIXED AS HELL. Obviously, not losing your first battle in your first "I started this war in my arrogant conviction it would be easy" war is great! But while he obviously had to reward Schwerin for his actions, he personally never forgave him, officially for talking him into leaving the field, but really, we all suspect, also for daring to win. (Fritz, possibly not the world's greatest team player.)

Now, I bring this up because Fritz's reputation for courage took a hit as a result of his decision to *leave* a battlefield in the *middle* of the battle. How cowardly! But from what I've gathered from reading various sources, it seems to have been the case rather that Schwerin was worried because he was displaying too much personal courage and not enough leadership, in that he was putting himself in danger for no great benefit and not making good decisions. Regardless, pretty much everyone is convinced Schwerin talked Fritz into leaving not just to save his life, but because he had some better decisions in mind. Which most of us agree Fritz would have found hard to forgive.

My favorite part of this story is that anyone can flee a battle, lose the battle, and feel shame, but being talked into leaving the battle and then having it won without you...the embarrassment much have been something special. ;)

Anyway, Fritz seems to have treated this as a lesson (he called Mollwitz his "school"), and learned a few things.

Btw, apparently even before he started invading, shortly after he inherited in 1740, people were already noticing that he did not want to listen to advice and wanted not just to make all the decisions himself, but to come up with all the ideas himself, and some people were starting to worry, because, as someone pointed out, "He's only 28. He can't possibly have learned everything about everything yet."

Fritz: Never mind that. Onward to Silesia! Also, have I mentioned I teach castrati how to sing?

"No less than three ducal brothers of Brunswick were fighting on one side or the other at the battle of Soor in 1745. Ferdinand was a brigade commander on the Prussian left; Ludwig was facing him on the Austrian right; the third brother, the young Albrecht, was killed on the Prussian right."

Good lord. I mean, I knew in theory the Brunswick family was divided (due to MT's mother being one, which btw made MT the first Habsburg in several generations whose parents had not been closely related), but not to this extreme. Poor EC, I say again.

This kind of behavior was not usual for reigning monarchs in the 18th century.

Quite right. I think G2 was the last British monarch to see battle (the one of Dettingen, part of the War of Austrian Succession, but he wasn't even in command (his son William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland was), plus his horse lost it and ran away, and thus G2 didn't even see most of the battle. Meanwhile, Fritz...

(The last British monarch to actively fight in a battle (which is different from being physically present) had been Richard III, I think, and yes, that's counting whom he lost to, because H7 notoriously did not engage - Richard was caught making headway to him, defeated and killed by the various people intercepting him from reaching Henry.)

That Mollwitz tale is so very, very Fritzian. Re: Austrian propaganda post Mollwitz, well, given Fritz had the army chaplain pick as his sermon good old St. Paul and his "No woman shall raise her voice in the community" as a subject... "Who slandered whom more?" is definitely a subject for the summit. :)

Yeah, I had almost mentioned Richard III and Dettingen, but was not clear on the exact details of Dettingen and to what extent George II vs. Cumberland was directly involved, so I deleted what I had written and replaced it with "not normal." Thank you for clearing that up. Did not know about the horse running away, haha. Even the horse knows this isn't normal! You don't see Louis XV expecting his horse to charge into the front lines! (I imagine the horse thinking.)

Meanwhile, Fritz: Flute at 3 am, paperwork at 4 am, charge into battle at noon, compose poetry at 6 pm, call it a day.

well, given Fritz had the army chaplain pick as his sermon good old St. Paul and his "No woman shall raise her voice in the community" as a subject...

I mean, if you're at war with someone and you're not doing propaganda, you're doing it wrong. ;) Fritz is just extra special with his "religion I don't believe in is cool as long as I can cherry-pick it for misogyny I do." Haha, I ran across this in my military history reading yesterday:

"In leading circles of society in the eighteenth century faith was at one of its lower ebbs, and religious observance in the armies was supported primarily as a means of promoting discipline and cohesion. On the day before the battle of Zorndorf (1758) Lieutentant-General Forcade received the evening orders from Frederick, and then repeated them in his characteristically loud voice:

During this litany the king chatted with Seydlitz, who was looking on with an amused and detached air. In due course Forcade came to the sentence 'Tomorrow, by the grace of God, we shall have a battle!' Frederick was apparently concerned that Seydlitz might think he had turned to God in his time of trial, and he muttered to him 'That's only for the baggage drivers!'"

I look forward to the meeting of the Catholic and the atheist/deist at the summit. ;) Btw, Wilhelmine? Low-key (compared to FW) Protestant or freethinker? (Got distracted from reading her memoirs more closely by Algarotti and military history, sorry not sorry.)

Btw, Wilhelmine? Low-key (compared to FW) Protestant or freethinker?

Freethinker, imo. Her being extremely sarcastic about the older Wittelsbach Empress' "Catholic superstitions" could be written off as anti-Catholic (though she is polite enough about some of the cardinals she meets in Italy), but she's also sarcastic about Dad's Protestant pietist crowd in her memoirs, and she didn't befriend a priest or lay theologian I can think of. When she's worried for someone, she doesn't mention their immortal soul.

Oh, and when she and the Margrave took off to Italy from France, apparantly someone - looking at Ulrike - spread rumors they were going to do a Queen Christina and convert to Catholicism, that this was their reason for going to Italy. Whereupon Wilhelmine, once this rumor reaches her, is all "WTF? As if I would!" (The Margrave, otoh, took the accusation seriously enough to make a quick journey back to Bayreuth (v. v. Protestant), reassure everyone he wasn't going to convert, and go back to Italy where Wilhelmine still was. (Which in the 17th century really meant enduring a lot of trouble for the sake of one denial in person.)

(Now what I really want to know was how Ulrike found out in Sweden about the Erlangen journalist who wrote those anti-Fritz articles. It's not like she could put Fritz on google alert, after all, and for an obscure German written newspaper to reach the Swedish court in time enough for this to be news to Fritz - Ulrike must have been employing a good intelligence service. Oh, and it's also worth pointing it it was her husband who joined the anti-Fritz alliance in the 7 years war.)

I think G2 was the last British monarch to see battle

Yep, that's the context in which I know Dettingen off the top of my head: last British monarch at a battle. (I guess no one counts the Battle of Britain, though possibly they should.)

Meanwhile, Fritz...

Meanwhile, Fritz, at the advanced age of almost 70, barely able to sit his horse, is riding around in the War of the Bavarian Succession in the late 1770s with Heinrich--granted, there was more skirmishing than actual battles, but they could still have gotten killed.

ahahaha Schwerin :D (Poor Schwerin. We have all been there. Well, not with Fritz, but with the manager who thought he knew how to do the job better than us. And who was wrong :P )

I would possibly have wanted Fritz as a pen pal, DEFINITELY not as a boss.

Haha, read a few pages further and couldn't resist sharing this.

"The dining table was the most accessible meeting place between officers of different ranks. Frederick and his senior generals set an example to the rest of Europe, even if Old Fritz was notoriously economical in the matter of wines. A Frenchman discovered as much when he came to sit at the magnificent table of the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick:

"When we arranged ourselves at the table (Lieutenant-General) Prittwitz spoke to me: 'Sit yourself down beside me. My lackey has a bottle of wine in his pocket and we shall drink it together. The king's wine is dreadful.' I rejoined 'Surely you wouldn’t dare to do this if the king was present in person?' 'Believe me, hardly any of us would do otherwise. The king sees it as a joke, and says that they are the equivalent of so many bottles spared for his cellar.'"

Lol, Fritz.

This reminds me, btw, of Louis XV getting all huffy about Prussian upstart Frederick daring to write to him as an equal, and cuttingly referring to Fritz as the "Margrave of Brandenburg," which makes me laugh every time I see it. Sorry, dude, you have the ancestors, but Fritz gets it done.

LOLOLOL. So I was glancing at some of Fritz's political correspondence. Fritz, from the very first letter to Louis that's in this collection, addresses him as "Monsieur mon Frère" and continues to do so in every single subsequent letter that I clicked on. And he signs himself "de Votre Majesté le bon frère Federic." This is not too long before Fritz totally ditches his French allies.

In contrast, Peter III the irrational fanboy is merely "Votre Majesté Impériale" all the way through. No frère-ing about it. Hmmm.

Also, I had to go look up that first letter to Peter, aka the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg. Here it is:

"Votre Majesté Impériale voudra bien [agréer] que je La félicite sur Son avènement au trône. Je L'assure que de tous les compliments qu'Elle recevra sur ce sujet, il n'en est aucun aussi sincère que le mien, ni que personne Lui souhaite plus de prospérité que moi, ni ne désire plus de rétablir la bonne et ancienne harmonie entre les deux États que de malheureuses intrigues de mes ennemis ont troublée pour des avantages étrangers. En un mot, Votre Majesté Impériale me trouvera dans les dispositions où Elle peut me souhaiter a Son égard. Je Lui demande de même la continuation de Sa précieuse amitié." (It wouldn't let me copy-paste, so I had to retype, so please excuse typos.)

Fritz: I've been fighting a three-front war for almost 6 years. I don't need to spell out why NO ONE stands to gain more from your accession than I do. I eagerly await your army not attacking mine any more. PLEEE-EEE-EEEAAAAASE. ~~Willing to marry you if the Joseph negotiations fall through. I hear you might have picked up some of my predilections, and your wife seems to have the sex and heir-begetting part covered without you.~~

ahahahaha this is GREAT. I really like seeing the actual letter and your synopsis of it :D

Glad you enjoyed. :)

I have now proposed consolidating this with our other crackfic, because the crackier the better. :D

For the record, I have no evidence that Peter was actually bisexual or homosexual, or even considered to be by contemporaries, I was just making a joke about the (rather homophobic) miniseries for maximum crackiness. Irl, it's true he wasn't great at scoring with his wife (iirc, he doubted whether his purported son Paul was even his), but that was because he had at least one mistress I know of whom he preferred to his arranged marriage.

Okay, here's the Algarotti summary! His life and his interactions with Fritz, as gleaned from a dissertation plus their correspondence. With apologies to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who is much cooler than she comes across as in Algarotti's story.

Also, small correction to my previous comment: he is from Venice and moved to Padua. Among other places. You'll see.

Intro
Algarotti: *writes books, poems, essays about philosophy, art, architecture, physics, you name it*
Algarotti: I will be as famous as Frederick the Great! My name will live alongside yours for all of time, Your Majesty.
All of the other reindeer: You'll go down in history!

1726-1739
Algarotti: Time to find my dream job. No worries! How hard can it be?
Algarotti in Venice: Ugh, too much family, always wanting me to get married and go into the family business. Moving on...
Algarotti in Bologna: Can't get a job here either. Third city's the charm, right?
Algarotti in Padua: Why so pedantic and conceited, everyone?
Algarotti in Florence: Much better! Oh, no, everyone here is boring and pretentious. Bunch of has-beens who don't realize they haven't been All That (TM) since the Renaissance.
Algarotti in Rome: I <3 Rome. Oh, shit, religion is a thing in Rome! I forgot.
Algarotti in Paris: The salons! The other intellectuals! The...censorship. Dammit.
Algarotti in Cirey: Voltaire! And Émilie du Châtelet! Three brilliant minds under the same roof! Living with Voltaire! *double take* Living with Voltaire? *sigh*
Algarotti in London: Everyone wants to have sex with me! Who shall I choose from this embarrassment of riches? Okay, not crazy stalker lady Mary Wortley Montagu. How about the guy who's buddy-buddy with the Queen, then I'll be sure to get a job. Lord Hervey! Let's get it on.
Algarotti in London: Still nothing? I thought that was a sure fire path to success!
Algarotti in Milan: Why won't the Italians ever freaking hire me? Oh, right, because I'm on the Church's banned books list. Back to London, then. At least they have freedom of the press.
Algarotti in Paris: Crazy stalker lady in London, you want to pay for the rest of my trip?
Algarotti in London: Still not sleeping with you, crazy stalker lady. Oh, no, the Queen died. No jobs for me.

1739
St. Petersburg: I hear there's a new Tzarina! And everything is modern since Peter the Great.
Algarotti in St. Petersburg: Not so modern you want to hire me. Gotcha.
Algarotti on the way back to London: Let's hit every city on the way, just in case.
Algarotti in Danzig, Dresden, Leipzig, Potsdam, Berlin, Hamburg, Rheinsberg: Anyone want to hire me? Anyone? I'm the second most famous intellectual in Europe! You know you want me!
Algarotti in Rheinsberg: OMG, someone wants to hire me! He's my age and writes poems about how great I am and wants me to read drafts of this pamphlet he's working on--something about ruling justly and having enlightened foreign policy--and he's going to be a totally awesome intellectual king, and I think he might even want me that way too. *heart eyes* Lemme know when your dad dies and you actually have some money, Your Highness!
Algarotti in London: *checking his mail every day*

1740
FW: *dies*
Fritz: Come quickly, Algarotti! All the leading intellectual lights of Europe are coming to my court. It's going to be the BEST.
Algarotti: *comes quickly* I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Fritz: Okay, now that everyone's here, we'll start the intellectual party as soon as I'm done conquering Silesia. Brb.

1741
Algarotti: Um? Are you done conquering yet? It's just the one province, right?
Other famous intellectuals: Yeah, what he said.
Fritz: Who's paying who here? I'll be done when I'm done.
Algarotti: Okay, but I came here on my quest for eternal fame and glory. I don't care how many titles you give me, I'm leaving if I don't get something useful to do.
Other famous intellectuals: Again, what he said. Maupertuis wants to know what happened to all the plans to make him president of the Academy of Sciences, O Enlightened Monarch.
Fritz: Okay, fine. You can help me win my war, since you have, like, no patience whatsoever.
Fritz: Now, Algarotti, you're the second most famous intellectual in Europe, and everybody knows you work for me. So go to Turin, SECRETLY, don't let anyone know you're there, suss out the political situation for me, SECRETLY, see if the King of Sardinia's open to an alliance with Prussia, and above all, don't let anyone know you're doing a job for me. Got it?

Secret Mission Interlude
Newspapers: *report on celebrity Algarotti's every movement*
Everyone in Europe: *follows Algarotti's trip from Berlin to Turin in the papers*
Everyone in Europe: Algarotti seems to be hanging out in Turin a lot these days. Must be doing work for King Frederick. Probably trying to get Prussia an alliance with the King of Sardinia.
Fritz: OMFG this is going to be just like the last time I tried to have a Very Secret Plan and everybody knew about it. Never mind the alliance, Algarotti, just come back to Berlin!
Algarotti: I finally get entrusted with something important, he ties my hands with a set of impossible constraints, and then I'm recalled before I can actually get anything done. SO HUMILIATING. Could my year get any worse?
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Hi! Remember me? I followed you to Italy so we could be together forever.
Algarotti: What the--Do I need a restraining order? Oh, boy. Crazy stalker lady or micromanaging boss? Decisions, decisions.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: My son is your age, but I just know we're meant to be!
Algarotti: Micromanaging boss it is!

1741, back in Berlin
Algarotti: Anyone else bored? I'm bored.
Other famous intellectuals: I'm bored.
Fritz: Seriously, everyone just sit tight. MT's going to give up this province any minute, and then I'll come home, and it'll be fun enlightenment times just like I promised when I invited you.
Time: *passes*
Intellectuals: *twiddle thumbs*
Fritz: ANY MINUTE!

1741, Silesia
Fritz: Meanwhile, I'm getting tired of just having military men to talk to. Maupertuis, come join me on campaign. I hear you're bored.
Maupertuis: *gets captured by Austrians, then released*
Fritz: Oops. Still bored, though? :D
Maupertuis: With all due respect, sir, this is not what I signed up for.
Algarotti: Oh, hell no. Dresden, here I come! The King of Saxony wants an art collector.
Maupertuis: Paris for me.
Algarotti and Fritz: *have a snippy exchange of letters, then silence for five years*

1742
Algarotti in Dresden: *trying to get to Italy to buy art for the King of Saxony, but it's not safe to travel because SOMEONE started a war in central Europe*

1743-1747
Algarotti in Italy: *looking for art*
Algarotti in Italy: Frickin' King of Saxony.
Algarotti in Italy: *looking for a better job*

1745-1747
Fritz: *finally wins the second Silesian War, builds Sanssouci, promises never to go to war again*
Fritz: NOW will you all come back? I've got this lovely new palace for us. It'll be just like Rheinsberg, but with money!
Intellectuals: *cautiously trickle back*
Algarotti in Italy: Well, I don't like my current job and I can't find a better one here, so I guess maybe Fritz has gotten the warmongering out of his system. It was so promising in Rheinsberg, and the new job offer *is* for everything I ever wanted.

1747-1748
Algarotti: Oh, man, on the one hand I finally got my dream job, but on the other, my boss is...Fritz. Fritz, can you pay me to go to Italy? There's, um, an archaeological dig in Herculaneum that is of *great interest* to both of us that I should totally observe so I can report back to you.
Fritz: You seem suspiciously eager to get back to the place you're always complaining about, but sure.
Algarotti in Bologna: I can see ~~Russia from my house~~ Herculaneum from here. Not trying to get a job at any of the academic institutes in Bologna, pinky swear!
Fritz, in a letter to Wilhelmine: He doesn't know any more about the Herculaneum digs than you or I do. He could have studied them just as well from here. (actual quote)
Fritz: Get back here, Algarotti. You're not fooling anyone.

1749-1753
Algarotti in Berlin: Sorry I can't come to Potsdam, I'm really sick. I still work for you and you should still pay me, though.
Algarotti everywhere else in Prussia at every possible opportunity: Sorry I can't come to Potsdam. Still sick. Still love you, though! (Would love you more if you would stop telling me what to do all the time.)
Algarotti in Potsdam: *still trying to get that elusive job in Italy*

1752-1753
Voltaire in Potsdam: *happens*
Fritz in Potsdam: *happens*
Algarotti in Potsdam: *watches in mounting horror*
Algarotti in Potsdam: Still no job prospects in Italy, but anything is better than Fritz/Voltaire.
Algarotti in Potsdam: Your Majesty, I totally love you, but I have some really pressing personal affairs in Italy. Can I get a hall pass?
Fritz: I think you're lying, but you did come back last time when you were lying, so sure. Bring me some marble from Herculaneum when you return, k?

1753, after the hall pass expires
Fritz: *tapping foot*
Algarotti still in Italy: Sorry, super sick!
Fritz: You know the doctors there aren't any better than here, right?
Algarotti still in Italy: I will come to you soon if it KILLS me. Which my doctors say traveling might, so please understand you might not see me for a little while.

1754
Fritz: Any day now?
Algarotti still in Italy: Any day now!

1755
Algarotti still in Italy: We were really nice to your sister.
Fritz: I heard! Also, I still miss you. Just putting that out there.

1756
Fritz: Well, um, there seems to be a war on here, but I'll invite you again as soon as it's done.
Algarotti still in Italy: Good luck! Not sure how much help I'd be, think I'll just sit it out here. With my bad health, you know.

1756-1763
Algarotti still in Italy: Wow, you seem really busy with that war. Keep kicking butt. I'll keep reading about it in the papers, here in Italy.
Fritz: It's looking like it's gonna be a while. Glad you and your countrymen are being entertained by my adventures. Lucky you, I wish I could be a spectator instead of a participant.
Algarotti still in Italy: You got this. P.S. Still love you! (Plz don't have your agents arrest me outside your country like you did Voltaire.)
Fritz: Not sure why you won't come back, but love you too!

1763
Algarotti still in Italy: I had to move to Pisa for the warm air. *cough cough choke hack* But I heard you won the Seven Years' War! Congrats! You're the best!
Fritz: "I hope you fare as well with your lungs as we did against the Austrians." (actual quote) This doesn't mean you're never coming back to Prussia, does it? Oh, no. Please don't die. Everyone I love keeps dying.

March 9, 1764
Algarotti still in Italy: Really wish I could see you again, but, you know, my health. You understand.

June 1, 1764
Fritz: You wish you could see me? Really?! I have an idea! We have this great doctor here in Prussia, who recently cured a cough just like yours! Nothing would make me happier than if you came and got better. I have a whole list of things we could do together. P.S. I'm really worried about you.

June 12, 1764
Fritz: Dear Algarotti's friend, thank you for letting me know our mutual friend Algarotti died of tuberculosis a month before my last letter. That shaky handwriting was making me nervous, but I was still hoping to see him again someday. Please set up a marble monument to his memory, then tell me where and how much money to send you as reimbursement.

Epilogue
Fritz: So, Algarotti my old friend, I heard you wanted your name to live alongside mine. Here's a grave monument in Pisa where my name is really big and yours is somewhat smaller. That should do it!
Posterity: Algarotti who?

Starring: Algarotti the Perpetual Job Hunter and Fritz the Jerkass Woobie.

One thing to keep in mind about all this is that the dissertation in question is specifically about networking techniques in the intellectual sphere in eighteenth-century Europe, with Algarotti as the case study. It's not a bio of Algarotti. So the whole focus is his job search. Aside from that love triangle with Hervey and Wortley Montagu, which the author depicts as a ruthless endeavor solely motivated by the need to get a good-paying position in London, you get no sense of Algarotti's personal life. So if Fritz was ever more than a paycheck to him, you're not going to get it out of this dissertation.

Another interesting point: Algarotti seems to get up to relatively little after 1753, compared to his extremely detailed and eventful career up to that point. Both the dissertation writer and various Fritz biographers are like, "Well, maybe he was as sick as he said he was. You know, he did die 11 years later. But actually we think he was just trying to get away from Fritz."

But not only does he stay the hell out of Prussia (which, granted, I'm sure his decision to be sick in Italy instead of in Potsdam was motivated by the whole Voltaire/Fritz implosion plus general Fritz-ness), but his output and activity seem to decline, and what he does produce does seem to correlate with gaps in his complaints about his health. That can't be all Fritz.

Poor everybody. /o\

Voltaire! And Émilie du Châtelet! Three brilliant minds under the same roof! Living with Voltaire! *double take* Living with Voltaire? *sigh*

LOL. Thank you so much for this golden overview. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau would like to complain about Algarotti's calling himself the second most famous intellectual in Europe. Whose fanboys were running the French Revoultion, he'd like to know?)

(Giacomo Casanova is not sure whether or not he counts as an intellectual, though "man of letters" is certainly one description for him; he'd like to point out that a) he was better at job-hunting than Algarotti, from inventing the lottery in France to ending up as a librarian in Bohemia as a retirement job, b) his memoirs are still read, which is more than can be said about either the majority of Voltaire's or Rousseau's oeuvre, and c) his name is certainly better known than anyone else's.)

(Dr. Johnson harrumphs and privately wonders whether his fame is too centred on the Anglosaxon world to make him enter this particular competition. THe answer is yes.)

Lady Mary Wortley Montague also briefly showed up in my MT biographies since she, tireless traveller who she was, was convinced MT's police agents had it in for her and were observing her the entire time she was in MT's territories. What with, you know, those sex policing rules. No note of the Austrian police on Lady Mary has survived, though, if they did take any.

Hey, self-promotion is part of marketing, and if there's one thing Algarotti was into, it was marketing! (At least according to the dissertation about marketing techniques.)

No note of the Austrian police on Lady Mary has survived, though, if they did take any.

*spits drink*

Algarotti's not big on sex policing *cough*, but would like to know if the sex police maybe have a sideline in restraining orders. :P

Okay, have now read Lady Mary's wiki entry to brush up on my (very vague) knowledge of her and am mightily amused that her wiki entry has Algarotti and Hervey duking it out for her favour. To quote:

In the same year, Mary met and fell in love with Count Francesco Algarotti, who competed with an equally smitten John Hervey for her affections.

Lady Mary wrote many letters to Algarotti in English and in French after his departure from England in September 1736. In July 1739 Lady Mary departed England ostensibly for health reasons declaring her intentions to winter in the south of France. In reality, she left to visit and live with Algarotti in Venice. Their relationship ended in 1741 after Lady Mary and Algarotti were both on a diplomatic mission in Turin.

....so, Mildred, your comment?

...This was going to be a short comment, but it turned into the history of everything ever, as per my usual. Anyway, here goes.

Lol. Well, the Algarotti dissertation has quotes from her letters indicating that, while Algarotti may or may not have encouraged her attentions on his first trip to London when he thought there was a chance of getting a job through her, after that it's all her complaining that she's always writing to him and sending him her unsolicited portrait and he never writes her back, so...maybe they're both right? Maybe during his first stay in London, the two men were competing for her interest, and afterward, Lady Mary and Lord Hervey for Algarotti's?

But even the Lady Mary's wiki entry has *her* writing letters to Algarotti, and not the other way around. And "In reality, she left to visit and live with Algarotti in Venice. Their relationship ended in 1741 after Lady Mary and Algarotti were both on a diplomatic mission in Turin" is correct but misleading. She left in 1739 with the intention of living with him in Venice, but he was in St. Petersburg at the time. She didn't see him for two more years, and here's the chronology of that encounter:

January 1741: Algarotti arrives in Turin from Berlin.
March 1741: Lady Mary arrives in Turin.
May 1741: Lady Mary leaves Turin.
13 June 1741: Algarotti is already back in Berlin.

So they were not exactly living together. In fact, the dissertation has a footnote: "In this year, Algarotti spent some months in Turin in the guise of secret diplomat for Frederick II (the Great). Wortley Montagu also happened to be in the city at this time. Accordingly, the two met up. The details of this meeting are unclear; however, it must have been quite unpleasant, as the two did not communicate with each other at all for several years thereafter." Also, if she was on a diplomatic mission to Turin, that's news to me. They were certainly not on the same diplomatic mission, as Wikipedia implies*.

Furthermore, she wrote a letter to him in May 1741 stating that "the prism of his eyes had allowed her to see into his soul, and although she saw many beautiful fantasies there, when combined, they formed indifference. This would be the last letter exchanged between the two for fifteen years."

Googling doesn't want to seem to yield up a copy of the letter in question. Gutenberg has her letters only from 1708 to 1720, archive.org has a selection that doesn't include Algarotti (I wonder if it excises declarations of love to a man she's not married to), and the complete edition of her letters on oxfordscholarlyeditions.com requires a subscription. However, I can view the list of letters there, and I see 26 from her to him and 0 from him to her in the 1721-1751 period, then 6 from her to him in 1752-1762 and 1 from him to her in 1757.

Interesting, the 1861 foreword to the first volume of the extremely incomplete edition on archive.org says that the 1837 compiler, her great-grandson, had taken many liberties with omitting passages, combining several letters, or passages from several letters, to form one letter, adding unsupported dates, etc. So this is an extremely corrupt edition. In which I don't see a single letter to Algarotti. Man, that rococo frankness did not fare well in the Victorian era, did it?

...And, reading to the end of the foreward, the 1861 editor quotes the 1837 editor, saying, "With regard to the freedom of expression in which Lady Mary indulged...[1837 great-grandson editor] justly remarks that she wrote 'at a period when the feeling upon such subjects was by no means so nice as it now is; and that expressions, with which we now find great fault, might then be used by persons of the greatest propriety of conduct, and would only be considered as painting freely, and more keenly ridiculing, the vices and follies of the society in which the writer found herself, and not as used for the purpose of indulging in grossness of language.' It requires but small familiarity with the originals of the private correspondence of those days, to perceive that Lady Mary's standards of delicacy and propriety were simply those of her time."

Yeeeaaah, I'm gonna go with "all the Algarotti letters got cut from the 1837 edition because she was totes married to another man when she decided to go chasing him." That said, even without Algarotti, she appears to have stayed abroad for the next twenty years anyway, only returning to London in 1761 when she heard of her husband's death, there to die herself in 1762. (Algarotti to follow them into death shortly, as we know, in 1764.)

In conclusion, documentary evidence seems to be that she wanted Algarotti more than the other way around post 1736. Before that, it's hard to tell.

Also, the dates on her 1736 letters to Algarotti after he left England are kind of hilarious. I really wish I could read them.

April 1736, May 1736, August 1736, September 1736, 10 September 1736, 20 September 1736, 29 September 1736, 21 October 1736, December 1736.

I can't view it, but the December 1736 letter is apparently the one where she 1) got upset that he wouldn't write to her even after she sent him a portrait of herself, 2) announced that if he wouldn't come back to London, she'd go to Italy to be with him.

* Can you imagine Fritz sending her to Turin to spy on the King of Sardinia for him? "Pretend you're obsessed with Algarotti, but tell me if the King is open to an alliance. For hundreds of years, no one will ever suspect you're spying for me. Perfect cover story!" I can almost hear the Prussian cyber agents from the beyond typing. "Curses, Wikipedia is onto our boss's Cunning Plan!"

Edited (pronoun fix) 2019-11-04 12:28 (UTC)

Heh, I realize your sources (and you) are choosing what data to display, but this is hilarious. "the prism of his eyes had allowed her to see into his soul, and although she saw many beautiful fantasies there, when combined, they formed indifference. This would be the last letter exchanged between the two for fifteen years." lol.

omg, yeah, the dates on those letters and the last in that sequence apparently being the one where she complains about him not writing to her... hee.

Context for the prism metaphor: optics (Newtonian optics specifically) was one of Algarotti's main interests, and one of his main accomplishments was reproducing the experiments that backed Newton's findings and publicizing his results. He was the first person in Italy to be able to reproduce Newton's results. Other people had failed and concluded Newton was wrong. Algarotti got his hands on some really high-quality prisms and reproduced the results.

OK, that's actually really cool. Go Algarotti!

Well... I've heard of Rousseau (possibly even had to read a little of him in high school?) and I hadn't heard of Algarotti until now :P Of course, some of this has to do with, well, the US being a Thing, which is hardly Algarotti's fault :)

I think that at least Candide is more read than Casanova's memoirs? If only because of Bernstein :) Though I can't argue that Casanova's name is better known than anyone else's!

Oh, but that's what I'm saying! NO ONE's heard of Algarotti any more. He went from celebrity status in the 18th century to "Posterity: Algarotti who?" in like a hundred years.

Seriously, I had never heard of Algarotti except in the Fritz context--and that was minimal enough that, while I must have read about him 20 years ago, I did not remember him at all from that period, and had to relearn who he was from scratch this time around. The dissertation I summarized (written in 2010) is the closest thing to a bio that's been written about him in any language since 1913, and the only one ever in English, and it states that the only other biography about him was written in 1770. There've been a few monographs on his works, and he gets occasional (usually unimpressed) entries in biographical dictionaries. And that's it for Mr. Used to Really Be Someone.

Poor Algarotti. Maybe if he'd been better at job-hunting...or Fritz had been a better boss.

The dissertation's final chapter is on how the mighty have fallen, and it turns out some of it has to do with Algarotti being a polymath instead of a specialist (I sympathize; if I were a specialist, I'd be a lot more famous now too), but much of it has to do with the period when Italian nationalism took off. You see, Algarotti the cosmopolitan wasn't considered sufficiently patriotic, always living abroad, working for foreign monarchs, getting art out of Italy and into foreign collections, and ick, that spying on the King of Sardinia for Old Fritz.

Edited 2019-11-01 23:38 (UTC)

Yeah, I sympathize with the polymath stuff too :P Huh, interesting about Italian nationalism, I could see how that might do a number on his reputation. Interesting though that a dissertation about sales techniques has to end with "...and these techniques worked for a while but then completely fell apart once he was dead."

On the other hand, invade Silesia and you'll be famous FOREVER!

"...and these techniques worked for a while but then completely fell apart once he was dead."

Yep, sometimes fate screws you over. Especially when a major standard for fame is: "How much did you aggrandize your country?" Fritz: lots. Algarotti: not so much.

omg, this is amazing.

"I hope you fare as well with your lungs as we did against the Austrians."

Oh man, Fritz. This makes me... not feel quite as offended about his condolence letter to Heinrich, actually. He can sure turn a phrase.

It's an interesting choice of words, that's for sure. Yes, he's replying to a letter congratulating him on his victory, but I definitely raised an eyebrow when I read it.

Absolutely no citation given for this anecdote, but it was entertaining enough to pass on:

"'Contributions' were a form of blackmail, whereby an invading force compelled a town or district to make a heavy payment under threat of physical force. This procedure was a recognised one, and the local authorities usually hastened to supply the cash or promissory notes. When the Austrian general Haddik descended on Berlin in 1757 he is said to have demanded not only a large sum of money but two dozen gloves for Maria Theresa. When, however, the gift arrived in Vienna, it was discovered that the Berliners had taken their revenge by providing only left-hand gloves. This, according to legend, was the origin of the custom among Austrian officers of carrying their right-hand gloves in their left hand, so as not to put themselves above their sovereign."

Hee, this is great. I am absolutely here for unsupported anecdote! (though only if it's actually cited as unsupported anecdote, thank you for being better than the books :P )

*okay, transferring my last replies to here, where they're both more readable and more accessible*

You're very welcome. Re: Franzl, I would like to know how the original conversation went, pre- and post invading:

MT: So, you've met him. What can we expect?
FS: He's completely different from his fright of a father, very cultured, loves the arts, maybe a bit sharp-tongued, but he's funny, and he told me he's planning on writing a book on how a king as to rule morally and not wage wars other than defensive ones! Just the pal to have among the German princes!

Silesia: *gets invaded*

MT: ....
FS: Or not? For now, at least.

Sex policing: yeah, that's one one thing even contemporary admirers found hard to stomach, let alone later biographers. Though Fritz actually thought it to be in her favour, since this is what he meant when he said "The Queen despises whores" (whereas most other women are whores for him, not that he didn't also call MT one when it suited him). Mind you, it gets even more complicated than that in the famous young Marie Antoinette versus Dubarry case, which you may have heard about but which has a lesser known post script, so I shall recount it here:

Teenage MA arrives at Versailles, marries young teenage Louis, while his grandfather, Louis XV., is still ruling, with the last of his famous mistresses, the Countess of Dubarry, at his side. MA and young Louis (see earlier entry about Joseph, improvised sex counsellor) don't have sex. Old Louis as per usual does, a lot. So does Madame Dubarry. Who is hated by her lover's adult and unmarried daughters, nicknamed "the aunts". (No, really, centuries pre Margaret Atwood.)

Aunts *scheme*: Surely the daughter of MT will not greet Dad's slut? You could totally impress everyone by showing that whore who she really is, MA!
Easily influenced teen MA: *snobs Dubarry in public by not speaking to her*
Dubarry: I worked for this position. Lover, make the funny little carrot (*that*s what she called her in rl*) say hello to me, will you?
Louis XV: Say hello to my mistress, sweetie, will you?
Aunts: Don't do it! You're a Habsburg and the daughter of the most moral woman of Europe, she's a slut!
MA: Sorry, I can't.
Louis XV *summons Austrian Ambassador*: Tell MT to tell her daughter to say hello to my mistress, or the alliance is off.
MT *writes*: For God's sake, say hello to the mistress. I need that alliance. Your brother has just met Fritz at Neisse and is still starry eyed.
MA: But Mom! She's a slut! Surely you of all the people are not sanctioning talking to sluts!
MT: I would never malign my beloved husband, your late father and thus I won't mention I did talk to his mistress, before and after his death, but I will very cryptically say that sometimes needs must, some monarchs have their weaknesses and are still good people, and also, needs must, and did I mention I need that alliance? Say hello to Dubarry, that's all you need to do for your mother and your mother's empire.
MA: I'm very disappointed in you, Mom, but fine. *gets ready, but at the last moment does not talk to Dubarry and snubs her in public again, because she's 15 and a brat*
Louis XV: Should I write to Fritz instead?
MT: *unleashes her full written wrath on her fifteenth kid*
MA: *caves and says exactly seven words to Dubarry, in public* "There are many people tonight at Versailles."
Louis XV: Dear MT, we're good and staying allies.

Flashforward to three years later: Louis XV dies. Dubarry, as was the custom also when previous French kings died, is sent away during his dying so he can confess and is not in a state of sin. However, these ladies were then pensioned off, whereas...

MA: Dear Mom, am proudly writing my first letter as Queen now. Among many new things I'm doing is this: Making sure that slut Dubarry finally gets what's coming to her! Should have seen her face when she had to leave! No more creature comforts for you, whore!
MT: For God's sake. "I don't wish to hear from you about Dubarry again unless you write words of compassion." (Literal quote.) She's just lost everything, given she's been a mistress she's facing hellfire when she dies unless she repents, so you can show her some kindness now as a good Christian should.
MA: I don't get you, Mom. I really don't get you.

re: Joseph, you already know he was Fritz-style unkind to his second wife. (And admitted later when she was dead that he could at least have been civil, not least since the consequence of his behaviour was that the courtiers took their cue from him and she was utterly isolated.) He also could be high handed, when trying to imitate Fritz in his foreign policy he invited disaster (see previous post; this almost war about the Bavarian Succession is but one example), and his reforms had this problem:

Joseph: Having Latin as the official language in schools bars the peasantry and a lot of the middle class from understanding anything. Therefore, I shall make German the official school language, thus opening the realm of learning to all the people, not just nobles and a few outstanding middle class scholars! The language of the people, for the people! Yay!

Hungarians, Czechs and assorted other East Europeans ruled over by the Habsburgs: What do you mean by "the people", asshole? We didn't save your mother's throne back in the day for you to impose German on us! HABSBURG LINGUISTIC TYRANNY!

Joseph: *gets never crowned in Hungary*

Joseph: One of the great evils of an Ancien Regime court is that ordinary citizens can't speak to their ruler, except for a very few times when Mom wants to make a point. They have to pay a dozen courtiers and civil servants before their petitions even have a chance of advancing, many can't afford that, and all the time, the nobles are getting fat with the bribery money. I shall therefore radically reform the entire system by making myself available directly to the people in halls, floors and on the streets and by contrast ignore any nobles bringing petitions. After all, the nobility is just a tiny percentage of my people, and I need to be there for all the others.

Nobles: Joseph, you asshole! We hate you forever! This is still a monarchy, buddy, and we're financing most of your army. See where you'll be without us.

Leopold *writes letter to friend*: Saw my brother Joe speaking to a dirty peasant while going up the stairs. Ew, ew, ew. I'm pro reform, too, but for sensible ones, that avoid pissing off everyone. For God's sake!

Ordinary people: ...does that mean we've paid Count X and Secretary Y for nothing and the Emperor still hasn't heard our case? This new Emperor is a tyrant!

Joseph: A major problem in this country is the stranglehold the Catholic church has on everything, including our education. I mean, just look at Mom. She was brilliant, don't get me wrong! I argued with her all the time while we were co-ruling, but I still admire the hell out of her, and by the way, Poldl, you snidely writing she was half senile near the end was a) a jerk move, and b) dead wrong, as I'm in the best position to know - look at that stunt she pulled with Catherine and Fritz when I was trying to take over Bavaria. That was in the last year of her life. Also, you weren't there, I was, you were in Tuscany. Anyway, as I was saying: Mom. Imagine what she'd have been like if she hadn't been educated by the most old fashioned Jesuit Granddad could find! So: I'm decreeing that education of the young, nobles and peasants alike, should be put into non-clerical hands. Any priest who does still want to teach needs to go to a non-clerical seminar first and qualify just like a layman would. Also, I want teaching priests swear loyalty to the state. Oh, and any orders who don't make themselves socially useful by running hospitals or caring for the poor get shut down and run out of the country.

Church: Clearly, Joseph is a secret atheist and may be the antichrist. Also, who do you think has been propping up your house all this time, buddy? Do you really think the Habsburgs would still be ruling without us? Preachers, tell everyone what's going on!

People: The Emperor is a godless fiend who wants us to give our children into the hands of the Freemasons who'll teach them evil rituals! I'm not sending my kid into one of those schools! Never!

Leopold: Congratulations, bro. You've now managed to piss off the nobles, the church and the people. Anyone left?

Joseph: Yes, Mr. Mozart, you may write a German language opera. In fact, I've been thinking. More people should write German language operas. As patron of the arts of this realm, I'm renaming the Burgtheater (literal: Castle theatre, used until that point exclusively by the imperial family and the nobility) into Deutsches National Theater, because that was one area Fritz was completely wrong in, and I'm determined to encourage German language culture in all departments, thus making the enjoyment of opera and theatre accessible to ordinary people!

Italian composers: Fuck no!

Edited 2019-10-22 09:01 (UTC)

I actually did not know about Marie Antoinette vs. Dubarry (I knew about both of those figures, but had not heard about both of them together -- my French history of this time is better than most of my abysmal history, but actually lower on the gossipy sensationalism, lol)

MA: *caves and says exactly seven words to Dubarry, in public* "There are many people tonight at Versailles."
Louis XV: Dear MT, we're good and staying allies.

This totally made me laugh out loud and I can't even fully articulate why, I think because it's so anticlimactic and yet, well, solves the problem!

(You know I'm going to ask you about MT and talking to Franz' mistress now, right? :P I mean, you did mention that she gave her a pension as Franz had requested, but that seems easier in some ways than actually talking to her...?)

MT: For God's sake. "I don't wish to hear from you about Dubarry again unless you write words of compassion." (Literal quote.) She's just lost everything, given she's been a mistress she's facing hellfire when she dies unless she repents, so you can show her some kindness now as a good Christian should.
MA: I don't get you, Mom. I really don't get you.

This is sooooo fascinating. Go MT! (although MA has a point! if you're going to sex police everyone then you can't be surprised when your kid learns some things from it!)

I gotta admit all of this (except for his second wife, oh man, mildred is right, all of history is just everyone having PTSD at each other :( ) is making me even more kind of wanting to pat the head of Woobie Rational Fanboy Joseph. He's so clueless, awwwww!

(also yay Zauberflöte, gotta admit that puts me on your side, Joseph)

all of history is just everyone having PTSD at each other :(

Exactly what I was thinking when

selenak reported Fritz offering to kidnap tall shepherd guy (remember, he personally thought the Potsdam Giants were a waste of money and military resources and made them not a thing as soon as he became king): "Please accept this peace offering, Dad! Please don't send my newest BF(F) Fredersdorf to the other side of the country/execute him/whatever else you might be thinking!"

I knew about the Marie Antoinette and Dubarry thing from the Rose of Versailles anime! :D Though it sounds like the anime was actually closer to history there than I was expecting.

I keep hearing about Rose of Versailles, though I've never watched it. Googling tells me Dubarry is presented as a villain, though? That's somewhat unfair. Once she's made it to the top, she was generous and used her influence to persuade the King for mercy a lot. (Unlike Pompadour, though, she was not interested in politics and not able to create a party for herself, either; she just listend to bad luck stories.) She didn't have a beef with young MA beyond wanting that open acknowledgment, either, and "funny little carrot" is hardly a vicious nickname. (Especially if you consider Dubarry really came from the streets and had to work in a brothel as a young teen before finding a sponsor willing to get her out of there; I'm sure she could have found far worse things to say if she'd wanted to.)

It's been years since I watched the anime/read the manga, but IIRC, Dubarry wasn't presented as a villain -- at most an antagonist in that arc. The way you described it didn't contradict my impression/recollection of it.

Anyway, I don't expect historical accuracy from anime, and I was surprised it was that historically-based!

It's yay Entführung aus dem Serail, actually, Joseph sadly was already dead (and soon Mozart would be) when Zauberflöte premiered.

True fact: a lesser known German language Mozart work, Der Schauspieldirektor , was was performed when MC & Albert were visiting in Vienna, having been commissioned by Joseph, as was Salieri's opera Prima la musica. Both were performed at the Orangerie in Schönbrunn. MC & Albert liked the Salieri opera better.

(Albert, making notes for his future tell-all: ...The Salieri songs were cute, but then Joseph had us listen to that Mozart guy in the winter garden. It's freezing outside! Is he trying to kill us?)

This is sooooo fascinating. Go MT! (although MA has a point! if you're going to sex police everyone then you can't be surprised when your kid learns some things from it!)

Indeed. Of course, MA was mostly being a (lonely and stubborn) teenager.

MT and Franz Stefan's main mistress: well, given the lady in question started out as her lady-in-waiting, she had to talk to her. The lady's name was Wilhelmina von Auersperg. Let's leave it at Auersperg for obvious reasons. This was her married name, btw, because MT, once she noticed Franz' interest, did try the "let's just marry her off to someone else" tactic. And the big difference to France was that no one acknowledged openly that the woman did anything but keep the Emperor company (platonically) now and then. She entered his life shortly after MT had given birth to their sixteenth and final child, Maximilian, and some biographers speculate she might have said "no more sex" after that birth in order to avoid having more, but then Franz had cheated on her before that. (Though more or less with one night stands and very brief affairs. Auersperg was the sole longer term relationship.)

Anyway, we do have a letter from MT to MC where she writes: "It's not just that the beautiful princess" - the lady's title was Fürstin von Auersperg, Princess of Auersperg - "does not bother me, but she is more pleasant and even prettier than before. One sees each other and sits next to each other when dining. We sit there, Maria Anna, Amalia with me, Elisabeth and Auersperg with the Emperor. They've all gone hunting now; I'm alone and can catch up on the mail."

(BTW, linguistic note; in a rare German sentence in between French ones, it's "die Maria Anna, die Amalia bei mir, die Elisabeth und die Auersperg beim Kaiser", remember what I said about "die" as informal German.)

Re: the money - 200 000 Gulden directly; MT also bought the palace Franz Stefan had given to Auersperg back at three times the actual price to secure the rest of her future, since, again, there was no public acknowledgment of the relationship and so she could hardly be paid officially by the state.

I thought about that after posting! Anyhow, yay that too :) and sad that he didn't see Zauberflöte, though of course he might have been very much taken aback at it :P

MC & Albert liked the Salieri opera better.

LOL. Of course they did.

MT and Franz Stefan's main mistress: well, given the lady in question started out as her lady-in-waiting, she had to talk to her.

Oh right, you did mention that! And that MT really liked her until then :( So her husband iddn't mind her keeping company with the Emperor?

No, what I had mentioned was this very thing happening to Wilhelmine (whose well-liked lady in waiting Marwitz was, who married her off when her husband made Marwitz his mistress, which because the intended was an Austrian was one of the triggers for the three years Fritz enstrangement, etc.). Re: Auersperg minding, not that anyone mentions. (To put a cynical slant on it, she was one of the greatest beauties at court, and given FS was loaded in private cash he didn’t have to ask MT’s permission to spend for, it might have been convenient to turn a blind eye for Prince Auersperg.) They didn‘t have children though he had one from his previous marriage, so who knows. She died relatively young, btw, five years in fact before MT did.

Ah, man, Joseph. :/ Rough times.

I'd known about the du Barry/MA incident, but not in that much detail, and not with the MT backstory. Fascinating stuff!

Clearly, Heinrich and Franzl need to have a drink somewhere at some point.

AT THE SUMMIT! MT, Joseph, and Fritz are locked in a room together for a secret summit, while Franzl and Heinrich are sitting outside in the antechamber with a bottle of tokay, commiserating.

"You know, if it were up to me..."

"If it were up to me..."

*indistinct shouting on the other side of the wall*

"Here, have another drink."

"No, no. I know it's all my brother's fault. You're the wronged party."

"Oh, no question, but you're the one who has to live with him."

"...Better make it a double."

ETA: Meant to add:

FS: Just the pal to have among the German princes!
FS: Or not? For now, at least.

It's okay, Franzl. A lot of people were fooled. Even Fritz was fooled!

Voltaire in 1741: "Son, I am disappoint."

Edited 2019-10-23 00:18 (UTC)

Alas if Joseph is there than Franzl is not, since Joseph only became Emperor after his father's death.

(Joseph: Um. Mom. I'm 23, just like you were when Granddad died. Also, unlike Dad, I am a Habsburg by blood. I'm just saying. Nobody would blame you for retiring!
MT: What is this thing "retiring" you speak of? Now what kind of mother would I be to let you carry this heavy burden I know so well alone?)

Seriously though, I'm somewhat frustrated that none of the books I've consulted so far are giving me a direct Franzl quote on that Grand Tour meeting with Fritz, and just are paraphrasing and summing up as "was charmed" and "liked". Because having a first impression without the benefit of hindsight would be awesome. (The first direct quote comes in the Prussian Ambassador's report on how FS received the letter in combination with the Silesia news.

(And then we get Fritz quotes along the lines of "Here I am, GENEROUSLY offering my protection to you and your girl for the tiny tiny fee of Silesia and I GET REJECTED! It's a cruel world, sucker, see you in Silesia if you dare.")

I suppose if Fritz thought anything during that encounter, it was "why does everybody get to go on a Grand Tour except me?" and at best "not bad looking, likes music, wouldn't survive Dad's treatment for a week".

Alas if Joseph is there than Franzl is not, since Joseph only became Emperor after his father's death.

Does Joseph have to be Emperor, though? Can he just be a starry-eyed fanboy who wants to reconcile Mom and his hero by acting as intermediary?

MT: Fine, but I'm not letting your dad in the room or Fritz will keep pointedly ignoring me to talk to him, and also your dad might start trying to get along with him.
Joseph: ...I thought the point of this was that you and Fritz learn to see eye to eye?
MT: Oh, you sweet summer child.

Meanwhile, in the antechamber:
Franz: What's going on in there?
Heinrich: You don't want to know. I got kicked out in the first five minutes.

(I'm not telling you how to write your much more realistic and well-written secret summit! I'm just having fun outlining crackfic à la FW has aneurysm from Fritz's letters, since you keep giving me ideas and I'm having fun putting them together. :D)

This is all GREAT and I am considering adding crackfic to my Yuletide requests :P

:) Oh, I love crack fic, too, and in that spirit:

Franz (somewhat later, after he and Heinrich are half a bottle down at least): So, your brother. I'm just speculating, but could it be he'd be in a general better mood and perhaps less inclined to conquering our territory if he got laid on a regular basis?

Heinrich: I resent that theory, on the basis of me getting laid on a regular basis and still being a better - a good warrior. Also, I don't want to think about his sex life, thanks a lot. What is it with your family handing out sexual pointers whenever you visit foreign royalty?

Franz: I didn't say anything about you compensating, just him, relax. And, well, it's just a theory. If you live in a Vienna for long, there's something in the air that makes you speculate about other people's sex lives, what can I say.

Heinrich: Well. In fact. I may have sometimes wondered. But I'm not sacrificing any hot pages to test that theory!

Too good!

Heinrich *under his breath*: Is your son offering? Because when I was in the room, that's sure what it looked like.

ROTFLOL.

At this point, Philippe d'Orleans' ghost makes a cameo appearance:

Monsieur: Grandson Franz, let me point out that I as well as my older brother never suffered from a shortage of les plaisirs d'amour, and was I not a successful campaigner, so much so that Louis got jealous? This being said, this handsome gentleman here has a point. *eyes Heinrich appreciatively* Young Joseph could do worse than lose his virginity in the service of diplomacy. After all, is this not his sisters' lot?

Franz: Just how much of this wine have we drunk? Never mind. His mother would kill me, Monsieur mon grandpère.

Heinrich: So your marital peace is more important than peace in Europe?

Franz: I could say the same thing about your hot page.

Heinrich: Look. If *I* don't get laid regularly, I'm going to strangle my brother, and then there will be civil war. You all have no idea what miracles of self-control go into my relationship with him. I NEED THAT PAGE!

Franz: Hmm, but does a civil war in Prussia benefit Austria?

Heinrich: Are you asking if my brother has a problem fighting on multiple fronts?

Franz: ...Never mind.

*a few drinks later*

Franz: So about getting Fritz laid...

...I am now trying to figure out if I can somehow shove Franz-Heinrich crackfic into my Yuletide requests :P

(I have my letter up! here

I saw! I went looking last night to see if you'd put crackfic in, and I did not see any crackfic! So we started writing it here. :P

In all seriousness, it's going to be an awesome Yuletide. Also Zenna Henderson, yay. <3

ahahahaha this whole discussion, uh, may have made me add a prompt about that :P

Too good!

Also, next year we clearly need to rope another nominator in so we can get more characters! (And hopefully more offerers!) Algarotti and Poniatowski were nice surprises, but Franz and Heinrich! The list keeps growing. :DD

Incidentally, all this talk of diplomacy via sex reminds me of:

"[The French] were appalled to learn in mid-December [1745] that their Prussian ally was about to desert them once again. The French ambassador in Berlin, Valori, mounted a last-ditch attempt to frustrate the negotiations underway at Dresden by sending off his secretary, Claude Etienne Darget.

"Why would a mere secretary be entrusted with such an important mission? The probable explanation is that Darget had already caught Frederick's roving eye, making such an impression, indeed, that his transfer to Prussian service had been requested. As we shall see, Darget was to feature as the antihero of Frederick's homoerotic poem Palladium. Alas, Frederick knew how to keep sex and politics separate. In the detailed report of their encounter sent back to Valori, Darget had to register total failure, in his diplomatic mission at least."

Footnote: "Darget moved to become Frederick's librarian the following month, January 1746."

Alas, Heinrich might be right. Don't let that stop you, though, Habsburgs!

omg, that is BEAUTIFUL. Way to go not "being a man-whore," Fritz, I guess :P

(Still cracks me up thinking about how Fritz would react if MT said the very same things about him)

Like I said, he was quite proud of not being a man-whore like *some* monarchs he could mention! :D :P Now, how he would react if someone else said this out loud using that language...is an exercise best left to the reader.

MT, you missed your chance!

this handsome gentleman here has a point. *eyes Heinrich appreciatively*

Also, this. HILARIOUS.

Philippe d‘Orleans would never let a little thing like death come between him and eyeing the gents.

Later that night, once an exhausted from verbal combat MT is alone with FS in their bedroom:

F: ...actually, Mitz, the more I think about this, the less crazy it sounds. I mean, Joseph wouldn‘t exactly be unwilling, would he, given how starry eyed he is about him, and trust me on this, a man with a wonderful Habsburg in their bed is not a man who wants to go world conquering!

MT: Your dead grandfather clearly is a terrible influence on you. I might have to call an exorcist.

F: But we do expect the girls to marry for the Empire, don‘t we? Far worse guys than, well, him.

MT: Emphasis on „marry“, Franzl. Never would I ever let a child of mine live in sin and lose their immortal soul, even for the Empire. *pauses* He‘s not likely to make an honest man out of Joseph, is he?

F: ...Are you thinking what I‘m thinking, Mitz?

MT: Well, I had intended for Joseph to marry the Parma girl, it‘s true, but something tells me she‘ll get over the disappointment. If the King converts and swears to love and honor my oldest son in front of God and men, I would not gainsay God‘s plan for peace in Europe.

me: *screams*

Our crackfic has a Fritz/Joseph same-sex marriage proposal!

"Tu felix Austria nube" indeed!

He's not likely to make an honest man out of Joseph, is he?

I'm dying here, really.

Well, is he???? MT has gone as far as she possibly can with this idea, Fritz. And no, she won't accept any younger Hohenzollern siblings for her boy. No one less than the King would do! Joseph is the future Emperor, after all.

(And already King of Germany; Franz and he did go through the relevant ceremony in Frankfurt which would ensure that Joseph after his father's death would automatically become Emperor instead of having to go through vote gathering all over again. So he's already outranking Fritz, technically speaking.)

(In medieval times, it went thusly in the Holy Roman Empire: the princes electors voted you King of Germany, you got crowned as same, and then the Pope made you Emperor, unless you were one of those kings he was busy arguing with. Emperors who wanted to ensure there was not too much bother about the succession had the princes electors vote their oldest sons as Kings of Germany while they, the Emperors, were still alive and well. In the sunset days of the HRE, people usually didn't bother anymore, but after all the trouble with her own succession, MT wasn't taking any chances. She had Joseph made King in his father's lifetime.)

Edited 2019-10-30 15:52 (UTC)

...But WAIT

Would MT actually marry the future emperor to Fritz and risk Fritz being the power behind the throne of the Emperor? Seems like she might balk at that. Also how does religion work? I guess since bio kids are off the table, it's not quite so important that either of them convert?

And now how does Fritz react when MT comes back to him after the summit and is all "So, you know, we didn't get anything done yesterday, but here's an alternate proposal, hear me out..." Does this alliance work for him?

(lol how much do I love that we're having a discussion about Fritz and Joseph getting married, and realizing it might actually work out better than Fritz and MT getting married)

I'll leave Fritz' reaction (and Heinrich's!) to Mildred.

Fritz being the power behind the throne of the Emperor is a serious obstacle, but MT knows her son. He's stubborn, he's argumentative, he'll insist on imposing his own ideas on his olders and betters, she just knows this will happen. Also, he might be star struck by Fritz know and thus prone to do what Fritz wants for a while, but you know, the last person in a mutual admiration society with Fritz was Voltaire, and close contact cured that one as the whole of Europe knows. She intends to live and rule for more years to come, so her gamble is: physical proximity to Fritz will reduce Joseph's crush to manageable size.

As for the succession, well, she has already some grandkids of both genders. At least one can be married to one of Fritz' nieces or nephews. But it must be a Catholic.

Edited 2019-10-30 17:49 (UTC)

Oh, I missed that you'd (MT had) already mentioned he would have to convert, lol.

Not that Fritz would have any problem with that, so we're good :D

Okay, I feel we have to to have illustrations here:

Arch Duke Joseph as a kid some years before this potential meeting:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Martin_van_Meytens_003.jpg/800px-Martin_van_Meytens_003.jpg

Joseph crowned as Holy Roman Emperor (he hated those robes and thought they looked ridiculous, but that was what he looked like, well, how portraitists rendered him, in his early 20s, so not so different from how he'd looked at 18, just before marrying Isabella):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Ritratto_di_Giuseppe_II_d%27Asburgo.jpg

And that's the most famous portrait and the one used to style Jeffrey Jones as Joseph in "Amadeus" after:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/HGM_Hickel_Portr%C3%A4t_Kaiser_Joseph_II.jpg

Oh, and remember that splendidly baroque tomb where MT and FS are buried together, looking at each other? Joseph is buried in front of his parents, in a simple copper casket (according to his own wishes):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Wien_-_Kapuzinergruft%2C_Maria-Theresia-Gruft_%282%29.JPG/800px-Wien_-_Kapuzinergruft%2C_Maria-Theresia-Gruft_%282%29.JPG

For you,

cahn, as an addendum - the original bill for Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, which Joseph had comissioned and which premiered in the Hofburg, or, as Joseph had renamed it (Leopold changed it back), the "Deutsches National Theater":

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Cosi_fan_tutte_-_first_performance.jpg

he hated those robes and thought they looked ridiculous

heeeee, of course he did!

Awww, I love these pictures, not least because I am imagining the guy in these pictures as a total awkward Fritz fanboy and... it's not hard.

Oh, boy, the RP pressure is on! :D Well, I have some ideas, but I need to let them marinate first. I guess I'm the one who got us into this :P, but it escalated quickly from snide remark, sotto voce, to marriage proposal between two major European powers!

Voltaire is EXACTLY what I was thinking when I imagined how a Fritz/Joseph relationship would play out. Joseph was less all-out crazy than Voltaire, but he had a definite mind of his own, and I don't see that going very well. Also, Fritz doesn't have the strong feelings for Joseph that he has for Voltaire, so he might be even less inclined to look for (what he considers) the good when they start to clash.

...This is gonna be fun.

While you ponder the Prussian response, Franz Stefan, because he's nice like that, thinks someone should at least hint to Joseph this could be in the offering. To, you know, prepare him, not least because who knows he he'll react if this is sprung on him unprepared in public in case Fritz doesn't say no.

F: So...you're really impressed by the King of Prussia, aren't you, son?

J: Well, yeah. No offense to you and Mom, Dad, but to me he's the ~~coolest~~ most effective monarch of Europe, and I just think I can learn a lot from him. Except for his thing about German. That's just weird. Also, Gluck rocks!

F: There isn't any special someone in your life right now, is there?

J: With Mom supervising me like a hawk? I leave that kind of thing to Poldl. Younger siblings always have it easier. Another thing I agree with the King on.

F: Speaking as a former younger brother whose older brother died: that's an illusion. But never mind. How do you feel about the ancient Greeks?

J: Look, Dad, it's enough that Mom sits in during my lessons and examinations every second month. You're the fun parent! Or you used to be. I can read bloody Homer in the original, okay?

F *under his breath*: How I produced a son simultanously so clueless and smart, I don't know.

LOL FOREVER

Heinrich: *spits out his drink* He said what about younger siblings? Never mind, my friend, in the event your boy ends up in Prussia, I'll take him under my wing. Not in a hot page sort of way, I mean.

Franz: Thanks...I guess?

Heinrich: Meanwhile, listen up. You might have noticed my brother can be a bit...contrary.

Franz: You could say that.

Heinrich: So we've got to play this just right. I'm thinking that if there's too much pressure to go through with the marriage, he balks. But he might die laughing if given the opportunity to troll a certain virtuous Empress-Queen. If you catch my drift.

Franz: I do indeed. Maternal resistance might not be a bad way of getting Joseph behind the idea, either. Has anyone ever told you that your brother's not the only devious genius in the family?

Heinrich: You're too kind.

*later, alone with her husband*

Maria Theresia: So you want me to pretend to be against it so that that man and our Joseph can be for it? How old are you all, twelve?

Franz: I'll remind you that when the doctors told you explicitly to rest and do nothing during your first six pregnancies, you instead went dancing, stayed up till 11 pm and gambled.

MT: That was different. I knew better.

F: *eloquently says nothing*

MT: Fine. But what if it's all for nothing, and he sees through me? I'd be humiliated, Franzl! By that man!

F: Mitz, you're the best actress I've ever met. (*Footnote: He actually did say that. ) Just think of how you sang Agrippina. I couldn't imagine a woman more different from you, and yet when you embodied her, we all believed the truth of every note! Channel your inner Agrippina. I believe in you! You can do it.

*early in the morning, Fritz hasn't arrived at the summit salon yet; MT mutters to herself beneath her breath "Think Agrippina, think Agrippina" and hums a few Händel notes when Joseph arrives; her posture immediately changes to stiff disapproval*

MT *pitching her voice as a trained singer can so she will be overheard in the next room, just in case Fritz is either already near or has deployed lackeys*: Joseph, I don't want you to attend the summit today. Your very presence is a sabotage, because the King can see you're far too impressed by him.

J: But Mom! The entire summit was my idea! You can't do that!

MT: Yes, I can. In fact, I'll go further. When we get back home, I'm confiscating your copy of the Anti-Machiavel and the porcelain cup portrait you think I don't know about. Till we leave, you're staying away from the King, you don't talk to him, you don't as much as breathe his name! Are we clear!

J: *slams door on his way out (not the way Fritz will take when entering, the other door*

MT: *tries to calm herself herself; there was a bit too much truth in that performance; gets out her rosary, both as part of the calming effort and because it's a prepared prop; she knows, after all, that Fritz is always mocking her piety in public; she then gets out her supersecret weapon, a broche showing a miniature pastel portrait of... Wilhelmine, and pins it firmly on her dress where Fritz is bound to see it*

Fritz: *enters*

MT *smile pasted on*: You don't have to kneel, your grace. (*he wasn't about to, as well she knows, but it can't help reminding him he bloody well should, according to protocol*) In fact, it is I who owe you, I just remembered. Before he died, Prince Eugene told me you wanted to convert and marry me, and see, if you'd officially proposed my father probably would have said yes, what with Prussia so full of soldiers and money, and then where would we be! In misery, that's where. But you reconsidered, and so I owe you decades of happiness with the love of my life. THANK YOU!" *grabs him by his shoulders and kisses him on both cheeks*

So you want me to pretend to be against it so that that man and our Joseph can be for it? How old are you all, twelve?

Um. Yes?

I'm confiscating your copy of the Anti-Machiavel and the porcelain cup portrait you think I don't know about.

BWAHAHAHAHA

You don't have to kneel, your grace. (*he wasn't about to, as well she knows, but it can't help reminding him he bloody well should, according to protocol*)

HEE.

Oh boy. Inquiring minds want to know how THIS goes...

How old are you all, twelve?

Um. Yes?

I would just like to point out that this is no more immature than, say, the Algarotti/Hervey/Wortley Montagu love triangle! And I wanted to give MT the option of saving face by not appearing too eager to consider her worst enemy a suitable marriage prospect for her heir. I also figured the acting would be partly real--which I'm glad

selenak picked up on. :D

Oh boy. Inquiring minds want to know how THIS goes...

Haha, I have some ideas for the next part, give me time! Though I think the only possible reaction to this particular statement is to haughtily ignore it. He's definitely going to escalate things in reaction to other parts!

ahahahaha I'm not saying it's not more immature than other things going on, just... heh. Also thank you for giving my fave MT the option :D

You're welcome. :D Also, I managed to work in the kneeling after all! Fritz has a dirty mind, what can I say.

Fritz: *elaborately wiping his cheeks*

Fritz: Congratulations. Now I *have* to convert, just to become a monk so I can get the girl-cooties off. The Countess Orzelska dressed as a man, you know.

Fritz: As for kneeling, I'm afraid I'm out of practice. *inclines head sardonically* Your son, on the other hand, madam, is just as delighted as you are, albeit for different reasons, that he's not too closely related to me. His interest seems decidedly...non-filial, shall we say. That portrait of me by his bed? Confiscate it if you like; I'll never forget the sight of it, and neither will he.

Fritz: *lets her decide how to react to that, then brazenly snatches his sister's portrait from her bodice while she's distracted*

Fritz: Looks like Silesia isn't the only thing of mine you have.

Fritz: *sits down, looking rather pleased at this performance*

Ball's in your court, MT and Franz! Heinrich is trying to decide whether he can believe his ears.

Franz (with Heinrich in the ante room, which is still open to the salon) wonders whether telling MT to channel her inner Agrippina has been such a good idea because for a moment, she looks like she thinks serving Fritz a mushroom dish is a really good idea. He decides to hope for the best and prepare for the worst, by which he means looking for his son (last seen storming out of the other exit and slamming the door) just in case an intervention is needed. This means, by necessity, there'll be some time (spent Joseph-hunting) MT and Fritz are free to strangle each other without him being able to stop it, but surely Heinrich would intervene... would he?

MT *does have murder in her eyes, but has not survived sixteen pregnancies and childbirths as well as her father's stupid ancient advisors in her first cabinet lecturing her without being able to conjure up discipline as well as a lethal smile*: Cousin, you should have told me you were tired, I'd have given you permission to sit down long ago. Men just don't have the stamina we women do, I suppose. Your dear sister told me what a sensitive boy you've always been, and I now see she was right. You do remind me of little Max and Ferdinand, always grabbing at shiny baubles that aren't yours.

*Pause to let that sink in, while she remains standing. She is at this point of her life of course no longer young herself and overweight, her dancing nights are past, but she's still healthy and the woman his ambassador describes in his dispatches as able to remain hours and hours unprotected in high summer heat outside going through receptions while her court runs for cover*

And here I thought you didn't care for portraits.

*drops the fake pleasantry for pure ice*

Now, may I enquire how you came to see yours by my son's bed?

Edited 2019-11-05 06:21 (UTC)

Fritz: *is crippled with gout and leaning on a cane, as she well knows*

(Eddie Izzard on royal inbreeding: Cause it's a bad idea when cousins marry!)

Fritz: *patronizing smile* Thank you for your concern, madam, but the rigors of campaigning aren't something I'd expect you to be familiar with. It's only right and natural that you should be protected from such hardships. Allow this old warhorse to compliment you on your fine complexion.

Fritz: *courtly half-bow from his chair* Then he turns absolutely smug, because she just walked into the trap.

Fritz: I'm afraid I don't take your meaning about the portrait, though. I said that I'd seen it and that he kept it by his bed, not that I'd seen it by his bed. Interesting that you jumped to that conclusion; I'd rather thought you were too pure-minded for the gutter. But then, you would know more about your son than I would.

Fritz: *hasn't played the "Did I or Didn't I" game for thirty-plus years for nothing*

Fritz: And speaking of sons, if Max and Ferdinand are giving you as much trouble as I am, I can only imagine what your oldest is putting you through. Should I offer to take him off your hands? I might find him more manageable. You did seem worried about my influence over him when I was walking through the antechamber, and in quite the hurry to be rid of him.

*Inside Heinrich's brain*
Eeeeexcellent. Everything is going according to plan.

*mimes raising a glass* To my brother getting laid on the regular and maybe calming the fuck down. And keeping his hands off my pages.

*looks around for Franz* Now, where on earth is that Joseph?

Franz Stefan had believed his son wouldn’t go far, unable to resist the temptation of overhearing, regardless of or especially because of his mother’s ban, so he’s surprised it takes him a while to locate Joseph - who then comes sprinting towards him from the general direction of the courtyard. Was he outside for some reason?

J: Dad, you must know Mom is handling this terribly. She’s dead wrong about Fritz and me! I’m not a pushover, I just understand him! I do! I shouldn’t just be in the room, I should be the main negotiator!

FS: Well, you might get your chance. Last I looked he and your mother were about to kill each other, so let’s go back there and I’ll somehow persuade your mother to let you stay.

(Franz: not a bad actor himself. Comes with the occasional one night stand territory.)

J *hasn’t taken this in yet, he’s prepared a speech in order to convince his parents and hasn’t even gotten to the middle of same yet*: I know you both think I’m without guile, but I can be sneaky! I have a secret weapon to butter Fritz up, and now I’ll employ it if you... hang on, did you just say you’ll back me up with Mom?

F: Yes. Secret weapon, hm? *under his breath* Thank God. I was beginning to fear I need to draw you a diagram.

J *proudly*: Yep. I had the idea before we left Vienna. Preparation is everything ~~says Fritz~~.

F: I’m impressed, son. Now, not to rush you or anything, but we really need to...

J: Right. Let me just get the weapon.

F: ...? You don’t mean to say you already brought a ring?

J: ...????? I brought the Mozarts.

F: ....

J: Come on. Everyone melted when those two kids performed in front of us. Even Mom! She totally let that boy hug her, jump on her lap and kiss her. I mean, who gets to do that to Mom otherwise? She sure isn’t the spontanous kissing type!

F: ....

J: So I thought: Fritz loves music. Truly deeply does. Now I have no idea whether he also likes kids in general, but come on, everyone loves little Wolferl! So I told Leopold Mozart to secretly follow us with his kids, and I’ve now checked whether they arrived. Which they did! So here’s my plan. I’ll announce to Fritz I’ve arranged a special concert in his honor. We all listen to the Mozarts. Everyone melts, again. Peace, love and harmony descend on both our realms. Am I a genius or what?

*meanwhile, MT’s reaction in the summit salon shall be posted at a later point*

Edited 2019-11-06 12:07 (UTC)

!!!!!!!!
I don't think I can convey the sheer delighted joyous WTF response I had to this amazing plot twist. I was not expecting that AT ALL. AHAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh Joseph. You are just Something Else.

(denn durch sie wird Menschenglück und Zufriedenheit vermehrt!)

I was beginning to fear I need to draw you a diagram.

Sorry, Franz, you might still have to!

Der Traurige wird freudig seyn,
Den Hagestolz nimmt Liebe ein.

Well, If the mission is an all out Austrian charm offensive, which to Joseph’s mind it certainly is, whatever his parents think, unexpected Mozart(s) certainly make sense. :)

Haha, even more apt! (I imagine Wolfgang, years later, remembering this moment or perhaps even this moment as it was told to him later by Joseph in Amadeus -- and of course kid!Wolfie didn't pick up on any of the tensions, or if he did, didn't understand them -- and reminiscing to Schikaneder about the Power of Music in this fraught situation, who promptly put it in his libretto.)

The only thing better than crackfic: crackfic with illustrations!! :D (seriously, this totally made me smile. The Mozarts are so cute!!)

*meanwhile, in the summit salon*

Never ever has MT been torn between feeling smug herself and feeling annoyed as hell. On the one hand: things are going the way she, in the end, wants them to. On the other: he’s possibly more infuriating in person than a distance of hundreds of miles when invading her provinces, and just once, she wants to be the one to gloat. But if she makes that mistake, if she lets him discover she’s not, in fact, 100% horrified at the prospect of him being anywhere near her son, she’s lost the game. And she’s really really sick of losing to this man, thanks a lot. Silesia will definitely be ruled by Joseph, even if he has to do it with Fritz, that’s so going to be in the wedding contract.

So she swallows down her bile and her moment of fierce satisfaction and instead grabs at something that’s also real, so she doesn’t have to fake it. (Much.)

MT *wounded expression of noble wronged madonna*: Allow a mother to be protective of her son, Monsieur. Especially since, as the mother of my country, I already lost a great many sons to you. I may have expressed some concern, yes. But a parent, a true parent, should never, ever, disown their child. So I am afraid I cannot possibly allow you to adopt him.

*widens eyes a bit, as if something suddenly occured to her that’s stunning and shocking, simply shocking, and she never, ever thought of it before*

You did mean adoption, didn’t you? Not some other legal arrangement?

*Fritz has little time to ponder this one, as there’s a commotion heard outside. The doors burst open. Enter Joseph, looking rather dashing for Joseph; he’s a bit on the thin side, as opposed to his parents, a bit flushed from running, and neither small nor gigantic tall a la Potsdam Giants*

J (to Fritz): I apologize for being interrupting, Sire, but I cannot contain myself any longer: I have a proposal for you!

*behind Joseph’s back, FS appears and gets the most WTF? Look he ever got from his wife; he’ s giving her a “not my fault!” Look back*

J: *continuing* Even a warrior such as yourself must rest once in a while, so let yourself be seduced....

MT’s WTF????? Look is no acting at all, and could scorch the Earth.

J: *continuing*: ...by music!

*cue trio outside, Wolfgang playing violin, Nannerl piano, Leopold flute. Because of course this is an opera buffa, and we’re in the final scene*

Because of course this is an opera buffa

omg, OF COURSE IT IS

it makes everything SO MUCH better if they're singing ALL of this in duet-trio-quartet

MT is a mezzo soprano, FS has the father role but just isn’t the type for a bass so he’s a bariton. Heinrich and Joseph are both lyrical tenors. Now, the question is: is this opera buffa from the first three quarters of the 18th century, in which case Fritz is sung by a castrato as the heroic primo uomo, spanning the whole range from soprano to alto, or are we talking later Mozart and onwards, in which case he is a heroic tenor.

Heh, I can't imagine Franz Stefan as a bass either. (sorry FS! But I like baritones better anyway!) But what, MT isn't a dramatic soprano??
And if we're talking later Mozart (which we are, only because I like it better for ensembles), Joseph isn't a trouser role? :D

I think every iteration of this crackfic is AMAZING, just so you know. Lol the portrait :D

ETA:

Thank you for your concern, madam, but the rigors of campaigning aren't something I'd expect you to be familiar with. It's only right and natural that you should be protected from such hardships. Allow this old warhorse to compliment you on your fine complexion.

lol Fritz!! Fritz and MT throwing shade on each other is my faaaaavorite :D

Edited 2019-11-07 17:40 (UTC)

Fritz: Madam, I lived with Voltaire for 3 years. I can throw shade. All. Day. Long.

Re: the only allowing one of her kids to marry for love, whereas she did marry the man of her choice: double standard indeed, though in fairness, the situation was different in that one of the reasons why she knew her Franzl ahead of time and thus had the opportunity to fall in love with him was that he was partially raised at the court in Vienna when not in Lorraince. And the reason for this was that her father was at least tentatively eyeing him as a potential marriage candidate for one of his daughters. (Like Fritz having young Carl Eugen raised in Prussia, then marrying him to Wilhelmine's daughter.) While this had not been done with the intention of making Franz Stefan the Emperor - since MT's Dad kept hoping for a son of his own throughout - he was seen as a possible suitable political alliance for an arch duchess, so her love match also made political sense.

(Well, except for the part that by the time they did marry, her political value as heiress had increased so much that FS was no longer a truly beneficial candidate, but that's another story.)

Ultimately, though, it came down to marriage as a key way to make or maintain alliances, and the famous Habsburg motto: Tu felix Austria nube! MT did not have all those children as a private person, after all, or for her own maternal joy. She had them as part of her duty to her country. (And to prevent the situation she herself had been in, with only two female children - her and her younger sister Maria Anna (aka Marianne), who died when still in her 20s - left to secure the future.) Making an exception for MC was possible because out of the 16, ten were still alive (and marriagle/already married) at that point, but if all had been allowed to marry (or not) according to their own choosing, the entire purpose of their existence would have been abandoned.

There was also the fact Franz Stefan really went through a non-stop humiliation conga in the early years as the guy without political clout of his own (as a ruler in his own right would have had). Starting with the marriage ceremony: because the House of Lorraine was not a royal one (they were dukes, after all), his younger brother, who was present, could only be present as a private citizen and could not be greeted by the other royals present or the papal nuntius. Who wasn't able to say hello to the groom, either. Because he'd had to give up his duchy, he was entirely dependent on the Habsburgs and told by his father in law, in public, that "since the Emperor had given him the honor of marrying his daughter he would have to suffer all at the Emperor's pleasure", his only use was to father sons, and if he couldn't even do that, what was the point of him? (If Joseph had been born before MT's dad died, he would have been able to bypass her as heiress, made the baby his heir and install a regent.) No fellow sovereign who'd been married for politics would have been treated this way. And precisely because MT loved her Franzl, she hated seeing this happen, and might not have regarded marriage (primarily) for love as an example to follow.

Incidentally, Franz Stefan's letter to his son Leopold when the later became Duke of Tuscany is quite revealing in what he learned during that time: With politeness, amiabilitiy and gentleness (politesse, complaisance & douceur) one got further than with a lordly tone (le ton de maitre); inner calm (tranquilleté chez soi) was more important than authority. In matters not of crucial importance, it was okay to concede and let the other win. Especially for marriage, it was important to listen to each other and learn to deal with each other's temper (humeur). A wife should see her husband as a true friend, not as a lord and master. The ideal marriage was: "sincere friendship and complete trust between husband and wife". In general, he adviced his son to put himself into the other party's shoes now and then and always be careful of his own flaws, for nous meme, we ourselves, were the worst enemy we could have.

(This is clearly both why MT loved him and why his contemporaries thought he was a joke, and not like a man should be at all.)

Back to Isabella, but still on the topic of advice per letter: the non-amatory quotes from the letters in the biography I'm reading make it clear she had no problem giving Joseph the impression she loved him. (Till his own death, he always said the time with her had been "the greatest happiness of my life" and that she was the most wonderful person he ever knew, etc.) She also instructs MC on how to behave: MC was supposed to show "the arch duke" as she consistently called him that she admired Isabella for her character, not for her tender qualities. As he hated open flattery, MC should not compliment him directly, just ensure to make a positive comment now and then in a situation where he overheard but could believe she didn't know she was there. That way, smooth sibling relations and MC's constant presence at her side would be ensured, etc. It's quite manipulative, but it has to be said it was survival stragegy, for Isabella couldn't have known she'd die early. In the normal run of things, she'd have remained married to Joseph for decades, and he'd have had complete authority over her life. If he'd behaved towards her as FW did to Sophia Dorothea, for example, or as her own father had behaved towards her mother, then once his mother was dead there would have been no one to stop him. So it's understandable she didn't trust him, or anyone else (other than MC?)and instead prefered using strategy and manipulation.

(She did with MT, too, because of course she knew that as long as MT lived, her word was ultimate law in Vienna, and thus winning and keeping her favour was quintessential. Writes Isabella to MC about MT: "The Empress has an excellent, tender and compassionate heart" but "she distrusts her own insight, she forgets that few people are sincere and true friends are a rareity. That is where the mistakes she makes hail from; that is the root of the indecision she occasionally shows; and thus she at times asks those for council who are more impertinent than others in offering their falseness." Therefore, MC was supposed to outmaneuvre everyone else and take advantage of the fact that one of MT's primary virtues was loyalty, that if you'd once won her friendship, she remained your friend for life. Of course it was difficult to "be the friend of a great princess, a monarch and your own mother" since the unequality of rank and the respect for a parent were in the way, but that with "discretion, steadfastness and a lack of sensitivity towards attacks by others scheming to be close to MT", it could be done.

It comes across as cold-blooded, but like I said: in an ancien regime court, this was survival technique.

...who was called MT after his mother. When she died at only 7 years of age, he wrote this letter to her governess, Christine de Trazegnies, Marquise d'Herzelles:

Madame,

If decency permitted, it would be with you alone that I would be pouring out the sorrow which… pierces my soul. I have ceased to be a father: it is more than I can bear. Despite being resigned to it, I cannot stop myself thinking and saying every moment: ‘O my God, restore to me my daughter, restore her to me.’ I hear her voice, I see her. I was dazed when the terrible blow fell. Only after I had got back to my room did I feel the full horror of it, and I shall go on feeling it all the rest of my life, since I shall miss her in everything. But not that I have, I believe, fulfilled all the duties of a father - and a good father - one [duty] remains which I hear my daughter imposing on me: that of rendering thanks to you. Madame, where would you wish me to begin? All your trouble and care have been beyond price. But [she] would never forgive me if I did not at least try to induce you to accept the enclosed offering as a memento of all that I owe you and a pledge of all that I should like to do for you. In addition the sincere respect and true friendship that I have sworn to you can in some way discharge [my obligation], you can be sure it will be unshakable. I venture to ask only one favour from you, which is that no one shall ever know anything about it and that even between ourselves - since I am counting on our weeping and talking again together about this dear child - there will never be any mention of it, or you will at once cause me to regret fulfilling this duty. I beg you to urge the same absolute silence of Mlle Chanclos, for whom I also enclose a letter; it is for me a point of importance. As my daughter’s sole heir, I have just given orders… that I should keep only her diamonds. [You are to have everything else.] One thing that I would ask you to let me have is her white dimity dressing-gown, embroidered with flowers, and some of her writings. I have her mother’s, I shall keep them together. Have pity on a friend in despair, and be sure that I can hardly wait for the moment when I come to see you…

Your true friend and servant,

Joseph

This unhappy 23 January, which has overturned our happy and so successful household, 1770.

Okay, I didn't realize my heart was going to be broken this morning :P

Oh, poor Joseph :((((((((((

It is a heartrendering letter, isn't it?

On the one hand, child death was far more common back then, even among the well to do who could afford food and doctors. (Of MT's 16 children, 10 made it into adulthood, which was a good percentage for the era. Isabella had had two stillbirths inbetween this girl and her final pregnancy, during which she contracted smallpox, had a final miscarriage as a result and then lingered on a few more days to die of smallpox instead of miscarriage, poor woman.) Plus you can speculate that the habit of handing over one's offspring for other people to raise until they got older prevented parent-child bonding. But then you read something like this and it's clear Joseph had bonded with his daughter, and the grief speaks to us across all the centuries.

Yes -- and I would have expected that fathers, with all that, would have bonded even less (as at least mothers have hormonal bonding imperatives) -- but -- there is a lot of grief in that letter <3 :(

...which you must have been wondering. Not with his wives, obviously, and Fritz might have gone for it one time if only to annoy MT, but generally he didn't trust him, and one wants true affection for one's ship. Possible candidates: the circle of five, allow me to copypaste:

"In late eighteenth-century Vienna there existed a remarkable coterie of five aristocratic women, known to history as “the five princesses” (die fünf Fürstinnen), who achieved social preeminence and acclaim as close associates of the Habsburg “reform emperor” Joseph II: Princess Maria Josepha Clary (1728–1801); Princess Maria Sidonia Kinsky (1729–1815); Princess Marie Leopoldine Liechtenstein (1733–1809); Countess—subsequently Princess—Marie Leopoldine Kaunitz (1741–1795); and Princess Marie Eleonore Liechtenstein (1745–1812). (...)
In a remarkable letter written in summer 1775, Grand Duke Leopold scolded his older brother Emperor Joseph about the unsuitable company Joseph kept. Leopold’s critique was direct and vivid: “that persons among the groups you visit informally dare to meddle by talking to you about political matters and accordingly if they are women to make wrongheaded objections … and even dare to scold you … or make impertinent remarks, and that you can allow this, tolerate it, and visit them again seems to me one of the most astonishing things in the world.”

(He may have abolished the death penalty in his dukedom before Joseph did but we don't like Poldl, no we don't, precious. When Mozart wrote La Clemenza di Tito for his coronation, Leopold's wife called it "una porcheria tedesca", a German swinishness.

Joseph, for his part, referred to the "charmed circle" as "“five ladies joined together in society who tolerated me" and when he was on his deathbed in 1790, he wrote this to the five:

Mesdames, it is time, my end approaches, to acknowledge to you once more here through these lines my appreciation and gratitude for the kindness, patience, friendship, and even flattering concern that you have been good enough to show me and to bestow on me during the many years we have been together in society. I miss each of those days, not once were there too many for me, and never to see you again is the only meritorious sacrifice I make in leaving this world, be so good as to remember me in your prayers, I cannot be sufficiently grateful for the grace and infinite mercy of providence to me, in complete accord therewith I await my hour, farewell then, you will be unable to read this scribbling, the handwriting attests to my condition.

For a m/m ship, there's Angelo Soliman, one of the earliest black citizens of Vienna, who was befriended by Joseph and often played chess with him. (His post mortem fate is infuriating. Franz II - son of Leopold - had him mummified and put on display in a museum where Angelo's own daughter had to see him.) Angelo also knew Mozart and may or may not have been the model for Bassa Selim in Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

Edited 2019-10-22 15:11 (UTC)

Heeeeee, I actually wasn't :P It is hilarious though that you have answers to this :D

What

cahn said.

Fritz might have gone for it one time if only to annoy MT

Ahahahaha, lol, the mental images here. But yes, you could one-night-stand ship them, but not OTP ship them. Much better to have "kindness, patience, and friendship" for him.

It cracks me up that Fritz notoriously said about him that Joseph was ambitious, thus dangerous and would set Europe ablaze once he, Fritz, wasn't there anymore to contain him. Um. I mean. He wasn't wrong about "ambitious" and one could argue that Fritz speculated on the lines of "any young man modelling himself on me with MT's stubbornness and power is bound to be trouble!", and of course there was no way Fritz could have predicted the French Revolution and Napoleon being just around the corner, but still.

Joseph: *secretly flattered when Austrian spies get a hold of a Fritzian dispatch, which they occasionally do* OMG Mom, he thinks I'm dangerous. I HAVE IMPRESSED FRITZ!

#LIFEGOALS

That cracks me up too!

(Hit "reply" too soon)

there was no way Fritz could have predicted the French Revolution

Though I have a vague recollection of him having noticed the same thing Joseph noticed, which was "this is not a happy state and it's not going to be stable much longer at this rate"? I can't remember where I came across it, though, and if the source was reliable. I *don't* think anyone could have predicted Napoleon circa 1780 ("It'll be like another Alexander, but without the dying!"), and certainly not the exact trajectory of the Revolution, hoo boy.

Edited 2019-10-23 04:30 (UTC)

Um. I mean.

This also cracks me up :D

The man of her choice turned out to be Prince Albert (no, really), who was a sixth son (and the thirteenth child all in all), and thus really a penniless prince (grandkid of August the Strong). (Fritz having invaded Saxony by now, that descent wasn't worth much anyway.) They had one child, a daughter, who died the day of her birth, and the birth was so difficult that MC could not get pregnant again. Otherwise, though, she was happy in her marriage. (She later persuaded brother Leopold to give her one of his sons for adoption so she and Albert would have an heir.) After MT's brother-in-law had died, she wanted MC and Albert to govern the Austrian Netherlands after him. (The Austrian Netherlands were roughly the territory of Belgium and Luxemburg.) Then she died, and trouble started.

Joseph honored the appointment, but he also insisted they'd reform the Austrian Netherlands according to his new program. And cut down their budget.

MC: I can't believe you're cutting down my budget! How are we're supposed to represent the Empire this way?!?
Joseph: The way I do. Your husband can wear uniforms. You can wear a dress more than once.
MC: You're mean and jealous. Because Mom liked me better. Yep. That's whom you're jealous of.
Joseph: I've spent seven weeks in the Austrian Netherlands, and they really need reforming. Here's a detailed list of what you and Albert are supposed to do and the laws you're supposed to sign. Do not dare to do anything else. Micromanagement is the way to go, says Fritz!
Albert: So we're just there to be pretty faces in old fashioned clothes? That sucks! MC, we're off to visit your sister in Paris.
MC: Ah, the city of light. Party time!
Marie Antoinette: If you must, but not in my favourite place. You get a public reception in Versailles, and that's that.
MC: But when Joseph visited, you were all over him! For weeks! And weeks!
MA: He helped me and Louis with an urgent problem. Also, we like each other, even if he's a lecturing know-it-all. Whereas I still can't stand you. Bye.
MC: Jealous siblings are the curse of my existence. Is it my fault Mom liked me best?
Albert: Better go to Vienna and make nice with Joseph.
Joseph: I thought I told you two to govern the Netherlands for me.
MC: We can't! You don't let us decide anything! And everyone hates your reforms!
Joseph: You're going back to the Netherlands. Reform already!
Netherlands: have a minor uprising.
MC: This is all bloody Joseph's fault!
Revolution in France: Ensues.
Netherlands: Have a major uprising as a follow up, resulting in the first Republic of Belgium.
MC: No way am I going to let myself captured by the peasants like silly MA. Come on, Albert, we're off to Bonn in exile until Joe sends us troops, more money and finally admits his reforms are rubbish!

Joseph: *dies*
MC: Well, I'm not exactly broken. Poldl, do we have a deal? Troops? Decision leaveway? Heir?
Leopold: *sends troops who take Netherlands/Belgium back* Okay, you two are governors again. But the actual governing shall be done by this new kid I've just discovered. He's got talent. Step forward, Metternich.
Albert: I can't believe your family. I'm so writing a trashy tell-all after you're all dead.
Leopold: *dies*
Franz II: You two can stay as my representatives, except...
French Revolutionary Army: *arrives*
Napoleon: What can I say. It's a new era.

MC: I liked the time when Isabella told me I was the most wonderful person alive much better. Albert, we're off to Vienna. My nephew has to cough up a pension.
Albert: Still writing that tell-all though.
MC: *dies in Vienna*
Albert: *comissions a tomb by Canova titled "Uxori Optimae Albertus" (to the best wife, Albert), collects graphics, gets the Albertinum in Vienna named after him*

Wow, this is amazing and hilarious. Umm, I guess I'm glad they were happy together? For some value of "happy" that includes "annoyed at siblings and history"? :)

...I mean, it may have been cold-blooded, but given the situation they were all in (forced marriage, annulment/divorce not really easy and the resulting position probably being far worse) it does seem like the best thing for everyone, really. Of course I'm coming from the position of having just read Sophia Dorothea and FW basically clawing each other's eyes out (FW, of course, managing to do a lot more damage from a position of power) and that just doesn't sound fun for anyone, whereas in this case it seems like everyone got to be more-or-less content.

Isabella actually sounds really fascinating -- I feel like a lot of what she's saying here is, while perhaps manipulative, actually true (e.g., what she says about MT) and the best way to familial and marital harmony under these circumstances -- I feel like it comes across as manipulative in large part because she actually thought about it and analyzed it for MC rather than just doing it. (Or maybe this is just me being spectrum-y again :P )

And if you'd told me about all this a month earlier I would have been inclined to spinoff Maria Theresian RPF and nominate her :P (Probably good that you didn't, you and mildred would probably have killed me)

ETA: And wait, I forgot to ask all my questions!

(Well, except for the part that by the time they did marry, her political value as heiress had increased so much that FS was no longer a truly beneficial candidate, but that's another story.)

WELL? :D

Incidentally, Franz Stefan's letter to his son Leopold when the later became Duke of Tuscany is quite revealing in what he learned during that time:

By the way, Franz Stefan is AWESOME. My question: so how was Leopold's marital life?

Edited 2019-10-22 18:14 (UTC)

Leopold: Don't worry, Dad, I'll just follow your example... in some things.

Leopold: *proceeds to have 16 kids by his wife and cheats on her the whole time*

It was otherwise according to gossip a harmonious marriage, though. His wife, Maria Luisa, was Spanish by birth but had grown up in Naples. They were happiest while Leopold was Grand Duke of Tuscany and they lived there. Maria Luisa supposedly was a private person not inclined to the public life (bad for a royal), but she did her duty with must-have public appearances. She also wasn't into politics at all and never disputed her husband, which is lucky, given his opinion on women disputing politics with men as voiced in that letter to Joseph about Joseph's circle of five.

(Joseph: You are aware I spent fifteen years arguing, err, ruling with Mom, aren't you, brother?
Leopold: Your point?)

Isabella actually sounds really fascinating -- I feel like a lot of what she's saying here is, while perhaps manipulative, actually true (e.g., what she says about MT) and the best way to familial and marital harmony under these circumstances -- I feel like it comes across as manipulative in large part because she actually thought about it and analyzed it for MC rather than just doing it.

Oh, absolutely, and Isabella comes across as one of the smartest people at court. Incidentally, you may have wondered why we have her letters but only one of MCs. We also have various essays by her (not just the "men suck" one). The reason is that when she died, MT ordered Isabella's waiting woman Erdödy to provide her not just with a lock of Isabella's hair as a memory (you probably know this was common) but to immediately collect all of Isabella's papers. (Said instructions are in German, not French, as MT is writing to a lower ranking person: "Und auff all die Schriften gebe wohl acht, das kein kleiner Zettel verlohren gehe" (and pay attention to get all the writings, don't miss even the shortest note); said papers, MT wrote, would later provide comfort to Joseph and an example to Isabella's little daughter and allow her to get to know her mother. She got the papers, and while indeed Isabella's theological writings were collected and printed in a small private edition by the court printer Trattner, methinks MT had at least an inkling there might be something in these papers Joseph shouldn't read. (And as much as she argued with her oldest son, she didn't want him to be hurt this way.) In any event, that's why by the time Joseph did read his late wife's papers, there was only one (harmless) letter by his sister included.

(Meawhile, MC of course kept all her letters by Isabella, and Albert inherited them from her after her death. He, in turn, had no problem publishing them, though edited (no arse-kissing intentions included, and just enough love declarations to still pass it off as "passionate romantic friendship", making it clear who Isabella's favourite person at court had been.)

Re: Franz Stefan's status in the marriage market going down while MT's went up in their adolescence: per se, the Duchy of Lorraine was nothing to sneeze at. (I don't know whether you recall, but that's why Catherine de' Medici married her middle daughter, Claude, to the then Duke, and you don't get more ambitious for your kids than Catherine.) Nice big territory, used to be a kingdom in ye dark ages, even, and as mentioned several posts ago, Franz was the grandson of Liselotte and Philippe on his mother's side, thus had direct blood connections to both French royalty and various other German principalities. Its location between France and the German speaking territories gives it strategic value, too. So: as long as MT is just supposed to be an arch duchess and the future Emperor is her mythical to be had future brother, it's a suitable match, and having Lorraine as an ally can be useful for said future brother, especially given the then still raging Habsburg/Bourbon feud. (Remember, MT's dad lost the Habsburg claim to Spain to the French. Grudge, grudge, grudge. He still displayed the Spanish court of arms in Vienna, never mind the Bourbon ruling there.)

...but now the future brother refuses to show up. And Poland is an issue for the European powers already. (August makes a play for it, remember, it's an elective monarchy.) And MT's Dad really, really, REALLY needs everyone to come on board and pledge themselves to respect the Pragmatic Sanction after his death, or he'll be the last Habsburg ruler. While Lorraine provides nice revenues, it doesn't provide, say, a useful big army. Franz, recently back from his Grand Tour through Europe, is a nice guy to go hunting with (which MT's dad does a lot) and a hit with the ladies, but he doesn't have any military gifts, and he's not burning with ruling charisma, either. Why the hell should anyone vote for him as Emperor? Even the fact he's willing to give up his duchy as a prize for being allowed to marry MT also speaks against him: how will this guy be able to hold the Empire together? (Remember, Dad doesn't even consider it might be MT herself holding the Empire together.)

By the way, Franz Stefan is AWESOME.

This is as good a point as any to voice my opinions on the two 2017 MT biographies. The way shorter one is by Èlisabeth Balantier. It's informative and pacefully written, but has two big drawbacks, imo. One is that the author, as she mentions in the afterword, does not speak German; she thanks in said afterword someone for translating "the most important documents" for her. This is a problem because while MT's family correspondance (and correspondance with other royals and nobles) is mostly in French, her entire administrative correspondance is in German. (And by administrative I don't mean her secretary writing "her highness wishes you to do this and that" to some civil servant but MT herself writing (well, often dictating, but in first person and with a distinct style). And whoever translated for Balantier obviously already made a selection. This means she's missing out on MT's inner politics a lot.

The other problem is that Balantier doesn't consider source bias, or if she does quickly dismisses it. For example, she admits that the French ambassador reporting negatively about Franz Stefan in ye early years is influenced on France backing Karl Albrecht of Wittelsbach for Emperor and fearing a Lorraine man with Imperial power would just spell trouble. She also admits that some of the ambassador's claims, as for example MT being putty in her husband's hands, were subsequently proven to be ridiculously off base. But then she goes and gives us three pages of the French ambassador's gleeful "Franz Stefan is the worst!!!!" report, not for the last time. She adds other negative reports by other ambassadors about how he's idle and worthless later, without telling her readers that by "idle", they mean he's not governing and lets MT do it. That he's actually doing something other than hunting and partying is hidden in a brief footnote on Joseph inheriting 20 Millions Gulden cash as a private (not state) fortune by his father as the result of his father's successful business managements (which Joseph then used to fix the state debts. Siblings Leopold and MC were pissed off because, they argued, this being Dad's private fortune they deserved a share). There is nothing on FS's interest in the natural sciences at all. So if all I knew about Franz hailed from this biography, I'd be utterly bemused as to what MT ever saw in him, why she kept defending him during the early years of their marriage (when trying to prove himself militarily he joined the war against the Turks and lost, badly, causing even more tauntings back home along the lines of "can't sire sons AND sucks as as an officer, is there anything manly he can do?", why it was so important to her that he'd be crowned as Emperor in Frankfurt (whereas she refused to be crowned as Empress, considering this to be a pointless thing, she already had power), or why, when she was dying, she was wearing his old brown ~~bathrobe~~ dressing gown she'd kept.

Luckily, though, I also have the other 2017 biography to through. This one is far more voluminous and by Barbara Stollberg-Rillinger. It's titled "Maria Theresia. The Empress in her time", and the title is program; she very much puts emphasis on the contemporary context MT is operating in. Of course, she also uses the ambassadorial reports as sources, but not as the only sources, and she mentions which country and ambassador had which interest and bias first. Most importantly, she provides such primary source stuff as the Franz Stefan letter to Leopold about marriage I quoted from, points out the unprecedent gender expectation reversal both MT and FS faced (and if her contemporaries finally decides she rose "above" womanhood, not striving to rule both the country and his family remained seen as shameful for a man), and also shows what FS did do (in modern terms, he was an entrepeneur - all that money hailed from the fact that he ordered the use of modern instead of antiquated agrarian methods in his estates, and established and ran silk and other textile manufacturing within the empire (so instead of importing textiles from non-Austria ruled Italy or France, suddenly there was a closer market). (He also was interested in the sciences and personally responsible for Gerard van Swieten, the founder of the Vienna School of Medicine, coming to Vienna, oh, and he founded the zoo in Schönbrunn.)

Incidentally, the estimation of MT herself is basically identical in both biographies (both in her virtues and flaws), though where Balantier, say, just provides the traditional legend of MT making her appeal to the Hungarian Assembly with baby Joseph in her arms, Barbara Stollberg-Rillinger points out baby Joseph didn't arrive in Hungary until a few weeks after that appeal; she's very determined not to let herself be seduced by the drama which as she ruefully admits in the foreword is powerful ("Young beautiful woman comes to the throne beset by enemies, finds arch nemesis in the most ruthless and most brilliant big bad her era could have provided for her") and to remain aware both MT and Fritz were really good at propaganda, not to mention that later historians each had their agenda as well.

Edited 2019-10-23 07:05 (UTC)

The other problem is that Balantier doesn't consider source bias, or if she does quickly dismisses it.

Oh, sigh, this is like practically every biographer I've read in the last couple years, on any subject. This is why I treat them all as glorified novels. I'm glad your other one is better about this!

Tangent: I had a linguistics prof who once told me that Turkish has this particle that has epistemological meaning: you can attach it to any sentence and it means "So I've heard; could be wrong." He was saying we should borrow it into English. Well, I've often agreed, and never have I so badly wanted this particle since I started discussing history. "My only source on this is a biography; take with a pinchful of salt."

the author, as she mentions in the afterword, does not speak German
I...whuh...buh...how?? How do you write a biography of MT without knowing German? I wouldn't even *begin* to write a bio of Fritz before learning both German and French, and honest-to-god I'd wait until I learned to deal with 18th century handwriting so I could look at unpublished material. I barely consider myself qualified to share forcefully-expressed-but-often-unfounded opinions about Fritz with two other people in Dreamwidth!

Languages in the order in which I am motivated these days to learn or relearn or learn them properly:
1. Ancient Greek, my all-time favorite language.
2 and 3: Italian and Latin. Italian would be easier; Latin has more stuff I want to read.
4 and 5: French and German. French would be easier; German has more stuff I want to read.

And 4 and 5 are only so high because Fritz. Once I'm back out of Fritz fandom, Ancient Near Eastern languages (Akkadian, Hebrew, Sumerian) will beat them out again.

I...whuh...buh...how?? How do you write a biography of MT without knowing German?

Haha, yeah, I was wondering this too! Is this bio in French? I can't seem to find it anywhere -- although now that I know the other one is coming out in English, and given that it doesn't seem nearly as accurate, I wasn't spending a whole lot of time on google-fu.

I think if I had time to learn a language, German would be first on the list -- I know French well enough to get by, I know Italian not quite well enough to get by but well enough for listening to opera, but I don't even know German well enough for opera, much less digging through history fandom canon :P Though if I had gobs and gobs of time, I'd like someday to learn Italian well enough to read Dante :D

*nod* Dante would be a nice side benefit. What I really want is to learn Italian well enough to read Machiavelli and Guicciardini, their works and their correspondence. Especially since even when I read physical books, I couldn't find a decent translation of the Florentine Histories that didn't make me feel like I'd be better off reading it in Italian. I managed to get through book 1 doing a side-by-side approach, then got distracted (largely by back pain). But I still mean to go back to it.

It would also be nice just to have access to some of the untranslated documentary sources from Renaissance Florence. And to be able to write more convincing fic set there. What? :P

methinks MT had at least an inkling there might be something in these papers Joseph shouldn't read.

Wooooow. It does seem like the natural inference. Now I'm wondering what MT thought as she read all of Isabella's papers. And I really want MT-Isabella fic, because it sounds like Isabella might not have been quite as opaque as she might have thought she was when dealing with MT, who of course was also an extremely smart and perceptive person (Joseph being smart but... maybe not quite as perceptive in a lot of ways), and who had the advantage of years of experience by the time Isabella showed up.

Thank you for your opinions on the biographies! I did some digging around and found that the Stollberg-Rilinger is supposed to be published in English translation by Princeton University Press in 2019, yay! (I know, academic publishing, this means that it might be anytime in the next five years with the clock starting in 2019, but hey, at least someone is probably working on it even as we speak!) I am so getting this when it comes out :D

I also found this from her website: "There is no current scientific biography of [Friedrich Wilhelm I]; the last one is from 1941 and covers only the youth years until the accession of the throne. I believe that it could be interesting in a new way today to turn to a ruler who played the role of elitist despiser and cultivated a bizarre outsider habit." (Google translate of the German.) Huh! I'm gonna say I'm not interested in buying that book, but an interesting project.

Edited 2019-10-24 17:05 (UTC)

LOL, I never thought of FW as a proto Orange Menace, and I feel that‘s somewhat unfair to him since he was a hard worker and instead of needing to be bailed out by Dad from various financial disasters left the treasury filled like it never was before. But the rest of her description certainly fits, and I could imagine her writing an interesting study about him.

ETA: forgot to say - have found a collection of letters from MT to a former lady in waiting and life time confidant (Sophie, who married unusually late - 39 - and who together with her husband was actually hostess to Leopold‘s wedding in Innsbruck so experienced the whole thing live, so to speak) - and in the foreword the editor mentions that most high ranking people asked for their correspondance to be destroyed, which is why it‘s rare we have such a lot (though not all) of the MT letters to Sophie. But, wait for it, only a single one by Sophie to MT. (Obvious parallels are obvious.) (The one Sophie letter survived because it‘s written on the back of one of MT‘s.) It‘s also interesting that she‘s vous-ing Sophie in the French texts but using „Du“ in the few German intermissions.

Still, going back to Isabella, I doubt MT suspected a sexual relationship as such - not least because 18th century understanding of sexuality as far as I recall basically didn‘t acknowledge f/f - it was only sex if penetration was involved, so women literally couldn‘t have sex with each other; presumably it counted as a kind of masturbation? Anyway. However, between MC being MT‘s favourite kid and her liking Isabella a lot, I do think she noticed the person Isabella loved best, in whatever sense, was MC, and private letters were bound to bring this up, this being an age where declarations of devotion were the norm, not the exception.

Edited 2019-10-26 17:40 (UTC)

Ohhhhh, more letters, yay :D Anything interesting in them?

*nods* Sure, I was actually not thinking so much that MT would suspect specifically a sexual relationship between Isabella and MC as that (as I think you were saying in your previous comment) MT might well have picked up that Isabella wasn't nearly as in love with Joseph as Joseph thought she was, even though I imagine Isabella was probably trying to project to everyone (except MC), particularly Joseph's parents, that she was in love with him -- and that this might have come out in letters to MC. And maybe in general MT may have picked up on Isabella's savviness in a way Joseph doesn't seem to have. (And in a fic sense, it seems to me this would be a fascinating dynamic to explore between the two of them -- especially in light of what Isabella said about MT herself in her letter.)

(Although that would also be interesting if MC wrote letters with similar content to Isabella's censored letters! What would MT think of that!)

Edited 2019-10-28 16:33 (UTC)

Oh, and one more thing about Leopold and marriage: prepare yourself for both farce and tragedy when it comes to the actual wedding. MT had the idea of letting it happen not in Vienna, but in Innsbruck, capital of Tyrolia. This was because it had meaning for the House of Lorraine (Franz Stefan's granddad had been in exile there when Louis XIV had invaded and temporarily occupied Lorraine, and his father had been born there before everyone returned to Lorraine) and for her and Franz (they'd spent part of their honeymoon there). So, romantic, right?

Except that Leopold got a stomach flu and couldn't get rid of it all the way from Vienna to Innsbruck. He spent his wedding literally trying not to shit himself. Everyone disliked the commissioned opera (not by Mozart, don't worry). It started to rain, which drenched the fireworks. It was hell.

And then, once the wedding day was finally over (Imperial weddings took eons), the news arrived that Joseph's first father-in-law, Isabella's father the Duke of Parma, had died. Cue necessity for the Imperial family to get their mourning suits out. So much for the farce part, but it gets worse.

Still the same week, it's now Sunday, everyone prays for Isabella's late Dad at mass. Franz Stefan isn't feeling so well. He couldn't sleep the previous night. MT suggests a bi tof blood letting since she's worried. He declines and says to get one with the (still related to the week long Leopold wedding festivities) shows; he watches a comedy by Goldoni and a Ballet by Gluck, and is on the way upstairs together with Joseph and some courtiers when he has a stroke. Joseph catches him in time and prevents him from falling; they get him on a servant's bed in the antechamber and call doctors and priests. But he's dead not even ten minutes later.

Now bear in mind that for us, a quick death is something enviable. For a Catholic monarch in the 18th century, it's horrible. It means they haven't had time to confess, get shriven, face their maker. This is not a good death. It means purgatory, and might mean hell. Which is why MT, who has heard exclamations and much uproar, naturally is on her way to her husband but kept away from him on Joseph's orders. By no means is she to know Franzl had a stroke and died unprepared. She's lied to that he's just feeling bad again, the doctors are taking care of it. Joseph tells her (some of) the truth later, after he's pressured the priest to say there were some signs of life left when he arrived so he could provide the last unction for Franz Stephan and FS died shriven. So by the time MT gets told by Joseph that her husband is gone, and she can see him, he's been dead for hours.

And MT never, ever, gets over it. Even ten years later, she writes to a confidant: "I spend the years, the months, the weeks, the days in the same stupor, the same bitterness as with the first day, and often I am glad the days that pass are over so I'm one day closer to my ending. (...) I know myself no more, for I live like an animal, without a soul and reason. I forget things. I get up at five, I go to bed late, and I'm not doing anything that truly counts. I do not even think."

These quotes are from a letter written in French to a former lady in waiting. After her death, people found handwritten notes in her prayer book, these in German and with excentric spelling (no capital letters) and a litany of numbers: "emperor franciscus my husband has lived 56 years eight months ten days, has died on August 18th 1765 on half bast ten in the evenig. Has lived 680 months, 2958 weeks, 20778 days, 496992 hours. My happy marriage lasted 29 years, six months, six days, and at the same hour I gave him my hand, also on a Sunday, he was taken from me. In sum 29 years, 335 months, 1540 weeks, 10781 days, 258744 hours."

(This, like Joseph's letter about his daughter, breaks my heart.)

Wow. Yeah. That math is heartbreaking. :-( And the whole story.

Oh. Yes. The months and weeks and days and even hours :((((((

:( Did MT believe that he had been shriven, at least?

Well, on the one hand, Joseph (who didn‘t have his mother‘s respect for the clergy) seems to have put the fear of God in that priest, and MT never said she didn‘t believe it, but...

...on the other hand, she did say that it‘s a comfort to her FS went to mass that day (it being Sunday) and took communion. Which could be read as meaning just that, or could mean she‘s somewhat suspicious of the „there were still life signs“ story but tells herself that there wasn‘t much sinning happening between morning, when FS had communion, and evening, when he died, so he still was in a good spiritual state.

:( I'm glad that she did seem to believe he was in a good spiritual state, either way. I really don't want to imagine her thinking that not only did he die but that she'd never see him again after death because he'd died in a state of sin. :(

Quite. This is as good a place as any to mention that her own death, by contrast, took three days (from the moment everyone admitted she was, in fact, dying), and was public (a lot, though not all of the time, courtiers and clergy were there in addition to her immediate family other than the children who were married abroad). She was wearing one of FSs old dressing gowns, as mentioned, and refused to fall asleep for those three days, saying she would not meet her maker in her sleep when he called her. A lot of coffee was involved. Joseph was present the entire time, too (also drinking a lot of coffee), for all that they'd really fought vehemently and a lot during their years as co-rulers. (And he had not taken her last intervention graciously - other than his immediate embarrassment at her contacting Fritz via Catherine behind his back and offer to step down which she didn't accept, he'd been pissed off to go, visit Catherine, and then write home that Catherine was certainly "the greatest woman of our age" (so there, Mom!).) But now he was there again, when even his sisters left to catch a break in between attending, because they did have an Albee-esque love/hate relationship on his part.

On the evening of the third day, November 29th shortly before 9 pm, she got up from the chair she was insisting to sit on and made a few steps to the Chaiselongue by herself, said "See, what bad weather for such a long journey" to Joseph (it was raining outside), took another three breaths and died.

Since I'm keeping a running word count and all, I thought I'd update with the latest stats, now that we've switched to a new post. They're a little overinflated, including things like us quoting each other and the occasional html tag, but should be in the right ballpark.

mildred_of_midgard: 56,122

selenak: 46,940

cahn: 13,225
Total: 116,287

cahn continues the all-important jobs of 1) hosting, 2) encouraging us. *hugs*

Btw, I've been meaning to ask, can I get you to tag all the posts that ended up with 100+ Fritz comments, even if they started out being about opera? It makes it easier to figure out if I've already said something, or link to a comment where someone said something. Thanks!

\o/ This is SO FUN, thank you both!!

Yes, thanks for reminding me! I had started to tag last night and... got halfway through, oops. Done now!

I also put an index with links on the previous page and I'll try to keep that one updated. (I also finally added links to the letters that you and selenak gave me :D )

Thank YOU!

Haha, our three-person three-month fandom is getting large enough to require organization already!

All hail to the wonderful hostess, I say!

<3

Hee, I definitely also go here and am watching this space :)

:D Isn't it great :D

Since I feel guilty about all the tragedy I'e recounted recently, some fun stuff: saw an interview with one of the more recent Fritz biographers, the one who said that he didn't go into "was Fritz gay, and how gay was he?" because that was for gossipy sensationalists and his book was a serious Fritz analysis. Well, in this interview he's asked again and basically just verbally shrugs. (He does say "well, his brother Heinrich definitely was, and his brother August Wilhelm was bi" - the later was new to me.) But in the comments, a mighty "no homo!" Fritz "defender" roars who not only insists that Fritz wasn't, but also that Heinrich wasn't, either, and what do you mean, bi about AW?, and it was all an Austrian slander cooked up by the Habsburgs and spread through their agent Voltaire. I pause in admiration. As centuries old conspiracy theories go, this is a new one, at least to me. I mean: how MT would have hired Voltaire to spread gossip about Fritz' sex life (as opposed to Voltaire doing it out of spite), I don't know, but I'm sure Voltaire would have taken the money if he was annoyed and broke enough at the time, principles be damned. It's just that given MT's general opinion on French freethinking philosphers suspected of denying god, he'd probably run once he saw an Austrian agent.

(Also, what could I possibly say about the King of Prussia that would make his reputation wnorse than what he says himself? my inner MT insists.)

Also fun: found an essay by Katharina Mommsen speculating why on earth Old Fritz in his last years bothered to fire off his anti-German Literature tirade; and he didn't do so casually, he wrote it for publication, had it translated into German in manuscript, so it was published simultanously in French and German. It was important for him that it appeared.

Now, as I think I mentioned before, we know from Fritz' last reader, Henri de Catt's successor, that he got the idea after his sisters Amelie and Charlotte showed up and evidently must have said something complimentary. What I hadn't so far bothered to check when looking at the date as that this wasn't before but after Goethe had already moved to the court of Charlotte's daughter Anna Amalia and become bff with Fritz' great nephew Carl August. What I also hadn't known was that for all that he'd been a Fritz fan as a boy, Goethe tongue-in-cheek did a version of Aristophanes' "The Birds" for the Weimar court in which the eagle (the emblem of Prussia) is mildly spoofed and made fun off. Also, apparantly Fritz had been complimentary about teen Carl August and had hoped his great nephew would take to the military life. This, otoh, was really not was Anna Amalia wanted.

So this ensued.

Anna Amalia: I'm hearing rumblings about some war about the Bavarian succession. Carl August already says he wants to go and is starry eyed about serving with Uncle Fritz. Now I'm honoring my Hohenzollern blood, but really, no. However, I'm not so naive to assume he'd listen if I told him to be careful and stay at home. Mr. Goethe, you've gotten over Fritz fanboying, have you? Advise me, how do we stop Carl August from joining the Prussian army without me coming across as a nagging Mom or you as a fun killer?

JWG: Here's my cunning plan: I'm off with your son to Berlin, where the Great King is not, but your uncle Heinrich is. Now maybe I've been listening to the wrong gossip, but methinks your uncle Heinrich has something to say about what serving with his brother is like, and considering he's renowned as a hero himself...

Anna Amalia: I knew there was a reason why I didn't make a fuss about you and Carl August hanging out all the time.

Heinrich: Has a lot to say.

Goethe: *is not two faced at all as he uses his one and only trip to Berlin to also visit Sanssouci like a tourist*

Carl August: Dear Uncle Fritz, I've reconsidered. Am not joining the army after all. My duchy needs me. Also, I've got a court of the muses to attend to with a Voltaire of my own, by which I mean my bff JWG, the author of Werther and "Götz von Berlichingen". He's just the coolest!

Fritz: *has just gotten MT's offer via Catherine and knows there won't be any actual battles in this war, but is still pissed off as he returns*

Anna Amalia: *writes* Dear Mom, maybe you should check on Uncle Fritz, I don't know, could be he's annoyed with us? Weimar is way too close to Prussia for me not to feel uncomfortable about that. I don't know, maybe take Aunt Amalie with you and distract him with some literature talk?

Charlotte: Eh, why not.

Fritz: *going back to bookwriting about how the German language is awful, German literature is horrible and the one young German writer he mentions by name has written this horrid play Götz which just shows his utter lack of talent ensues*

German writers, 99% of whom have been Fritz fanboys after the 7-years-war: *facepalm*

Wieland: Good lord, what's gotten into the old man? I mean, we already knew he hasn't updated his literary taste since he was 16, but doesn't he have something better to do? What on earth brought this on?

Goethe: I couldn't possibly say.

Edited 2019-10-23 12:24 (UTC)

The hilarity, it never stops. Didn't he trash talk Shakespeare (since you mentioned Shakespeare in another comment) in that same pamphlet, or at least around the same time? IIRC, "Shakespeare at least had the excuse that culture hadn't been invented in England yet, but now we have Germans imitating Shakespeare when they could be imitating my favorite 17th century French dramatists, and that's just inexcusable. Discuss! [It had been five minutes since I last said or did something controversial, I was having withdrawal symptoms and produced this pamphlet. Sorry not sorry.]"

we know from Fritz' last reader, Henri de Catt's successor

Just out of curiosity, do any of your sources provide a name? Mine just say "reader," and 'I've been wondering for a while.

Edited 2019-10-23 14:42 (UTC)

Yup. It was the Marchese Girolamo Lucchesini.

Yes, the Shakespeare trash talking was in the same pamphlet, alright. Here's what one of the ~~young Turk~~ Sturm und Drang writers, Herder, replied, according to Katharina Mommsen's essay I have this latest intel from:

"Does one have to step forward and exclaim: great man, be silent! You have no idea what you're talking about; you're making yourself ridiculous in the eyes of your fellow citizens and contemporaries; go and scrub your warrior's armor so it doesn't rust, and continue to leave the dust on the books you should have bothered to read first; shame on you, go away!"

(Btw, today's resarch according to the essay knows that in fact a substantial amount of De La Literature Allemande is based on an unpublished pamphlet Fritz drafted during his time in Rheinsberg...thirty years earlier. And as he confessed to Gottsched when he was in his forties, he hadn't read a German book since he was 18. I doubt he'd read any since meeting Gottsched, though presumably someone told him what Götz von Berlichingen was about and that it was blatantly inspired by Shakespeare. That he dusted off this unpublished thing and added a few more insults, though, really speaks for a need to be controversial again. *g*)

(The essay is mostly about German literary matters and not so much about Fritz, but for the record, it's here.

*"your fellow citizens": truly, the French Revolution is only a mere nine more years away. I doubt anyone in Fritz' youth would have dared to call him a "fellow citizen". ("Mitbürger")

** Also fun is Wieland calling Fritz "den aufgeblasensten aller deutschen Michel" ("the most bloated of German Michaels") in response. "Der deutsche Michel", "German Michael", was a symbolic figure like Uncle Sam later for the US or John Bull for England. He's usually depicted as a sleepyhead with a cap. (Remember, this was before Prussia took over the rest of the German states and we got the collective reputation of being military tough guys; the Michel was the opposite of that.) Is being called bloated or being referred to as the most German of Germans the worse insult for Fritz? Discuss.

Edited 2019-10-23 15:50 (UTC)

Marchese Girolamo Lucchesini

Oh, Lucchesini! I know him as gentleman of the bedchamber and person Fritz talked to the most in his last years. Should have guessed that would be his reader.

cahn, you have provided a most excellent research forum. :D

Do you happen to know the names of any of his other readers? Unfortunately, this is difficult to google due to 1) the frequency of the word "reader" in English, 2) Henri de Catt (who floods the search results even when I use "Vorleser").

Is being called bloated or being referred to as the most German of Germans the worse insult for Fritz?

Depends. What does "bloated" mean in this context? Indolent? Something else? Literally bloated, yes, between the digestive issues and the edema, but I don't think that's what was meant. :-P

Btw, today's resarch according to the essay knows that in fact a substantial amount of De La Literature Allemande is based on an unpublished pamphlet Fritz drafted during his time in Rheinsberg

Rheinsberg? RHEINSBERG?! Oh god, this is so in character I'm dying laughing. Oh, Fritz.

we already knew he hasn't updated his literary taste since he was 16

Or his taste in much else. Time kind of stopped for him in the 17th century when it came to the arts. Neoclassicism? What Neoclassicism?! Frederician rococo all the way! (It has been pointed out that not only did he form his tastes early in the 18th century, but he got them from people who were a generation older than he was. And to use cahn's analogy, he was an absolute terrier when he got an idea into his head.)

Okay so very important question for my modern AUs: do you think anything has been created in the last 300 years that Fritz would actually like, if he was dropped by a time machine into the year 2019 with all his memories up through 1786 (or 1728, which as discussed is the same thing :P) intact? Having virtually no artistic tastes myself (tone-deaf, aesthetically blind, probably completely soulless :P ), I can't really judge, but I've been desperately curious for a long time.

Finally, while we're here, I have run across some quotes from people playing devil's advocate re Fritz and German. Some of them are, "Many of his contemporaries agreed, or partially agreed," but hilariously, many are "Well, of course he was terribly wrong, but there were silver linings, because Fritz being wrong was better than most people being right!"

"As Goethe noted, by simply publishing a pamphlet about German literature Frederick gave intellectual debate a momentum which no other living person could have matched. His declared aversion to their culture was paradoxically 'highly beneficial' for German writers, because it spurred them on by provoking a reaction. Goethe continued: 'Moreover, in the same way, Frederick’s aversion to the German language as the medium for literature was a good thing for German writers. They did everything they could to make the King take notice of them.' That Frederick’s remarks about German literature were ill-informed, one-sided and even at times absurd did not matter. What was important was the entry of the King of Prussia to the public domain to take on all comers."

"Paradoxically, this combination of goad and encouragement does seem to have promoted German literature."

"The Prussian writer Leonard Meister...could even find a beneficial side to Frederick’s alleged Francophilia: 'Even his preference for the French seems to have had a beneficial effect on the Germans. Not only did they learn from them, but there also developed a noble spirit of competition, with German intellectuals seeking to be worthy associates of their gifted French counterparts."

"Frederick himself...said to Mirabeau: 'What greater service could I have performed for German literature than that I didn't bother with it?'"

I love that last one. "I didn't micromanage it! What more do you want?" :P (I mean, I don't think that's what he meant, but that's what I'm taking away from it as the real silver lining here.)

Do you happen to know the names of any of his other readers?

Not by heart, and my Fritz bios are back at the library by now.

"Bloated" in this context means mostly chest-thumpingly arrogant, but I wanted to get the physical imagery across which "aufgeblasen" has in German. Puffing up your cheeks, literally.

Okay so very important question for my modern AUs: do you think anything has been created in the last 300 years that Fritz would actually like, if he was dropped by a time machine into the year 2019 with all his memories up through 1786 (or 1728, which as discussed is the same thing :P) intact?

Impossible to answer, since we don't have any date for him actually having read and listened to anything post 1728 or thereabouts. (Well, other than his and Wilhelmine's compositions.) It's not just literature, as I said in the other post. Beyond him putting her and Heinrich's boy under arrest for a while, another beef Elisabeth Mara/Gertrud Schmeling had with him that he wouldn't let her sing any Gluck but stubbornly kept to the old Metastasio-inspired stuff, and if you're a singer living in an era where opera goes through a major major shift and lots of exciting new composers are around, that's got to be frustrating even if he pays you very well.

And as one biographer asked: "Friedrich enjoyed Moliere's Le Bourgois Gentilhomme, but if he'd enjoyed Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm, if he'd actually read or watched it, is highly doubtable." The point of comparison here is that much as Moliere poked fun at the customs and hypocrisies of his day, Lessing (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,dramatist and philosopher, friends with Moses Mendelssohn, embodiment of the German Enlightenment as its best, also notoriously the one whose electon to the Academy made Fritz change the rules to NO GERMAN WRITERS ALLOWED) poked fun and, um, actually critisized, in a comedy manner, the Prussia of his day. I.e. Fritz' Prussia.

Minna von Barnhelm is set right after the 7-Years-War. Our titular heroine (a Saxon) is a rich heiress who fell in love with and gotten engaged to our hero, Major von Tellheim (a Prussian), mid-war. But then she hasn't heared from him until finding him in the inn the play takes place, absolutely broke and dismissed in disgrace. Why? Because Tellheim, who is an honorable man, has thought the war taxes he as a Prussian officer was supposed to raise from the occupied (by Prussia) Saxons were too much and too unfair for the part of Saxon population he was in charge with, lowered them and partially used his own fortune to make up the difference. This ended up being construed as bribery and got him kicked out of the army. As he's adherring to the Prussian code of honor he feels he can't possibly tell Minna about this or make her marry a man without fortune and in disgrace, hence his disappearance.

Cue the usual comedy stuff, since Minna is a sensible and clever heroine, with a streak of ruthlessnesss (her way of getting Tellheim who when seeing her first pretends to not love her anymore to tell her he does love her is simply by pretending to have lost her fortune as well, and be crushed he now turns his back on her that she's in distress; cue him saying no, if that's the case, of course he loves and adores her, he just thought, etc., and then she corners him with her question if this is honorable and loving behavior for him - helping her if she's poor - why not for her?. You also get the usual 18th century comedy structure of upper class Minna and Tellheim being mirrored by her lady's maid and his footman (the only of his servants who remained with him, unpaid, and refuses to leave; Tellheim spent the last of his money to pay his other servants' salaries before they left back when he was dismissed from the army). Saxon common sense and charm triumphs over Prussian stiff neck and pride, with a little help from the off stage wise King (i.e. Fritz), a la Louis XIV deus' ex machina appearance in Moliere's plays, who has realised the truth of what Tellheim did (i.e. that he didn't let himself bribed by Saxons but on the contrary spent his money to help them and meet the demands of the Prussian army at the same time) and reverses the dishonorable discharge.

But around the rom com plot, you also get a pretty sharp picture of the 7 years war aftermath, with not just Tellheim and his footman Just but a lot of other former soldiers not knowing what to do, being out of money, and the civilian population still shaken and barely recovering. It's a contemporary play which doesn't bother with allegorisation or mythical disguises, or a fictional location, but features contemporary characters, in the author's present, and a very specific setting. (It is, in fact, the very first play of later to be canonical German literature which deals with with the 7 years war.) I don't think the biographer in question was maligning Fritz when doubting he'd been able to laugh and say "point taken", or even to realise that Lessing was in fact doing the same thing Moliere had done, that the way to follow the example of a classic playwright wasn't by imitation but by adopting those satirical methods to your own surroundings.

(Especially if one of the results is "yeah, the Prussian code of conduct, for men especially, is really somewhat ridiculous and inherently self damaging", and "women are more sensible than men, by and large".)

Anyway: one thing that happens in the Fritz/Wilhelmine letters more than once is this kind of exchange:

W: Congratulatons on founding the academy in Berlin and switching from being Mars to being Apollo at your court! Seems the muses are leaving France and coming to the Germans, yay! We're entering a golden age, I just feel it.
F: Nope, nope, nope. No way are the muses deserting France. They got several new plays and operas out just this year when the Dauphin married, and have we got? Dreck I'm not reading or watching. We're barbarians" (he does say "we", not "they") and all my artists are French or Italian because I have taste.

So for Fritz to enjoy anything produced in the last 300 years would require him to make the major, major concesssion he never did in his life time of actually being able to listen to it/read it/watch it instead of refusing to and clinging to the stuff that he liked when he was young. Mind you, the change of circumstance might make it happen - because a Fritz transported into the present via time machine would no longer be able to create his own world around him and shut out (most of) anything he doesn't want to acknowledge. He couldn't count on people indulging him. And he might be frustrated enough by everyone talking about things he has no idea about to actually tackle at least some of them.

A cunning plan might be to start with Mozart's "Figaro's Wedding" (hey, it has an Italian libretto! Based on a French play! He'll recognize the traces left by the Comedia Dell' Arte archetypes) and Rossini's "Barber of Sevilla" (aka the prequel, same reasons as before). It's post Gluck (and how) so has all the innovations he was against and then some, but both are so beautiful that I just can't imagine anyone with the slightest love of music truly listening and not loving them.

I would at some point risk traumatizing him again by either Schiller's Don Carlos directly or Verdi's opera version, but not early on in the game. I would risk one of Schiller's poems, Die Bürgschaft (that's the one about Damon you asked me about several entries ago), because not only is it an ode to male friendship, but this time one of the friends is able to save the other one from execution by tyrant in the end and even the tyrant is impressed. And like all of Schiller's word arias, the language is gorgeous; hard to maintain German sounds terrible when listening to it.

Whether he'd enjoy any of the great 19th century novels, of any country, lord knows. There were of course Baroque novels, but the 19th century novel was a very different beast. I would, however, introduce 20th century music by presenting him with Leonard Bernstein's version of his pal Voltaire's novel Candide. Bernstein's music incorporates several operatic and musical styles, and Fritz would thus be presented with something both familiar and utterly alien.

ETA: Oh, I know another one to which Fritz' reaction might at least be... interesting. The Three Penny Opera by Brecht and Kurt Weill. He'd spot it being based on The Beggar's Opera, of course (well, I assume, I have no idea whether he knew The Beggar's Opera, but it was contemporary to him and pre-Gluck, so he might have), but Brecht's in your face cynicsm mixed with lyricism strikes me as acutally rather Fritzian in personality. What he'd make of the Canon Song I'd really like to know! Can equally see him laughing and be indignant.

Edited 2019-10-24 04:59 (UTC)

ahahaha, this is much more well-thought-out than my reaction to mildred's post, which was along the lines of "Are you KIDDING?? The guy didn't even like GLUCK and BACH, he would have had a heart attack with Mozart, much less anything more modern!"

However, it did make me think that perhaps flute might be a good way to get his attention. I know nothing about flute literature, but I know Mozart did a lot of beautiful woodwind stuff (yes, you can tell I'm a string player), and Fritz might get interested from that end, at which point maybe introducing him to Figaro might work. I wonder what he'd think of Romantic flute music. Again, maybe introduce some solo or even a capella flute music and get him gently used to that before adding in anything else.

Also, if this is an AU where Katte lives (aren't they all?) then I think it's very possible Katte might be interested in some of this newfangled stuff, and that might be an avenue to introduce it to Fritz.

(Also, Minna von Barnhelm sounds awesome -- both the play and the heroine :D )

Also, if this is an AU where Katte lives (aren't they all?)

Yes. Yes they are.

then I think it's very possible Katte might be interested in some of this newfangled stuff, and that might be an avenue to introduce it to Fritz.

That's exactly what I'm getting at. In all my modern AUs, Fritz is ranting about newfangled X, Y, and Z, and Katte is sighing to himself while gradually introducing Fritz to newer things. I'm just trying to figure out *what* Katte is introducing him to. Good witty comedy? What about *films*? Surely in the set of all films produced in the last hundred years, a modern Fritz comes around to liking at least one!

The other reason I think about this is that I think a less traumatized Fritz is less aggressively close-minded. He's still very opinionated, but...okay, I'm not trying to oversimplify here, but I do think his chronic trauma affected the way he related to things like the arts. It's just so radically in character with the way he reacted to everything else in a way that makes sense in light of his personality intersecting with PTSD. (It's never just PTSD. As

rachelmanija once said, memorably, "People react to trauma in character.")

For example, I don't think Fritz's exaggerated antipathy toward German and love for French, even relative to his contemporaries for whom French was the language of the nobility and intelligentsia, was solely due to FW burning/getting rid of Fritz's French books and forbidding anyone to let him speak or read or write anything but German at Küstrin, but I don't think it's irrelevant either.

So if Katte's around (and I said "time machine" for the sake of simplifying my question, but my actual mechanism is reincarnation, which introduces whole new kettles of fish), and therapy is around, and also other things I have introduced into this complex, never-to-be-written-and-posted universe, I feel like Katte is having fun exploring everything that happened in the last 300 years, while coaxing his grumpy boyfriend into dipping his toes in the water.

Re Don Carlos and Die Bürgschaft, I would give him major detailed trigger warnings first and let him decide. :)

I feel like reincarnation may make this part easier? In particular, what's the mechanism whereby he acquires his past memories? If he acquires them past age zero (and if he has them at age zero, that's... going to be interesting, growing up) then he'll have some acclimatization to this world that will make it easier to try new things from this world.

Katte might introduce him to films, but he is *definitely* going to introduce him to flute music, right?! :)

Yes, exactly. No, he doesn't acquire them at age zero, for that exact reason (it's too weird, developmentally). They start coming back little by little as the reincarnated kids approach puberty (which means all of them have an *interesting* adolescence, in a world where reincarnation = crackpottery and nobody believes them...look, I said I was evil).

You mean new-to-him flute music? By the time Fritz & Katte meet in their twenties (yes, I'm evil and like to make my characters *work* for their happy ending), Fritz is already a professional chamber musician (and yes, a grumpy one) and pretty familiar with the repertoire of the last 300 years, and yes he has to play things he doesn't like for his job. Like selenak said, it's hard when you're not king and can't have everything your way. He considers it a price he's willing to pay to be a professional musician (which is part of the fix-it aspect for me). :)

But Katte has been doing a lot more exploring of everything that happened in the last 300 years, in multiple languages/cultures, and has a lot more breadth and a lot less resistance to new things (I have opinions about Fritz's resistance, and a lot of it comes down to personality meets chronic trauma). So he definitely gets to be the one who tries to get past Fritz's resistance gently with things he might like.

Ah, okay then, so he knows about flute music. I imagine that even with his Fritz-intrusive memories, if he has to actually PLAY all this music he'd have come up with some post-Monteverdi composers he would actually like! (My guess would be the Romantics and Mozart, who are kind of hard to dislike. The Romantics especially are very easy to love as an adolescent.)

So in that case I think it would be fairly easy for Katte to say, hey, Mozart ALSO wrote these cool operas, come see them with me! Verdi might be a harder sell but after being warmed up by Mozart operas it might work. /is projecting at this point from my own experience

Do you happen to know the names of any of his other readers?

Not by heart, and my Fritz bios are back at the library by now.

Have turned up some names of more people I knew about but didn't know/hadn't realized they were his readers: La Mettrie (man, *he* should have written some memoirs) from 1748 until his death in 1751, then Abbé de Prades, then after his falling out with Fritz a few years later, Catt. Then Lucchesini. So that takes us through most of his reign. Will keep an eye out for the early 1740s. :D

I'm finding varying dates for Darget as reader, the earliest being 1746-1752, and the latest being 1749-early 1750s. So he may have overlapped with La Mettrie, not sure.

Almost there!

Goethe: *is not two faced at all as he uses his one and only trip to Berlin to also visit Sanssouci like a tourist*

Also, pfff. I'm with Goethe on this one. Would not fight in Fritz's army for love or money, would definitely pay money to visit Sanssouci like a tourist, *have* paid money to visit Sanssouci like a tourist, planning to pay *more* money to visit Sanssouci like a tourist again as soon as I can afford it. :-P

Wieland: Good lord, what's gotten into the old man? I mean, we already knew he hasn't updated his literary taste since he was 16, but doesn't he have something better to do? What on earth brought this on?

Goethe: I couldn't possibly say.

This is still making me laugh in the best possible way. :D

(Also, what could I possibly say about the King of Prussia that would make his reputation wnorse than what he says himself? my inner MT insists.)

This is going to make it into your MT-Fritz fic, right? :D (Well, I guess this particular line doesn't have to, but happy to see you are thinking like MT :P :D ) That is... a theory, for sure. Wow.

Goethe: I couldn't possibly say.

This is amaaaaaazing!

To bring back the TV metaphor, I feel like this is one of those jokes-that-were-set-up-a-season-ago-and-are-now-paying-off, like, you told me about Goethe and Carl August being BFF's waaaay back and it's making this basically 1000% more awesome and hilarious :D

I couldn‘t be happier that the joke paid off.:)

I admit that I know basically two things about Frederick the Great of Prussia. (1) he was involved in a legal kerfuffle with a mill (but this might be urban legend), and (2) he tried to run away with his officer boyfriend, who was executed as a result.

Which is to say, since there is clearly a lot of glorious historical batshit here I would enjoy, do you recommend a particular book to start (in English)?

Alas, I have to pass this on to

mildred_of_midgard, because being German,the Frederick biographies I'm familiar with are as well. In the meantime, why not check out Mein Name ist Bach, a movie based on the historical encounter(s) between Frederick and, well, Bach? That one has English subtitles, is focused on a brief point in time (so you don't have to know context beyond the one the movie provides), and it does give you a first impression of Frederick's personality. (Though, as Mildred said, the jerk woobie part, not the magnificent bastard part, but that's due to circumstance. (The magnificent bastard part comes out when he's facing off with most of Europe, not with musicians, some of which depend on him for a living.)

Thank you for the rec! Alas, my German reading reaches its limits cheesy fanfic, but I enjoy a good costume drama and that looks like it would be a good fun start. And it's only 95 mins long, which is something I always like in a film!

Ha, I was waiting to see if

selenak had something to offer first. But I suspected her knowledge might be limited to German sources, just as mine is limited to English.

Sadly, I have further limitations, which are:

1) Most of the Fritz reading I've done was 20 years ago, when I was ~15 years old, and thus, while I remember a surprising amount of facts, I don't remember much about authors.
2) Due to chronic pain, I can no longer read physical books and can only read e-books. Not many of the Fritz bios have been converted to e-books.

So with these limitations, the only biography I can currently recommend as a starting point is Blanning.

Pros:
- It's recent, from 2015--more recent than I remembered.
- I found it quite readable.
- The author doesn't "no homo" Fritz.
- Best of all, he challenges a lot of long-standing unquestioned or rarely questioned beliefs about Fritz that have been floating around the ether for 200+ years, by looking at the documentary evidence.

Cons:
- It left me wanting more, by skimping a lot on the military and political side.

Oh, but another pro:
- It filled in a gap in my reading by actually engaging more with his artistic side than most biographers I've encountered.

If I could read more extensively, I'd have a lot more confidence in my opinions about the conclusions he draws in his challenging of long-standing myths, but between me not being able to read German or French fluently, and not being able to (re)read physical books in English, all I can say is I like the fact that he *is* trying to challenge long-standing myths by looking at documentary evidence. It's encouraging.

On the political side, MacDonogh is more thorough (and drier--oh, god, the endless Fritz & Wilhelmine wedding negotiations) and makes a good complement to Blanning, but he constantly frustrates me by saying factually wrong things, not considering the bias in his sources (or considering it wrongly), or just not backing up what he says with documentary evidence. Read with caution. Or as I always say, never read just one book on any subject. Blanning + MacDonogh is a pretty decent combo, though.

Mitford came out of her own abusive childhood believing that children deserve to be beaten, starved, and humiliated if they don't mold themselves into perfect emotional mirrors for their parents' every whim. I vaguely remember reading and disliking her bio of Fritz 20 years ago, but this time around, I had to stop reading 14 pages in. Cannot recommend.

But if you want a book-length treatment that's chaotic and out of chronological order, but focuses on presenting the glorious historical batshit in the most entertaining way possible, start here, then here, here, then read through the comments in cahn's Frederick the Great tag posts in order!

Also, always feel free to come here and ask us questions! We won't even mind repeating things if you don't feel like reading through the 100,000+ words of comments. I might even put together a "Best of" set of links, although the problem with our asynchronous presentation is that any given comment might presuppose knowledge that was presented in earlier, less exciting comments.

Welcome to the fandom! Somebody in it is always up to some wacky hijinks. :D See also my recent comment about Fritz thinking, "Oh no, it's been five whole minutes since I last said or did something controversial! Must...publish...ridiculous pamphlet!"

Thank you for such a long and thoughtful summary of the options, that's incredibly helpful. It sounds like I should start with Blanning - recent, not-no-homo, and looking afresh at things sounds solid even if inevitably no-one is perfect - and then hopefully I'll feel a bit more confident about reading on and around if I want to go further. Not with Mitford, though - I'm glad you didn't say hers is best, because she really annoys me! Frankly my European history of the period is so dreadful that this would be a huge improvement with just one book! I shall definitely read the entertaining batshit presentation, too :-)

Long and thoughtful is what I do best!

If you get *super* interested in Fritz specifically, Asprey seems to have a vast amount of detail (especially on his campaigns) that I desperately want to read but can't because of my disability--curses!--but would probably be too much detail for a beginner, and I also can't speak to any flaws it might have, because of course I can't read it. (I own a copy and try to read one to two pages a day, which is about the maximum my body will allow. The main text is 634 pages long. It's gonna be a while.)

Wish I could recommend a general 18th century intro, but I got into 18th century history so long ago I no longer remember anything (ETA: as far as good introductory resources), and now read only incredibly specific things. :P

Good luck, enjoy, and please do consider us a willing source of information and entertainment! :D

Edited 2019-10-24 22:37 (UTC)

Being restricted in reading like that must be absolutely infuriating! You have my sympathies. 1 - 2 pages a day is a long time to get through a book of that size - or anything really. I applaud your persistence.

For some reason the 18th century just seemed like the most boring historical period of all time when I was at school/university and I avoided it like the plague. But soon I shall know more!

For some reason the 18th century just seemed like the most boring historical period of all time when I was at school/university and I avoided it like the plague.

SAME. I don't know what I was thinking! (Well, I do know what I was thinking. No one ever told me these stories!)

Hahaha, well, as for me, all I can say is I was a weird teenager. I can't even claim I either knew most of these stories or cared about the ones I did.

At the time, I kind of used the Enlightenment as my excuse for being obsessed with the 18th century, but while I did like the *idea* of the Enlightenment, was I actually studying Diderot and Lavoisier and that bunch? No, what I was obsessed with was military history, military history, military history.

I pored over battle plans and surprisingly detailed historical atlases. I drew up my own battle plans and campaign plans! I was all "expansionist warfare FTW!" I checked out muster rolls from the university library and found them fascinating. I was the weirdest kid ever. Even to this day, when I've gotten rid of most of my high school book collection over the course of several moves, one category of books I hung onto over the years was 18th century military history. Cause yeah.

I regret nothing. :D

I bet you actually knew how to win Campaign instead of just shoving all bombs round your flag!

I was deferring to the other two, as I have basically no book knowledge and have just been reading all their crazy comments :D

I do have some links here but many of the links are video (which I haven't yet watched) or not in English (though for small things google translate can be used). I have read Volume 1 of Wilhelmine's memoirs in English translation (linked from that page), which definitely does make it pretty clear what an absolutely crazy family Frederick the Great was from, although depends on your tolerance for abuse (his father being quite abusive both physically and emotionally, and their mother being emotionally abusive to Wilhelmine). Volume 2 is less relevant to this discussion and I foundered in the middle of it.

If you're interested in Maria Theresia, there is apparently a good biography of her by Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger coming out sometime soon in English translation; I'm definitely going to get it when it comes out and will post about it.

selenak has read it in German and has good things to say about it.

Also, that is two more things than I knew before all of this started! (Although

selenak told me (2) last year.)

Thank you! I will root around the links, though may go for a biog first (or not, am currently mid-way through one on Luther). As a TV!Versailles fan I need to read all the Philippe d'Orleans and Liselotte and their successful but Very Gay Marriage.

Thanks for the Maria Theresa rec as well, I mentioned upthread that I want to improve my European history generally, so that would be a good option, too.

Guys, I‘m at another conference and thus it will take me a while longer to reply to all the replies I got from your gracious selves, but I just had to share this gem:

Discussion theme: what can writers do to further the European spirit?

Hans Pleschinski, author: „Well, I was the first to translate all the Fritz/Voltaire letters into German and publish the complete correspondance of these brilliant Europeans in 1991, and I have to say, when I got to present them in front of the European Parliament, with me reading Fritz and a Wallonian reading Voltaire, it was a highlight of my life and the most European event imaginable.“

heeee this is awesome! :D

I found a Voltaire sampler that has a few of the Voltaire->Fritz letters and all of them seem quite complimentary. I assume that the collater chose those intentionally -- I was waiting for the snarky letters and they never came! (The sampler also has some other writing by Voltaire where he goes off on Fritz, so there's that, but still.)

I haven't read their entire correspondence, but to be fair, the majority of what they wrote to each other as pen pals *was* straight out of their mutual admiration society. As some biographer put it, their relationship was great as long as all they had to do was exchange compliments. And one of the things they had in common was snarking at *other people*, that's why they kept falling head over heels for each other. They did a lot of snarking about the other one to third parties, as your sampler noted. Plus, in the period immediately after the big explosion (put Fritz and Voltaire in Sanssouci, shake, how big is the explosion?), there wasn't much correspondence between them at all because they were both sulking in their tents (and trashing each other to the rest of the world). So though there is some snarking at each other in their correspondence, most of the best quotes are going to be from other sources.

I'm still laughing at

"BOSWELL: He said the King of Prussia wrote like your footboy.
VOLTAIRE. He is a sensible man."

Btw, when Voltaire died, apparently Fritz had a mass said for him in Berlin. I love that so much. Trolling the Church: it's what Voltaire would have wanted! (Remember, neither was a big fan of religion in general, but Catholicism specifically was The Worst, and Voltaire, being a French subject, had a lot of conflict with the Church. Fritz mostly just sat off to the side as Protestant king and made snide remarks, then went, "ooh, look how tolerant I am, I'm harboring Jesuits and building Catholic churches in Berlin while writing libretti about how the Aztec religion* was more tolerant than Catholicism, yay freedom of religion.")

* Did he know about all the human sacrifice? Was he having a noble savage moment without realizing it?

Oh, speaking of Fritz and religious snark, albeit not Voltaire related, this one made me laugh out loud:

"He also enjoyed reminding his subjects that constitutionally he was the head of both the Lutheran and the Reformed (Calvinist) churches in his dominions. Adjudicating a petition from a man refused permission by the church authorities to marry his widowed aunt, he wrote: 'The Consistory is an ass. As Vicar of Jesus Christ and Archbishop of Magdeburg, I decree that the couple shall be joined together in holy matrimony.' The parishioners of a Pomeranian village who asked for the dismissal of a pastor who did not believe in the resurrection of the body were told that on the Day of Judgment it was up to him if he wished to just lie there prostrate while everyone else got up. Ordering the reappointment of a pastor dismissed because his parishioners objected to his preaching against the eternity of Hell, he commented that if they wished to be damned for all eternity, he had nothing against it. And so on."

"It was up to him if he wished to just lie there prostrate while everyone else got up," "As Vicar of Jesus Christ," omg, Fritz, this is why people love pen-palling with you. The sarcasm, it burns. :-DD

Oh, and speaking of that mass for Voltaire, it reminds me of something else Fritz said. See, Voltaire spent the last few decades of his life loudly proclaiming that he was on his deathbed and his death was expected imminently and everyone should cut him some slack. Fritz started rolling his eyes and retorting that Voltaire would outlive everyone, including him. "You'll write my epitaph," is approximately how he put it. (He was wrong: Voltaire died about 8 years before Fritz, albeit he was also 17 years older than Fritz, so about 9 years more advanced in age at time of death). I like to imagine Old Fritz wishing there were some way for him to find out from beyond the grave what his old frenemy had to say about him.

Boswell was so good at getting excellent quotes out of people that it is one of my lasting regrets he didn't manage to gatecrash Fritz. If his French was good enough to chat with Voltaire and Rousseau, he could have carried a conversation with Frederic Le Grand, or rather, provided cues for Fritz to spout terse aphorisms.

* Did he know about all the human sacrifice? Was he having a noble savage moment without realizing it?

Oh, he knew. Not least because the Spaniards made damn sure all of Europe knew, this being part of the "we brought light to the heathens" tale. Heinrich Heine (now here's a poet one wishes Fritz would spar with - Francophile, free thinker, loathed the Prussian military and Prussians in general as most Rhinelanders did) wrote a poem in which the gods of the Aztecs decide to avenge their people's slaughter by Cortez by joining the Spaniards on their way back to Europe and inspire the wars of religion that ravaged the continent through the ensuing centuries as the Christian version of human sacrifice.

Fritz' contemporary Rousseau didn't invent the trope of the Noble Savage, but he certainly helped popularize it; it was in the later 18th century air. In terms of serious discussion of the Spanish behavior vs the Aztecs (and other native Americans), though, it's worth pointing out that given Las Casas famously pleaded in front of Charles V. that the treatment of the "Indians" was horrible, unchristian and had to stop, i.e. you had inner Spanish objections to conquistadoring as early as a generation after it had started, I'd say it's likely Fritz' pro-Aztecs libretto expressed a majority opinion of his time at least in terms of "the Spaniards were the bad guys here", though not in terms of "...what human sacrfice are you talking about?")

The "Friedrich II und die Musik" book I was reading two months ago also points out his Montezuma opera points out that the Aztecs were lacking a strong leader to stand up to Catholic tyranny and conquest and represent their interest, that Montezuma honoring his promises and treaties instead of practical and using pre-emptive counterstrikes just doomed him. Which of course was written without any thought of contemporary application and propaganda at all, I'm sure.

the Aztecs were lacking a strong leader to stand up to Catholic tyranny and conquest and represent their interest, that Montezuma honoring his promises and treaties instead of practical and using pre-emptive counterstrikes just doomed him.

All together now: oh, Fritz.

...Good grief, I've just come across his letter to Heinrich about AW dying for the first time. Mildred, you've probably read it before, but I hadn't. Cahn, bear in mind that Fritz had blamed AW for a lost battle in the 7-years-war and publically humiliated him ("you're suited for commanding a seraglio but not my army!" was one of the nicer things), and AW had lived just long enough thereafter to write a resentful "here's what really happened!" private memo, then die. (Of brain tumor, but contemporaries saw it as him dying of a broken heart.) Bear also in mind AW and Heinrich had been close. So, this is Fritz, writing to Heinrich, mid 7 years war (before Wilhelmine's death, in case you're wondering):

„I received the sad and painful news of my brother's death from Berlin. I am all the more crushed as I have always loved him tenderly, and I have always blamed all the trouble he has caused me on his weakness for bad advisors and his choleric temper which he could not always curb."

(The "bad advisors" were some of his best generals and Heinrich himself.)

Due to the kindness of his heart and all his good qualities, I suffered a lot of his conduct with patience, even as it was most irregular and meant he was failing in his duties towards me.

(Meaning: AW, who had joined the club of unhappy Hohenzollern marriages, had asked Fritz for permission to divorce his wife and marry his long term mistress. Fritz was livid.)

I know how tenderly you have loved him. I hope that after you have given free reign to love and human nature in your first hurt, you will make every effort a strong soul is capable of to of course not forget a brother whose image shall always live in your and my heart, but to limit the overabundance of a grief which could damage you. Please remember that in little more than a year, I have lost a mother I adored and a brother whom I have always had tender affection for. Please don't add to my current difficult situation another wound which your grief might inspire in you."

How Heinrich didn't desert to Austria on the spot, I don't kow. (The letter is quoted in this article about AW.) As it is, the famous "Fuck you, Fritz!" obelisk in Rheinsberg with AW's image on it is more understandable than ever.

Edited 2019-10-29 19:20 (UTC)

Yes. Yes, I have read it. I have paraphrased it here. I have linked to fanart someone else made about it on tumblr. It's that bad. It's part of why I was ranting about Fritz's "condolence" letters, and it's why I said I would actually be okay with it if EC did decide to use a red seal instead of black to announce Fritz's mother's death to him. Because retaliation mostly just makes things worse in life, but in the absence of an actual solution to the problem, sometimes you just have to keep your own self-respect. And using the red seal would have been a minor and forgivable act of retaliation.

The only thing I can say about Fritz's letter is that he may genuinely have meant the Stoic aspects of it to be comforting/good advice, and he seems to be telling Henry "If you were to, I don't know, die of grief like he did or otherwise become incapacitated, I would be upset because I care about you," but none of that excuses the "Me me me all about ME" "But what about MY feelings??" "Oh and don't forget there's a war on, bro" themes to this letter.

Also, I may have mentioned that this letter is practically paraphrased in Catt's memoirs, where Fritz also goes on about how much he loved AW and it was all the fault of those bad advisors coming between them (he does at least admit that he himself has a choleric temper he can't always control, BUT STILL), and basically how, lip service to his own faults aside, everything is everyone's fault except his. Scapegoating is honestly one of Fritz's least attractive qualities.

Obelisk: oh, yeah. This letter had a lot to do with that.

How Heinrich didn't desert to Austria on the spot, I don't kow.

I'm telling you, HE NEEDS THAT HOT PAGE.

He does indeed. Without having read the Eva Z. biography yet, German language internet tells me this about Heinrich's known love interest:

Marwitz the hot page: frustrating, no one ever mentions a first name. Was probably related to Marwitz the cheating lady-in-waiting, though whether as cousin or brother, no one mentions.

Mara the sexy violinist: already covered in my post about Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling Mara.

Christian Ludwig von Kaphengst: described by Thibault in his memoirs as tall (Heinrich, like his father and brother, really wasn't), cheerful, witty and courageous, but also an incorrigble spendrift. (Like Mara the sexy violinist.) Heinrich gave him Schloß Meseberg - which today is used by our government to host guests of state in - and had to sell 29 paintings from his personal collection to Catherine in Russia in order to get the cash. Kaphengst wanted a promotion in the army, and Fritz bluntly refused to grant it, whereupon Kaphengst quit the army and got into more debts, so much so that he pawned his entire estates, and in 1784 Heinrich had to apply for a loan in France (aka the least financially solvent state in Europe) to bail him and the estates out, with Louis XVI. personally acting as guarantee for Heinrich's ability to keep his word. Heinrich got the money and covered the bail, but then also finally called it quits with Kaphengst.

(Catherine: I would never do that for my boy toys. Men are just too emotional to rule.)

In conclusion, I hope that to be read biography tells me at least one of Heinrich's guys was a bit more deserving and not mainly in it for the money, because otherwise this is depressing.

(Hey, here's a possibility for the incest shippers - Heinrich/Fritz hate sex?)

(Catherine: I would never do that for my boy toys. Men are just too emotional to rule.)

lol, I LOVE CATHERINE

Marwitz the hot page: frustrating, no one ever mentions a first name. Was probably related to Marwitz the cheating lady-in-waiting, though whether as cousin or brother, no one mentions.

Marwitzes : Hohenzollerns :: matter : antimatter

What little I know of Heinrich's love affairs is that Fritz was periodically having to give him money/aid to bail him out of situations like this. At one point Fritz said his occasional help with Heinrich's eventful love affairs was the only reason Heinrich was ~~not defecting to Austria on the spot~~ speaking to Fritz at all.

Also, I gather Fritz was kind of eyerolly about the love affairs. "~~See, I'm not a man-whore, like some people I could mention.~~ Or a whore-whore, Catherine."

Fritz: *dies alone*

Hate sex isn't my thing personally, but I can't deny the abundance of opportunity here!

I like hate sex myself, but I think I feel too bad for Heinrich to really go for it.

Fritz/Voltaire, where I kind of don't feel bad for either of them, I'm up for that :) (I suppose that would be less hate sex than... snarky sex?)

Fritz/Voltaire snark sex would be awesome. Also, they could maybe even get an exception from me about hate sex, mostly because it wasn't pure hate and they were really frenemies, and they'd been friends first. Actually, I think I would enjoy a dynamic where they'd been having sex before their falling-out, or at least flirting pretty damn hard, and then after the falling-out had at least one really intense sexual encounter full of passionate hate, snark, resentment, and "Where did our love go?" mutual disappointment.

...Okay, now I want someone to write that.

Oh yeah, I absolutely want Fritz/Voltaire snark, hatesex or otherwise :D Ahhhhhh it's too bad Yuletide doesn't let you request the same fandom twice!

IKR? I've been thinking that since this started. I would have signed up if I could have requested and offered different subsets of Frederician characters.

Oh, well. It's fun prompting each other and outlining fic ideas here. :D

You know, since treats are a thing, and you have a blanket "crackfic involving any of these characters" prompt already, maybe you could add that you'd be happy to receive treats for other characters that the limitations of Yuletide didn't allow you to formally request? I think that'd be fine? Since you've already got loads of prompts for the characters you did request. And then you could throw in a Fritz/Voltaire pairing ~~to your increasingly long list of Frederician prompts~~. ;)

ETA: mods have confirmed this is fine! There was a suggestion not to have your treat prompts outnumber requested character prompts, but everyone agreed non-requested-character treat prompts are totally kosher.

Me: Dooo eeeet!

ETA 2: You may already know this, but the mods have added that if you're okay with getting a subset of your nominated characters, this must be in your sign-up, not just your letter. Otherwise it causes them headaches when trying to decide if a submitted story meets the requirements or not.

Edited 2019-11-04 02:27 (UTC)

LOL, okay, I added that stricture in. Don't want it for my assignment, but if anyone wants to write me Fritz-Voltaire hatesex for a treat, I am not gonna say no to that. I mean, not that I know anyone who would do that :PPPPPP

And, yep, I did know that, thanks. I think I said this in previous comment -- I do actually want all nommed characters but I put in both letter and signup that it's OK if they don't all show up in person, just in thought/memory/discussion, since e.g. Wilhelmine might be dead by the time the summit actually happens.

Right, that makes sense.

I mean, not that I know anyone who would do that :PPPPPP

Who would do such a thing???? I can't imagine.

I mean, I don't have any inspiration at the moment, so I'm not planning to, but you know if that changes, then you'll have an interesting ~~totally anonymous~~ surprise on Dec 25. :PPP

Or MissM will! :D I am SO EXCITED that someone prompted Fritz/Voltaire!

Yay, now any fics will really be anonymous! Lol at her prompt, though:

it's so delightfully funny and non-tragic...

Me: Really? I think it's kind of sad that two of the great minds of the 18th century were so emotionally immature-

...compared to the doomed romance of Friedrich/Katte.

Me: Well, yes, now that you compare it to Fritz/Katte, it's pretty damn light-hearted and consequence-free! Frankfurt was nothing next to Küstrin.

I'm also laughing at her "Would prefer something light-hearted here" and your "snarky hatesex." Light-hearted snarky hatesex FTW! :D

Hee! Honestly, I think any Fritz/Voltaire would actually be in the lighthearted vein, even hatesex :D I mean, it's sad they were both so immature, but it's... kind of hilarious to watch?

You know, it's not that I don't get the hilarity and schadenfreude and total popcorn-munching aspects of their frenemy disaster, because I do. I think it's just that my fix-it instincts in this fandom are so strong that the part where it parses as a tragedy to me is a wee bit stronger, or at least strong enough to interfere with the enjoyment. :/

I mean, you're talking to someone whose current OT3 is fix-all-the-things Fritz/Katte/Keith. :P

But if someone writes Fritz/Voltaire, I will read the heck out of it and bring the popcorn!

Yeah, I knew it was bad, but... yeah. Heinrich. I'm feeling really bad for you. :(

Same here. I mean, one of the two biographies I read in recent months had recounted this as "After AW's death, Frederick tried to mollify his brother Heinrich". That's... one way of describing this letter, biographer.

BTW: this further proves the genius of my guy Goethe in making Carl August have dinner with Heinrich as a method of dissuading Carl August from joining Fritz' most recent war effort without saying that this was what he was doing.

Okay, playing devil's advocate here, the only redeeming value of that letter (and the subsequent letter, which is more of same) is that it's...it's complicated, but much of it is what Fritz tells *himself* when he loses someone he loves. Partly he's being callous, obviously he's scapegoating, but also I believe he's genuinely trying to be helpful and totally oblivious to the fact that this is NOT HELPFUL. (Especially when coming from someone who has a difficult relationship with Heinrich. Seriously, Fritz, don't try to be helpful. Just, "I'm really sorry about your loss, you must feel terrible, I loved him too, I still love you, let me know if you need anything, your servant, etc." and stop there. Seriously. NO ADVICE.)

Anyway, there are two main aspects of his letters to Heinrich after AW's death. One is, "I loved AW too, please don't think I didn't." Now, Fritz's (in)ability to 1) not fuck up family relations in the first place, 2) make amends when there's still time, 3) admit wrongdoing when it's too late, is the obvious major problem here. But given that, you can see the attempt at mollifying. This, of course, is where the saying "intent is not magic" comes in. But the attempt was there.

The second part is: the human condition and how to deal with grief. And this is something Fritz seriously struggled with all his life. He had a lot of practice. :/ And he was always torn between seeing the value of Stoicism and Stoic-influenced philosophy on the one hand, and on the other believing that the ability to form emotional bonds with people is what makes us human, and that anyone who can effortlessly brush off loss the way the Stoics want would not be human, and he's not even sure you want to be that person. Except it would hurt a hell of a lot less, so he kind of wants to be that person. But he can't in any case.

Reading the back and forth of his letters to and from Heinrich right after AW's death is eerily like reading an exchange inside Fritz's own head whenever someone he loved dies.

Fritz: I know it hurts; believe me, I've been there, and I'm actually pretty cut up about this particular loss too, but your duty requires you to carry on. <-- Something we know he frequently said to himself when he was tired and hurting and just wanted a break from it all.

Heinrich: Yes, I know, and I am and I will, please don't worry, but seriously, it's impossible for humans to not have any feeling at all. <-- What Fritz frequently said about himself when explaining how he spent the whole day crying instead of being philosophical.

Heinrich: Also, I'm pretty sure those who live away from human society are happier than princes. <-- What Fritz is known to have said after someone he loved died.

Fritz: Okay, I know what you're saying, but you can't let it get to you, you can't become a misanthrope. We are humans and we are part of society. <-- What Fritz, the misanthropically inclined, had to tell himself all the time. Yes, it comes across as hypocrisy whenever Fritz tells someone (Heinrich is not the only example) not to be a misanthrope, but I think he was actually not a committed misanthrope, but a traumatized-as-hell struggling-not-to-be-a misanthrope.

As condolence letters go, it's a complete failure of communication, but some of it is incompetence, rather than malice or sheer defensiveness (he is so freaking defensive about AW to both Heinrich and Catt it's not even funny).

Also in Fritz's defense, or at least as context, he has just lost not just his mother (and Fredersdorf), but one brother already (presumptively from grief), Wilhelmine is dying (she's got 3 months to live) and he's worried sick about her and constantly asking for news, he's worried about brother Ferdinand dying (he recovers, but Fritz doesn't know that at this point), and you can see him freaking out at the thought of Heinrich dying of grief, and going PLEASE DON'T at him.

Other things we know besides how AW just died of grief: Fritz isn't actively suicidal, but, especially at times of great loss, he does wistfully think about how nice it will be to be dead someday. Is he projecting his own emotional reactions to losing a beloved sibling onto Heinrich? Hell yes. Total breakdown in understanding what it would be useful for *Heinrich* to hear, but he's telling him what *he* wants to hear at a time like this, or at least the most useful things he can come up with to tell himself (which aren't very good, but at least keep him from giving up on life).

Which means, continuing with the theory of "this is what gets Fritz out of a grief-ridden borderline-suicidal funk"...there's the part where he goes, "Don't put me through losing you too." I'll delete my rant about how this is the single most common thing to say to someone who is seriously considering suicide (which I have no evidence Heinrich was) and probably second-most pernicious thing, but there is an aspect of "someone living still cares about you" that can be useful for someone in grief to hear. (Leaving aside the part where it needs to be phrased hella differently.)

Now, where has *Fritz* heard this line before? At Küstrin, when for 3 days after Katte's death, he was screaming, crying, feverish, possibly hallucinating or at least having severe flashbacks, and refusing to eat. Until finally someone said, "Look, if you starve yourself to death, it's going to hurt your mother and your sister."

And by all accounts, that was when he pulled himself together.

It's still one of the world's worst condolence letters, incredibly "me" focused and totally lacking in effective empathy. But, defensiveness aside, it is a very clear window into Fritz's brain, and an attempt to give Heinrich the only help that he himself ever got.

That's why I think the "See? See?! I told you so!" letters have less redeeming value. I find that hard to read as anything but sheer callousness, born of not caring about EC or her brother, or her other brother.

In conclusion, my own opinion about abuse is that abusers usually have reasons for the things they do, and you can totally understand those reasons and *still* declare the abusive behavior unacceptable and decide the right move is to protect yourself. Like, I understand my own family's behavior and hope they get help, but I'm still not on speaking terms with them.

This is really useful, thank you.

(I was kind of thinking, okay, Fritz, can't you just... figure out how this works from example, but it seems like it's possible he just never had any decent examples until it was too late to do any good. But still.)

Exactly, and while I'm sure he had decent examples in the sense that he'd received at least some decent condolence letters in his life, I don't think he understood the principles of what makes a good condolence letter, especially the part where holding back on saying everything he thought would be a better move in this case than giving advice.

He was, after all, an inveterate advice-giver (see also: teaching castrati to sing), and I don't think he had the tools in his emotional toolbox to figure out that while this might be the advice he gives himself at a time like this, it's not what he needs to be giving Heinrich if he wants to help him. That's the part of the letter that's easiest for me to forgive. (And by "forgive" I mean "it is specifically the fact that this letter is so terrible that means it requires forgiveness.")

Edited 2019-11-01 21:52 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess I've never been in that kind of situation -- that being said, I am coming from a position of having to basically take notes on things like this based on what other people say is good... and it occurs to me that (along with all my other advantages, which are major) I have the internet to tell me things like ring theory. (Course, Fritz would probaly have said that he was in the inner ring, and though he's not exactly wrong...)

(along with all my other advantages, which are major) I have the internet to tell me things like ring theory.

Seriously, the reason I'm so understanding of Fritz's shortcomings (okay, one major reason) is that I realize that many of the things he did that I don't do are because of the internet plus books written in the 20th/21st century that I have access to. Not that "how to write a good condolence letter" or "how to not invade neighboring countries" hadn't been invented in the 18th century (the Anti-Machiavel proves one of them had), but "how to convince someone like me and Fritz (not) to do these things" hadn't necessarily been articulated, and articulated enough times in enough different ways to register (or win in the face of absolute power).

Interesting about the ring theory! I wasn't aware that it had been formalized and given a name, but I had basically intuited that exact principle. I have deleted as irrelevant at least twice in this discussion the fact that Fritz did his whole "I told you so" after EC's brother died at Soor not once (to EC), not twice (to EC and her other brother), but three times (to EC, her other brother, and Fredersdorf), but I'm okay with him venting to Fredersdorf, because Fredersdorf wasn't (presumably) that close to the directly affected parties. Fredersdorf is who Fritz *should* be saying these things to! Just not the people in the inner circles.

ETA: Also, did you think of algebraic ring theory when you first encountered that term too? Because I had two semesters of it--well, of groups, rings, and fields--and though I've forgotten almost all of it by now, it was one of my absolute favorite parts of college, and it still brings back the happy memories.

Edited 2019-11-04 07:45 (UTC)

Yeah, the first time I had to write a condolence letter (literally just a couple of years ago -- a combination of good luck, my mom usually writing them for family friends, and the only relatives dying until then ones I didn't particularly want to write letters for) I just googled "how to write a condolence letter" and went from there :P

*nods* I had also intuited that principle by the time I came across that, but yes, from things like the internet and being able to watch what things people were like "wow, I can't BELIEVE that person did that thing" in advice columns and so on (I love advice columns), which also weren't available to Fritz.

And, lol, yes, my first thought on encountering it was "...author, you do know this is a thing already in math, right?" I also have forgotten my year of groups, rings, and fields, but loved it a Lot. (My best friend is a geometer, so she thinks I'm crazy, and I think she's crazy for loving topology, which was not my favorite. :) )

Googling it, a good idea! I'm surprised it didn't occur to me. My usual situation is having to write condolences about the death of someone I don't want to let on that I didn't particularly like, and have it be supportive without being dishonest, because I'm not a big fan of white lies.

I'm sure that in Fritz's shoes, without any internet, I'd just be listing out the faults of the person I didn't like, and talking about how great it is not to experience grief (one place where Fritz and I differ severely), and have they tried that? :P And genuinely expecting that suggestion to be helpful.

ahahahaha, yup, I had to do that. But I did like the person I was writing it to (otherwise I wouldn't have bothered), so I leaned hard into the "it must be so hard to lose your beloved mom, I am sorry for your loss" and ignored the part where "she was really terrible to everyone who wasn't biologically related to her, especially my parents, and none of us are even slightly sorry she's dead." Which are both true!

Also, when you go to beta my fic on Fritz losing his dogs, I suggest you keep the Heinrich letter in mind. See if the fic makes the letter come across as any more of a best effort.

Yes, that was a genius plan! Lol, imagining that dinner...

He needs all the hot pages he can get.

How much you wanna bet he was extra annoyed because everyone knows all Fritz likes to do anymore is look? :P

Haha, oh, lol, Carlyle, you never fail to provide entertaining gems even while being infuriatingly unreadable.

So, you know Muller, the pastor at Küstrin? His son got interviewed fifty years later. Carlyle quotes the son:

"'My Father used to say, he found an excellent knowledge and conviction of the truths of religion in the Crown-Prince. [Insert evidence of how devout Fritz was at that point in his life.] Whoever considers this fine knowledge of religion, and reflects on the peculiar character and genius of the young Herr, which was ever struggling towards light and clearness (for at that time he had not become indifferent to religion, he often prayed with my Father on his knees),— will find that it was morally impossible this young Prince could have thought [as some foolish persons have asserted] of throwing himself into the arms of Papal Superstition [seeking help at Vienna, marrying an Austrian Archduchess, and I know not what] or allow the intrigues of Catholic Priests to'— Oh no, Herr Muller, nobody but very foolish persons could imagine such a thing of this young Herr."

So apparently, the marriage project was well enough known that half a century later, some guy who wasn't even there was still trying to convince people Fritz WOULD NEVER.

Me: *is pretty sure Fritz would*

Also: is Carlyle being sarcastic in that last sentence or not? I can't tell without reading him more extensively, and I don't want to read him more extensively. I only cherry-pick from the Fritz bio because it has a gazillion volumes' worth of data.

I can't tell, either; as a late 19th century cranky Scot, he's both likely to have thought "as if Fritz, hero and defender of Protestants everywhere in Europe, would!" and "of course Fritz, masterful tactician and faker if needs must, would, you naive Son Of Muller!"

But yeah, I'm with you: he would have if he could have. Meanwhile, here's how I imagine things went down in Potsdam:

Grumpkow: Your Majesty, the crown prince is now very devout, praying with Pastor Muller.

FW: Good.

G: He's sworn off the English marriage project.

FW: He'd better.

G:...and wants to marry an Austrian arch duchess, convert to Catholicism and move to Vienna.

FW: WTF?!!!!!

G: Just a suggestion, maybe allow him to play the flute again? Just as an alternative to Catholicism, of course.

Meanwhile, in a dispatch to Vienna:

Seckendorff to Prince Eugene: Things are still bonkers here, crown prince just proposed to arch duchess, plz ignore!

Eugene to Seckendorff: WTF????

Edited 2019-10-30 07:08 (UTC)

Just a suggestion, maybe allow him to play the flute again? Just as an alternative to Catholicism, of course.

LOL FOREVER. FW, there are worse things than the flute! Well, things you think are worse, anyway.

I checked up Wilhelmine's travel correspondance again, and it turns out not just did the Margrave make his imprompto trip to Bayreuth and back to Italy to deny there was any Popery going on with him and Wihelmine but Fritz wrote to her: "By the way, sis, rumor has reached me that, etc., and I know it's stupid, but could you please pass through Geneva on your way back and visit Calvin's birthplace or something like that?" Whereupon Wilhelmine replies that yes, this was really stupid, but, and now I'm actually quoting again, "for you, I will make my salamaleikums in Geneva".

Which tells you that free thinkers or not, Fritz and Wilhelmine were aware that the Hohenzollern must never appear to be anything but Protestants in public. (Also that Wilhelmine in 1754 was either via the 10001 Nights (she must have read the French translation) or through other means aware enough of (at least some of)Islam to make the "my salamaleikums" joke.

Also this tells me that Wilhelmine is awesome :D Wow, though, that's an awesome bit of correspondence.

~~but how are we gonna get Fritz to convert to marry Joseph~~

Well, see, that's my sticking point too, and a large part of why the RP has stalled on Fritz's reaction. Fritz would personally do a nominal conversion in a heartbeat if it meant moving out of Prussia and getting away from Dad and give up a kingdom that's not even his yet, but ~1761 (when I imagine this summit taking place) he's not a private figure any more, and he's too good at realpolitik to throw away his kingdom once it's his.

...Maybe he trolls MT for a while but keeps his options open with other fanboy too (per my joke at the end of that first letter to Peter)? On the grounds that:

1) Irrational fanboy can be expected to be a lot more pliable than rational fanboy.
2) Irrational fanboy is a Protestant turned really-bad-Orthodox.

(Seriously, one of the reasons Catherine was more popular than her husband was that she was willing to play along with being a sincere convert as long as it was in her interests to do so, whereas Peter made it clear he didn't take his Orthodoxy very seriously. Note that she was also much more committed to and successful at becoming fluent in Russian.)

What do you think, guys? How long can Fritz drag out the fight for his hand in marriage? What does Catherine think of all this? (What does EC think of all this?)

Well, having written further on the crack fic, let me add that there would be this precedent: Secret or promised conversion a la Charles II (Stuart) ("I'll make it public on my death bed, or any minute now; meanwhile, Louis, keep sending over money"). In practical terms, no one would convert, but MT would have an embarrasment weapon if Fritz ever invades her territory again - Charles had to promise in writing; mind you, Fritz could cry forgery and invade anyway, which she knows he's capable of, but still, it would be something.

Anyway, she's now done her best to troll Fritz into wanting to troll her back by having designs on her son.

Edited 2019-11-02 12:52 (UTC)

cahn, Mildred mentioned this about two posts ago, but I just saw tumblr has Massie's description of the one and only meeting between not-yet-Catherine and Fritz when she was a teenager.

When at last Sophia appeared before him, Frederick saw a girl neither plain nor beautiful, wearing a gown that did not fit, adorned with no jewellery, her hair unpowdered. Sophia’s shyness turned to surprise when she learned that she - but neither her mother nor her father - was to sit at the king’s table. Surprise turned to astonishment when she found herself actually sitting next to the monarch himself. Frederick made an effort to put the nervous girl at ease. He spoke to her, she wrote later, about ‘opera, plays, poetry, dancing and I don’t know what, but anyway, a thousand things that one usually does not talk about to entertain a girl of fourteen.’ Gradually gaining confidence, Sophia managed to answer intelligently and, she proudly said later, ‘the entire company stared in amazement to see the king engaged in conversation with a child.’ Frederick was pleased with her; when he asked her to pass a dish of jam to another guest, he smiled and said to this person ‘Accept this gift from the hand of the Loves and Graces.’ For Sophia, the evening was a triumph. And Frederick was not indulging his young dinner partner; to Empress Elizabeth he wrote, 'The little princess of Zerbst combines the gaiety and spontaneity natural to her age with intelligence and wit surprising in one so young.’ Sophia was then only a political pawn, but one day, he knew, she might play a greater role. She was fourteen and he was thirty-two, and this was the first and only meeting of these two remarkable monarchs. Both would eventually be accorded the title 'the Great.’ And between them, for decades, they would dominate the history of central and eastern Europe.

What I'm always thinking when remembering that encounter:

1.) That British tv show about Catherine which has Fritz pushing the Anhalt-Zerbst marriage for Elizabeth's nephew because he wants two pro-Prussian Germans on the Russian throne is probably right, and that's also the reason why he bothered to charm teenage Sophie/Catherine, but

2.) It's still proof that Fritz could be nice to awkward teens under a lot of social pressure.

Now, how much irritated must her future husband the ultimate Fritz fanboy have been that she was the one who actually met his hero?

Edited 2019-10-30 08:13 (UTC)

Ha, I am glad you re-posted this because I had forgotten! (I don't think I had situated Catherine properly at that point.)

It's also nice to have a story once in a while that Fritz could actually be not a jerk when he decided not to be? ~~especially after just looking at that condolence letter to Heinrich again~~

Absolutely. Top marks, Fritz! More of this, please.

(BTW, it's somewhat of a canonical foundation to the theory that if Fritz at 20 had met MT at 15, knowing his (Dad-free) life for the next few years partly depended on her liking him, he'd have made some good effort!)

It's pretty clear from contemporary observer after contemporary observer that Fritz, even Old Fritz, had his charismatic/magnetic side, and that if he wanted to charm you into liking him after one encounter, he could (presuming you didn't already have a reason to be dead set against liking him).

Now, how much irritated must her future husband the ultimate Fritz fanboy have been that she was the one who actually met his hero?

Haha, yup. The Ekaterina series (which really captures the irrational fanboy aspect), has this exchange between them shortly after they meet:

Ekaterina: My father is a general in King Frederick's army-
Pyotr: *I'm* the one who should be a general in King Frederick's army!
Pyotr: *proceeds to make it really clear why Frederick would never have him as a general in his army*

Today I learned.

There are at least two editions of Wilhemine's memoirs floating around the internet (well, I'd already found different translations, but that's a different story). One that includes the Dresden interlude in full, and one that bowdlerizes it so effectively that Orzelska isn't once mentioned. The one I linked you to here is the full version. The archive.org version you linked to in your "Frederick the Great post links" post is the bowdlerized version.

I discovered this by accident, since I've been reading her memoirs, and am about halfway through the first volume, and it's 1730, and it occurred to me that I didn't even remember the Dresden interlude, much less any mention of Orzelska. When I went back to reread it, it was obvious why. Here it is in its entirety:

"The reception given to the King of Prussia was worthy of the two monarchs. As the Prussian monarch was not fond of ceremonies, everything was regulated according to his inclinations. He had requested to be lodged at the house of Count Wakerbart, for whom he entertained a high esteem. The mansion of this general was superb; the king found an apartment truly royal: unfortunately, it was consumed by fire the second day after his arrival. The conflagration was so sudden and violent, that it was not without extreme difficulty that the king was saved. The beautiful mansion was reduced to ashes. The loss would have been very considerable to Count Wakerbart, had not the Polish monarch presented him with the Pirna palace, which still excelled in sumptuousness.

"The court of Dresden was then the most brilliant in Germany: its magnificence was carried to excess. The King of Prussia was not long there before he forgot his devotion; the debauches of the table and the wines of Hungary soon revived his good-humor. The obliging manners of the Polish monarch made him contract an intimate friendship with that prince.

"My father, in the mean time, did not forget the object of his journey. He entered into a secret treaty with King Augustus, the conditions of which were nearly these: the King of Prussia engaged to furnish a certain number of troops to the King of Poland to force the Poles to render the crown hereditary in the electoral house of Saxony. He promised to marry me to the Polish monarch, to lend him four millions of dollars, and to give me a considerable portion. The King of Poland, on his part, was to assign Lusatia to him. as a mortgage for the four millions. A dowry of two hundred thousand dollars was to be settled for me upon that province, and after the king's death I should be permitted to reside where I might choose. I was to have the free exercise of my religion at Dresden, where a chapel was to be built for me. Lastly, all these articles were to be signed and confirmed by the electoral Prince of Saxony. As my father had invited the King of Poland to Berlin to be present at the review of his troops, the signature of the treaty was delayed to that time. The Polish monarch had solicited this delay, to prepare the mind of his son, and to persuade him to consent to what was required of him.

"The king my father left Dresden highly satisfied with his journey, as likewise was my brother. They were both equally zealous in launching out before us in praise of the King of Poland and his court."

I bet they were! All those debauches of the table and Hungarian wine, you know.

Wooow. Now I wonder what else was cut.

Edited 2019-11-03 03:01 (UTC)

ZOMG who was the (presumably) Victorian prig who committed these acts of vile censorship to protect English readers from Wilhelmine‘s Rokoko frankness?!?

(I know that when her memoirs were finally published, there was a shortened German edition and a complete French edition, but my great aunt had the shortened German edition and even that one has the Dresden interlude with naked lady (and FW after some oggling recalling his teenage son and dragging him out of the room), Orzelska and Fritz getting deflowered, so I feel safe in blaming British censorship instead of assuming they were simply translating the first German edition.)

I don't know if he's who made the decision to censor, but the author of the introductory essay to the bowdlerized version is listed as William D. Howells, 1877. Sadly (for me as a resident, although not native, of Boston), the title page has the publishing company and location listed as "Boston, Ticknor and Company, 211 Tremont Street." I've half a mind to walk down there and give their ghosts a piece of my mind! ;)

Well, one of Howell's feats as listed in the wiki entry is "translating pieces from French, Spanish and German", so he could very well be responsible. Otherwise his entry sounds sympathetic enough, though if "Howells viewed realism as "nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material", then censoring dead German princesses writing in French about their insane family does not fit!

Otoh, behold my latest icon, courtesy of your screencap!

Aww, what a wonderful icon! <3 I'm glad I was able to be of assistance.

WHAT I AM NOT AMUSED

I just used that one because it had a convenient kindle link! And it is way more convenient for me to read on kindle than on my computer.

I remember that part! And thinking "huh, that seems rather tame, I guess all that wild stuff they were telling me about Orzelska must be in some other primary source" and then forgetting about it. CLEARLY I should have asked :P

ALWAYS ask! :D

See, while I haven't read her memoirs cover-to-cover, I've skimmed them and used them as a reference often enough that I knew that episode was there. So when I downloaded the file for reading, and had gotten well past the date of the Dresden episode without remembering anything bonkers, I went, "...Wait a minute!"

Since

selenak gave you synopses of the deaths of Franz and MT, I thought I'd do Fritz's. As always, I continue to be obsessed with chronology. I promise there are fewer dates than the Algarotti synopsis. ;)

In the middle of 1785, Fritz's health took a sharp turn for the worse. He hadn't been able to play the flute since 1779, which was also the year of his last war, but he'd been pretty well hanging in there. After that point, it started to become increasingly clear that he was dying, and he gradually got worse and worse. Around the beginning of 1786, Heinrich started checking his mail every day for the announcement that Fritz was dead already and he could get to work on making that obelisk happen.

Fritz was no longer able to breathe while lying down, due to his worsening asthma, so he slept sitting up in his chair that last year. He occasionally able to ride his favorite horse around Sanssouci for short periods during the summer of 1786, but was mostly confined to his chair...working, working, working.

Naturally, he didn't stop being autocratic for one minute, and he continued being a workaholic whenever possible, which was most of the time. Despite periodic acute bouts of illness where it wasn't possible, he said he intended to die at his desk, and he very nearly did.

He was in enough pain his last year that celebrity seekers and other visitors kept remarking how impressed they were at the stoic (or Stoic) way he endured his suffering. First he stopped being able to read for pleasure on his own and had to be read to, and then in the last month he stopped being able to listen to his reader due to the pain...but he kept working. In those last few days, it was taking all his willpower to fight through the pain when reviewing and annotating reports, and his subordinates recorded that his concentration was impaired by the effort and he was having to rush through...but he kept working.

He worked all the way through August 15, keeping one of his ridiculously brutal workday schedules. Then he slept until midday on August 16--an almost unprecedented event from the man who woke up at 3 am every day on campaign and 4 in peacetime, and slept till 5 am in winter.

He spent that last day, August 16, fading in and out of consciousness. In the afternoon, he summoned an officer to give orders to, but then couldn't manage to speak. He finally gave up after three tries, with a wry look like "What can you do?"

At that point, the palliative care began.

As noted, he was having such trouble breathing that he had to sleep sitting up, but he kept slumping over in his sleep, which would compress his airways and wake him up gasping and coughing. Many nights he didn't sleep at all, or barely slept. In one of his letters late in life, Fritz joked to someone that if they were looking for a night watchman, he would like to apply for the job, seeing as he was an old hand at staying awake all night. So on the night of the 16th, his valet knelt beside his chair for hours and physically held Fritz upright so he could breathe as easily as possible and get some sleep.

The last order Fritz is known to have given was to cover up his dog, who was shivering. Italian greyhounds have very short coats and little body fat, so they're very susceptible to the cold. At 11 pm, he asked what time it was. Then he announced that he intended to get up at 4 am, as per usual.

Sometime between 11 pm and 2 am, a coughing fit brought up some phlegm that relieved his breathing somewhat. He said, "The mountain is passed; now we will go easier." Those were reported to be his last words: "La montagne est passée, nous irons mieux."

At 2:19 or 2:20 am on August 17, 1786, he died sitting up in his chair in his bedroom-cum-study at Sanssouci, in his valet's arms, his dog Superbe sleeping by his feet.

The room has since been renovated from his rococo into the Neoclassical style he hated (oh, Fritz); the chair is still there; and legend has it that the clock that was present at his death, and is still there, stopped at 2:20 when he drew his last breath and hasn't been wound since. Personally, I'm pretty sure if that's true, a human was involved, but hey, it makes a good story.

Oh, and I forgot to mention there's a death mask, so we can get a rough sense of what he looked like (in 1786, with no teeth, and probably having lost some weight). He didn't actually sit for his portraits after he became king (man after my own heart), so they represent best attempts from people working from memory and may be less accurate than most such portraits? On the other hand, the older he got, the less they were probably trying to flatter him, so who knows? "Grumpy old king who won't even sit for the portrait can take what he gets." :P

Oh, and we don't know what he died *of* besides generic "age", but my headcanon is congestive heart failure. That said, I made that up by cherry-picking some of his symptoms, haven't seen it suggested anywhere (haven't seen anyone suggest anything specific ever, other than one person joking that it was probably natural causes, since the chair looks pretty non-lethal), and reserve the right to change my mind. ;)

The last order Fritz is known to have given was to cover up his dog, who was shivering.

That detail kills me. Incidentally, do we know who took care of the dogs afterwards, or even if someone did?

Also, those painful, lonely deaths for days and days are hard to read about. BTw, people aren't sure what exactly kicked off MT's dying process, either - long term after effect of small pox, pneunomia from an autumn cold, something else - which reminds me of Elizabeth I. and her insistence on not lying down in bed but remain standing as well. (I think it took her three days and nights to die, as well.) It's not exactly suicidal in all those cases, but I do suspect these people with their considerable will power subconsciously were sick of living and did want to die.

(On a cheerier note, see below for some distraction.)

Incidentally, do we know who took care of the dogs afterwards, or even if someone did?

I was hoping you knew! It's something I often wonder about. (Okay, I make up fanfic in my head about August 16-17, because I have elaborate fanfics about the deaths of *all* my favorite characters, call me crazy.) I have read in multiple places that the dogs had their own dedicated servant (who had to Sie/vous them, of course), so I'd like to think said servant continued to get paid and to take care of the dogs? I know there's a Superbe buried next to Fritz, but he also reused names, so idk if it's the one who was there when he died, or an earlier one. At any rate, I hope she (and any others who were with him until the end) was well cared for until her end.

Do you know how FW 2 felt about dogs? I've read that he was in residence at Sanssouci (or maybe just Potsdam? he could have been at the Neues Palais, I guess) that last month or so waiting for Fritz to die, and the fact that he's never mentioned in any of the accounts of Fritz's last days just tells you that he was impatiently drumming his fingers waiting for it to happen. I imagine he was asleep when it did, and someone came to inform him.

those painful, lonely deaths

The difference between your description of MT's death (and Franz's, for that matter) and mine of Fritz's was striking. She had family coming and going, he was giving orders to a general, taking care of his dog(s), and dying in the arms of a valet because he had no friends or family left. :-( That's part of why I still mean to finish and post that chronology of his isolation.

I do suspect these people with their considerable will power subconsciously were sick of living and did want to die.

Hmm, difficult for me to say in this case. Judging by his last letters, Fritz was unhappy about his health, but apparently trying to reconcile himself to the actual fact of his imminent death. Even when you're suffering, and even when you've been quoted saying things like "The happiest day of your life is the one on which you leave it" throughout your often unhappy life, the survival instinct is strong. The fact that he was still trying to give orders on his last day and announcing maybe two hours before his death his intention of waking up at his usual ridiculously early hour to resume working tells me that, whatever may have been going on subconsciously, consciously he was resisting and denying death to the end.

Speaking of lonely, I have read somewhere, I would need to check the source for reliability, that in his last years he started thinking about whether there was maybe an afterlife after all, because he wanted to see his mother and sister again. I don't think he ever got to the point of believing in one intellectually, but quite understandably, emotionally he must have wanted there to be one.

On a cheerier note, see below for some distraction.

That is a cheerier note indeed!

Do you know how FW 2 felt about dogs?

No, I haven't seen it mentioned somewhere. Checked the wiki just in case it's mentioned, and it struck me that in this case, the German and English wiki entries on FW 2 are utterly different. Not just because the German wiki entry is way more detailed (though no mention of dogs), but because the English entry is all "Fritz' concerns about his successor proved themselves to be justified" (i.e. traditional 19th century take), whereas the German entry is "Fritz systematically non-stop humiliated his successor and destroyed his reputation before he ever had the chance to acquiring it because, like Robert Graves' version of the Julian-Claudian emperors, he wanted his own glory to shine all the brighter", with FW2 pointedly not being allowed near his dying uncle, as would have been the custom even with estranged princes, one last deliberate humilitation. (He also had not been taught statescraft or allowed to participate in government in any way - he did have duties, just not those - and thus in this regard was as unprepared as MT had been when taking over.)

Now, the one thing Fritz and FW2 appeared to have in common is love of music; FW 2' instrument of choice was the cello, which practiced sometimes up to four hours a day, belying the idea he was unable to focus on anything. But his working statebusiness hours were ridiculously low compared with workoholic Fritzes, that's true, one of many ways he fashioned himself as the opposite of his uncle, and they were so many that I wouldn't be surprised if FW2 was a cat person just because of that.

It has to be said, though, that Fritz came by this nephew dislike honestly. The kid was taken from AW & wife & household of same at age 3 because it was the future crown prince, and raised by Fritz-appointed people exclusively. His schedule at age 4 were verbal German and French lessons in the morning, reception of courtiers at noon, writing French and German lessons in the afternoon, then play time but play time consisting of having to replay the lessons received during the day with dolls, then public dinner with courtiers. (A few years later, maths, history, geography, military drill and law were added.) When Fritz was told little FW was shy, he said the courtiers were to tease him as often as possible, so he'd get rid of that shyness post haste. (German wiki quotes from a letter from Fritz to AW to that effect, with Fritz telling his brother what he's ordered for his brother's son.) Then AW's own public humiliation and early death happen.

Net result: young FW is into women, forms life long attachment to later maitresse en titre Wilhelmine Encke (we talked about her), finds religion and spiritism for good measure, changes the theatre program in Berlin from French plays to Schiller plays soon as Fritz has breathed his last, stops French as the official court language in favour of German, stops the Hohenzollern/Habsburg dualism in favour of an alliance (due to the French Revolution as much as because of any uncle issues, though), has all 29 royal rooms in the Berlin Hohenzollern palace (i.e. the one in the city itself, not Potsdam or Sanssouci) refurnished from Rokoko into neoclassical), and ignores Fritz' orders re: burial in favour of a daylight pomp and circumstance funeral ending with Fritz getting buried next to FW1. So yes, I'd say FW 2 could hold a grudge. But nothing I've read about him makes it sound like he was the type to take said grudge out on animals. Also, Heinrich was still alive and well at that point, and I dare say would have objected. If I were to make stuff up, I'd go for the irony of Heinrich ending up with the dogs. Or Wilhelmine the mistress does, who is depicted with dogs (though little ones) in some of her portraits and definitely liked them.

with FW2 pointedly not being allowed near his dying uncle

Right, right, I'd forgotten that. Well, I'm with Fritz on his right to decide who's with him in his last hours, politics be damned, but not everything that preceded it, especially the not training the heir part. In general, Fritz was what in the corporate world we would call a really good IC (individual contributor) and a really bad manager. Also should not be allowed to be in charge of children. Dogs, yes.

If I were to make stuff up, I'd go for the irony of Heinrich ending up with the dogs. Or Wilhelmine the mistress does, who is depicted with dogs (though little ones) in some of her portraits and definitely liked them.

If I were going to make something up, I'd go with EC ending up with them. It seems like the kind of thing she would do regardless of whether she was a dog or a cat person (do we know?), and that might bring her some comfort.

Holy cow English wiki.

What did EC do after Fritz' death, besides occasionally say nice things about him?

English wiki: Fritz's forcefully expressed opinions had a non-trivial effect on German historiography for a long time. See also: his grandfather F1.

EC:
- Being a reference on court etiquette
- Occasionally smoothing things over with visiting dignitaries
- Running her household
- Engaging in charitable practices
- Attending weddings and christenings
- Making sure nobody stopped the public from enjoying her gardens
- Planting trees
- Giving immigrants a place to live rent free in exchange for one day a week working on her gardens

(List taken from the Memoirs of the Queens of Prussia.)

Haha, that, wow, she is exemplary and also kinda boring, huh. Perhaps it's just as well I dropped her from my YT requests :P I like the immigrant thing, though!

There's a reason I can write Fritz and (so far) not her!

Yeah, the immigrant thing is cool. All my sources agree that she was well-loved and everyone (people who knew her personally and residents in and around Berlin) sincerely grieved her when she died.

Fritz, in contrast, continued to be divisive after his death:

On the one hand: "For forty-six years, Frederick had tried to rule Prussia single-handed. If he had asked a great deal from himself, he had made just as many demands on his servants and subjects, high and low. How did they all feel when the iron band that held them to their labors finally snapped? According to Mirabeau, the general response was one of overwhelming relief. Whatever else it might prove to be, the next regime was certain to be more relaxed."

On the other: "A Frederick cult got under way at once, as entrepreneurs moved in to satisfy what was clearly a large and growing demand for memorabilia. His image was reproduced on drinking vessels, clocks, bracelets, ribbons, snuff-boxes and vivat ribbons, as well as in books, pamphlets, periodicals and calendars. Perhaps the most enterprising of all were the Pages brothers, who bought Frederick's clothes from the court chamberlain, dressed up a wax figure and then hawked it around Germany, France and the Habsburg Monarchy, making a fortune along the way. So valuable was it that they turned down an offer of 4,000 talers. They were soon flattered sincerely, as imitators hurried to cash in too; by the early nineteenth century, there were sixteen wax figures of Frederick on display in Berlin."

Heh. I had a project manager a bit like this once, where he drove us all hard and drove himself even harder, so we wanted to kill him half the time and we thought he was super awesome the other half of the time. (He is a very nice guy! Just... with really high expectations.)

So yes, I'd say FW 2 could hold a grudge. But nothing I've read about him makes it sound like he was the type to take said grudge out on animals.

I'm less worried that he gave the orders to let the dogs starve, and more worried that they fell through the cracks in the transition from old King to new King. Another possibility is that they had their basic needs met after August 17, but not their emotional needs. I really hope they ended up in the hands of someone who actually liked dogs and would interact with them (or EC, who would probably make sure they got attention even if just for Fritz's sake).

I hear you. Yes, it's not just the feeding. Here's hoping, then, EC got the dogs!

Headcanon! I mean, the ideal outcome is that Fritz designated a trusted dog lover and they got the dogs, but second best, if no provisions were made (or if FW 2 juggled things so that wasn't an option), EC took care of them. I suspect she'd be allowed if she spoke up.

? I know there's a Superbe buried next to Fritz, but he also reused names, so idk if it's the one who was there when he died, or an earlier one.

After giving it a moment's sensible thought, it must be an earlier one. I can't *believe* anyone, Heinrich or EC or anyone else, still cared enough to bury one of Fritz's dogs at Sanssouci years after he was gone. And even if they wanted to, I imagine it would feel like a slap in the face of FW 2, who decided not to bury Fritz next to his dogs.

Any dog that's currently buried there I have to assume, until I have evidence otherwise, predeceased Fritz and is there because he made the decision.

I got the "Fritz and Musik" book back from the library for two days since I wanted to transcribe some stuff for you. One particular beef of the author's is that she argues against the claim Fritz stopped going into the opera in his old age, lost interest in same or never liked opera buffa (as opposed to the tragic variation) to begin with, and she backs up her oounterarguments with letter quotes and notes from Berlin newspapers about the King being sighted in the opera; the very last opera he attended is documented by such a newspaper note and it was an opera buffa, on January 28th 1786, apropos the visit of none other than great nephew Carl August from Weimar. (No mention as to whether he brought Goethe along this time, too, which makes me assume he didn't.)

(That book has other musical factoids like Fritz telling EC to arrange Heinrich's birthday party, birthday meal and birthday opera for him on January 18th 1784. Fritz did attend, though.)

Oh, and remember that Elisabeth Mara/Gertrud Schmeling had after she left Fritz a glorious Paris season complete with rivalry with local soprano La Todi, with people declaring themselves Maraists or Todists? Well, guess whom Fritz hired to make up for the lack of a heroic female soprano in Berlin once that season was over? (Though she didn't stay for longer than one season. She had an offer from St. Petersburg, and Catherine paid better than Fritz.)

Also of possible interest to you - a list of musicians who did stay with Fritz either until his death or theirs, meaning that micromanaging boss or not, Fritz must have won their enduring loyalty:

Carl Heinrich Graun (1704 - 1759), from 1735 till his death (first as a singer, then since 1740 as Kapellmeister)

Violinists: Gohann Gottlieb Graun (1703 to 1771) from 1733 till his death, Franz Benda (1709 - 1786) till his death, Georg Czarth (1708 - 1780) from 1734 to 1758, Ems (or Ehmes, ? - 1764), Joseph Blume (1708 - 1782) from 1734 till his death and JOhann Caspar Grundcke (? - 1787) from 1734 to 1786.
Viola: JOhann Georg Benda (1713 - 1752) from 1734 till his death.
Violincello: Antonius Hock (no known life dates) between 1734 to 1758
Contraviolone: JOhann Gottlieb Janitsch (1708 - 1762) between 1734 and his death.
Cembalo: Christoph Schaffrath 81709 to 1763) from 1734 till 1744
Theorbe: Ernst Gottlieb Baron (1696 - 1760) from 1735 till his death
Harp: Petrini (? - 1751) from 1735 till his death
Horn: Joseph Ignaz Horzizki (? - 1757) from 1735 till 1755

Most of these musicians were hired in Rheinsberg, i.e. during the "happiest time".

When Fritz and Joseph met at Neisse and Mährisch-Neustadt, there was ,of course, music, too. ("la ritornata di Londra" by Domenico Fischietti.) (They got the theatre decorations from Breslau.) A countess from Joseph's entourage kept notes: "The opera, which bears the name Il Ritorne de Londres, was better performed than yesterday. The two monarchs were listening very attentively, and the Emperor once laughed heartily. The opera took really long, though."

Opera content: Petronilla, a female singer, returns home to Bologna after having been a great success in London. On her way, she stops in Milan.She gets received by the noble house of Ridolfino. But she's greedy and not content with the cash she's made in London, so she cons her accidental fellow travellers, an Italian and a French noblemen, out of their fortune while pretending to love them. After a while, they smell a rat, one of the suitors pretends to be a castrato, and the lot uncover her duplicity. In the end, though, everyone reconciles and Petronilla continues her journey with the Marquis and the Baron in tow.

(Does "playing hard to get to two suitors" have symbolism for one of the two monarchs, enquiring minds want to know?)

And btw, the book's author quotes the letter to Joseph from Fritz afterwards. As opposed to Peter, Joseph is "Monsieur Mon Frere", and the letter in full goes, in my own translation into English, because I think

cahn deserves the full flavour of rococo state correspondance and over the top ness:

"Dear Sir and Brother,

after I enjoyed the unestimable pleasure of receiving your imperial majesty , nothing can be more precious to me than the letter you've kindly written to me. I can see the assured testimonies to your friendship and in general - which is most longed for by me - the complete reconciliation between two houses which have been torn apart for such a long time. Yes, my dear Sir, I repeat it in writing, that I find it impossible in my heart to be the enemy of such a man, and may heaven grant us that other steps should follow this first one, which will bring us closer to each other. I promise you with the word of a King and the promise of a gentleman that even in the case of a war breaking out between England and the House of Bourbon, I shall faithfully keep the peace so happily arranged now between us, and that I even in the case of another war, the cause of which is not yet forseeable, should remain neutral towards your current possessions, as long as you promise to similarly remain neutral towards mine. I shall say nothing more about the impression your majesty's presence has left on my soul and shall limit myself to the assurance of the great respect and admiration with which I shall remain

dear Sir, the good and faithful brother of your imperial highness
Federic

(Joseph: Mom! Mom! Just look at that. See how I kept my cool? I got a neutrality assurance and a peace promise out of him, even if we invade someone else!

MT: Oh for God's sake. *goes back to writing to Marie Antoinette about saying hello to Dubarry.)

Edited 2019-11-05 13:52 (UTC)

This is all extremely wonderful, thank you so much. I love the callback to Marie Antoinette! (MT "I NEED this alliance, child of mine! Your brother thinks a promise from that awful man in Potsdam is worth the paper it's written on.")

I also love how you were like, "I know, I'll put in gobs and gobs of dates, that'll make Mildred happy." Mildred is happy. ;)

"Your brother thinks a promise from that awful man in Potsdam is worth the paper it's written on."

AHAHAHAHA

Ha, I’ve found the other bit I wanted to transcribe for you before returning this book. To wit, the theatre and opera programm on those days Fritz was receiving his sisters, nephews, great nephews and nieces in his last decade:

July 14: Oedipe by Voltaire.
July 15: Great concert.
July 16: Mahomet by Voltaire.
July 17: Partenope (opera by Hasse)
July 18: Zaire by Voltaire
July 19: another performance of Partenope
July 20: another performance of Oedipe

(Carl August: Mom, is it me or is Uncle Fritz really into Voltaire?
Anna Amalia: Shhsh. At least there was an opera by Hasse included, too.
Carl August: Do you think he knows Hasse composed that opera for the. wedding between the daughter of the Empress, err, Queen of Hungary and that Naples guy?)

Lol, Fritz. But apparently he was a little bit more flexible on the subject of what he would listen to than one might think; on another occasion, he and Anna Amalia heard an oratorio--music by Hasse, words by Maria Antonia--on the conversion of Saint Augustine. Fritz wrote to Heinrich that he wasn't too thrilled with the whole Saint Augustine thing, but he said the music was beautiful and that that was enough for him.

Fritz: will listen to a telephone book sung by a WOMAN if he finds it beautiful.

~~Fritz: so totally into Voltaire, though~~

hee, yes, at least Hasse made it in!

(okay, finally able to respond to comments -- I just had to respond to the crackfic yesterday, though!)

Well, guess whom Fritz hired to make up for the lack of a heroic female soprano in Berlin once that season was over?

LOL oh Fritz :D

This is all really cool! I could totally imagine that for musicians who could deal with Fritz' personality and/or who cared about music enough that his personality was of secondary importance (and weren't chomping at the bit to play/sing Gluck), his court could be a really awesome place to be a musician. I had a conductor a little like that in college -- not Fritzian, but with some personality issues that made it difficult for a lot of people -- but the quality of the music that happened with him was so great that he had almost a cult-like following. You either hated working with him and dropped out as soon as possible, or would sign on to sing with him no matter what he was doing. (Hmm, he also generally preferred older music -- we sang a lot of Renaissance, not much 20thC.)

The opera took really long, though.

AHAHAHA Countess, you are a woman after my own heart :D

I promise you with the word of a King and the promise of a gentleman that even in the case of a war breaking out between England and the House of Bourbon, I shall faithfully keep the peace so happily arranged now between us

I love the over-the-topness of this letter, thank you for translating :D And awwww, that's touching! Or, well, might be if he hadn't cheerfully broken all kinds of things with respect to Silesia.

Oh, duh, it just occurred to me that Fritz had this over-the-top tobacco habit, which may have actually brought on the heart failure.

Specifically, Spanish snuff. He took so much snuff that his coat was constantly covered in it, like everyone who saw him commented on it, it was said that you could barely approach him without sneezing from all the snuff dust he was covered in, and even he repeatedly acknowledged that his habit and total lack of hygiene were disgusting. Poignantly, he told Catt he was slightly less "swinish" when his mother was alive, but now there was no one to care about his appearance. :/

This is how addicted he was: "Catt, we're going to read some French drama aloud. When we get to the end of this bit, I'm going to take a pinch of snuff. Then we read until the end of the scene. Then we pause for my next snuff break." This was his regular reading MO. There are multiple instances of this in Catt's memoirs, which are based on the very detailed diary he kept. (He was keeping a detailed diary of everything Fritz said in that first year largely so as to take notes and limit his chances of saying the wrong thing. Yes, conversations with Fritz were that high-stress exam you had to study for. ;) )

So anyway, lots and lots of tobacco consumption for decades. Now, membership in an at-risk demographic is not the same thing as a diagnosis, but sometimes, when the party in question has been dead for hundreds of years, it lends credence to your totally made up headcanon. ;)

Which leads me to wonder how much of the several years of coughing was asthma, which I always see it attributed to, and how much might have been heart failure. The cough appears to have gotten drastically worse in that last year, to the point where visitors reported it was hard to have a conversation with him; breathlessness while lying down is a symptom of congestive heart failure; and the only mention of phlegm that I'm remembering is the coughing fit that led to his last words. (Of course, that could also be a productive asthma cough.)

Other things I wonder about: one of the two classes of health problems that arguably caused him the most distress throughout his life was digestive. (The other being gout.) His doctors, for decades, unanimously thought it was caused by his eating habits. Fritz disagreed, vehemently. At least one modern biographer has suggested porphyria, which we know ran on both his mother's and father's side of the family (and we also know they were first cousins, sigh, which means all those recessive diseases are coming out of the woodwork in the kids) and at least one sibling had it.

We have numerous quotes from primary sources saying that Fritz constantly ate too much too fast, got an upset stomach, and then wondered why. (And because he didn't agree on the whole cause and effect thing, kept bolting his food.) He also insisted on spicy and strong-tasting food. We also have Fritz saying he suffered from disorderly cravings, "like a pregnant woman."

It's not terribly unlikely that both were responsible. He probably insisted there was no connection with his eating because he had digestive upsets even when he was eating slowly and sparingly, because porphyria; everyone, including him, could tell that he was abusing his stomach and not fully in control of his eating habits. No matter how many times he was told to get his diet under control, from at least the 1750s until about August 1786, he refused.

What else do we know? Both Fritz and Wilhelmine report being underfed by FW. Not just poor quality food, but not nearly enough food at times. In prison, Fritz wrote to her, "Starvation for starvation, I prefer Küstrin to living with Dad." (This was before Katte's execution, when Fritz still thought everything was going to turn out all right.)

Disordered eating as an adult after surviving years of food withholding as a child? That's a thing.

Fuck you, FW. Feed your damn kids.

Edited 2019-11-06 11:50 (UTC)

He was keeping a detailed diary of everything Fritz said in that first year largely so as to take notes and limit his chances of saying the wrong thing.

That is amazing and while I am sure it must have been stressful, I kind of love that detail. Holy cow.

Both Fritz and Wilhelmine report being underfed by FW. Not just poor quality food, but not nearly enough food at times.

Oh right. Ugh. The kind of awful thing about Wilhelmine's memoirs is that FW does so much crap that I sometimes don't even remember some of it, because it's overshadowed by the worse crap. But... yeah.

That is amazing and while I am sure it must have been stressful, I kind of love that detail. Holy cow.

It gets better. I'll put the new developments in the new discussion post, since this one is getting out of hand!

he kind of awful thing about Wilhelmine's memoirs is that FW does so much crap that I sometimes don't even remember some of it, because it's overshadowed by the worse crap.

*nod* The food thing jumped at out me specifically, since, as you may remember, I kind of had to report my own parents for food withholding. Not as bad as it sounds like FW was! (For one thing, they didn't spit in our food.) But similar.

And when I finally (very recently) put "Fritz's letter + Wilhelmine's memoirs + Fritz bolting his food as an adult" together, it was another of those "I can't prove causation, but it's a very suspicious correlation" moments.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Like, on one hand I feel like this is all very sad. And on the other hand I am sort of happy that he got to work just about to the very end, which sounds exactly like what he wanted. *sigh*

Yeah. :/ He wasn't often happy during his life, but what mattered to him most was control, and he held onto that control until they pried it from his cold, dead hands, so...faute de mieux, at least he got to go the way he wanted to go. ~~therapy for everyone~~

Something that always gets to me: our TV series season finale per Selena "ends with his death and young Fritz having a ghostly reunion with Katte," and then somebody wrote that fic on AO3. I didn't think the execution was anything to write home about, but just the premise is enough to get a serious GUH out of this Fritz/Katte shipper.

In the spirit of crack, and conflating dates a bit: if there’d been WhatsApp in the 18th century, you just know that the following „Fritz4eva!!!“ Chatgroup would have been a thing during the 7 Years War:

Group moderator: FrankfurtHans (on account of being more diplomatic than the other two)

Number1Fan: *changes his name to MoscowPete at the other two‘s insistence*

ViennaJoe: OMG you guys, I can’t tell you how glad I am to have found you. Can’t talk Fritz to anyone at my place. They just don’t get him.

MoscowPete: Same here! My aunt rants about him all the time. And there’s this girl I’m stuck with who ACTUALLY MET HIM, can you believe that, and didn’t even get me his autograph, because that’s the kind of cow she is. Hey, are you two up for cosplay? I’m Fritz, of course.

FrankfurtHans: Maybe leave the cosplay until later. How do you guys feel about writing Fritz a letter of support? I mean, we all know he’s gonna win in the end, but he’s got to feel depressed now and then. He should know we’re rooting for him!

ViennaJoe: Um. Can I sign with an alias?

MoscowPete: Chicken. And you call yourself a Fritz fan! You’re not worthy!

ViennaJoe: Listen, jerk, some of us have family in the opposing armies. Just because I think Fritz is cool doesn’t mean I want them dead!

*Private Message from MoscowPete to FrankfurtHans* Do you think ViennaJoe could be a spy? We should kick him out!

*Private Message from ViennaJoe to FrankfurtHans* MoscowPete is faking it, I can tell. No one is that much over the top with the fandom. I’m thinking spy, personally. We should kick him out.

FrankfurtHans (*in the chat*): Okay, everyone, chill. I’ll write a draft for the support letter and you can still get input and sign, or not, however you want. Fandom should be fun, right? And speaking of writing: I’ve got this rl bud who asked me to beta his Fritz/Katte RPF. I’m thinking historical AU, just to be on the safe side and get it staged, so: Peter the Great or Philip of Spain for the Soldier King?

MoscowPete: How is this suddenly a writing community? What are you, girls? Fandom is action! If you want to get historical, at least talk about some cool stuff like whether Fritz could beat Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan! Or both at the same time!

ViennaJoe: Fritz could totally beat Alexander, man. Alexander was all flashy battles and no long term planning or stamina. Not sure about Genghis Khan, though.

FrankfurtHans: Okay, first draft of the support letter coming through. Have a look. Also, Alexander so had long term game, he just drank too much.

MoscowPete: Fritz could still beat him, though. Hang on, reading your letter now. WTF? It’s in German!

ViennaJoe: For reals?

FrankfurtHans: Duh. We’re all Germans, aren’t we? Including Fritz.

*Private Message from MoscowPete to ViennaJoe* Do you think FrankfurtHans could be a spy? I mean, everyone knows Fritz hates German! We should totally kick him out.

Edited 2019-11-04 10:51 (UTC)

HAHAHHAAAAA, OMG, this is the best! I would totally eat this up if you wanted to post more. :DDD

One question, though: Moscow, really? Did Peter live there?

whether Fritz could beat Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan! Or both at the same time!

LOOL, MoscowPete would totally say that!

Alexander so had long term game, he just drank too much.

Stepping out of crackfic for a moment, IMO, Alexander had medium-term game, but his long-term game was weak. I'm not saying he didn't have long-term plans, they just don't strike me as the most feasible.

Anyway, I'm just laughing so much at the whole thing. Everything is hilarious. I could quote everything. Omg, all the spy accusations. Poor FrankfurtHans. Moderating the rational fanboy and the irrational fanboy in a room together is a thankless task.

~~moar plz~~

Well, "Petersburg Pete" sounds just too silly even for him, and HolsteinPete would be too obscure for future readers. :)

As for a sequel, only if I can think of something worthy.

BTW, FrankfurtHans saw the Rational Fanboy once, from afar, when Joseph was in Frankfurt to be crowned as King of the Romans and future Emperor. Since Goethe's parents had witnessed both the coronation of Charles VII (aka Karl Albrecht von Wittelsbach) and then shortly after of Franz, with MT attending, and Frankfurt was really proud of being the city where Emperors get crowned (Joseph was the last one, btw; Leopold didn't bother anymore, and then, Napoleon officially dissolved the HRE), young JWG, Fritzian fanboy or not, did of course go to the big event. Luckily for history, because that's why we have an extensive description of how this soon to be no more ceremony looked like by our most famous writer ever. Of course by the time he described this along with the rest of his childhood and adolescence, he was old, and the world had changed so very much none of the people in youth would have predicted it. (Goethe died in 1832. The industrial age had dawned!)

It's not crack fic, but here are two tongue-in-cheek descriptions of the Frankfurt coronations from his memoirs, first anecdotes his parents told him about the FS coronation and then a bit about Joseph's:

(They told me): Maria Theresia, exceptionally beautiful, witnessed the ceremony from a balcony window at House Frauenstein, next to the Römer (= Frankfurt City Hall), and when her husband returned in the strange costume from the cathedral and must have looked like the ghost of Charlemagne to her, he joked with her by raising, ghost-like, both hands with the sceptre and the miraculous medieval gloves, which made her burst out laughing; which endeared them to the witnessing people as it made the relationship of the highest-ranking couple in Christendom look good and natural. And when the Empress to greet her husband then waved with her hankerchief and called a loud "Vivat!" for him, the enthusiasm and cheer knew no ending. (...)

And now for his own glimpse at FS and Joseph in his youthful awkwardness:

Finally the two majesties arrived. Father and son were dressed up to the nines. The Emperor's robe of purple silk with pearls and jewelry and the crown and scepter he carried were pleasing to the eye: for it was all newly made, and the imitation of ancient finery was successful. So he moved comfortably in his well-fitting suit, and the expression in his good-natured face was that of emperor and father both. The young King, however, had to drag himself around with the immense wardrobe and jewely straight from Charlemagne like with an ill-fitting costume, and he couldn't surpress a smile now and then when he caught his father's eye. The crown which had to be euqipped with additional pollstery sat like an overbearing rooftop on his head. The Dalmatica, the Stola, however one had tried to make them fit didn't produce an advantageous look. One was awed at the sight of Charlemagne's sceptre; but one couldn't deny that it would have been better to look at a mighty, impressive figure able to fill out those robes.

Poor ViennaJoe. I can't think of a worse fate for an awkward teen than having to wear those robes in front of everyone. (Mind you, the whole description is written with the awareness that this was the last and with the obvious symbolism of the HRE being doomed in mind.)

Edited 2019-11-05 07:58 (UTC)

Aww, poor ViennaJoe! I like MT laughing, though, and her camaraderie with her husband.

StPete? A bit of wordplay on his given name and his city of residence? I agree HolsteinPete is too obscure, as is OranienbaumPete. ;) (P)russianPete? I'm sure we can come up with something.

Future readers: this is *absolutely* AO3-grade fic. If you get inspired for a worthy sequel, I'd love to see that letter of support!

Awwww, poor Joseph. I love this though. (And I can totally imagine him complaining about this in chat. "Ugh, can you BELIEVE what mom and dad made me wear?? In front of everyone, too! And it didn't even fit. DAD got new clothes!"

FrankfurtHans: Um. I live here, you know.
ViennaJoe: You SAW that? I am soooooo embarrassed.
*ViennaJoe has left the chatroom*
)

Meanwhile:

F2: Hey, how do you like my new handle?

FrankfurtHans: Nice pun, but just a bit... misleading?

F2: Hey, it's not my fault my old man called me Fritz, too. Anyway, I've gone historical AU with the Fritz/Katte RPF like you suggested. P2 not P1, though. Better costumes in Spain. Also, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

FrankfurtHans: Or the het angle. I'm supportive, mind! Elisabeth is one of your best FOCs yet! But if you really want to join my chat group, you've got to play that down. They're a bit paranoid about girls there. Mention you're a cadet in a military school, though, they're really into uniforms.

F2: Man, I hate that school! I'm so outta there as soon as I can. Forget about the chat group, I've so had it with group stuff anyway. So, spill. You're done with your own WIP yet? That Mephisto is the coolest demon who ever cooled, I swear!

FrankfurtHans: Ha. Ha. With the moderating them and beta-reading you? Fat chance. Fandom is eating my life. Maybe I should take a break. Go to Italy. #Gafiate

Heeee, so do F2 and FrankfurtHans ~~run off together~~ spin off their own private chatroom, much to the dismay of ViennaJoe and MoscowPete who are wondering where their moderator went?

And what happens to ViennaJoe and MoscowPete when they're left without a moderator? Disaster or big disaster? :D

Anyway, I've gone historical AU with the Fritz/Katte RPF like you suggested. P2 not P1, though. Better costumes in Spain. Also, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Lol, very true on all counts!

This is so delightful. I started cackling at "ViennaJoe" and couldn't stop.

I’m thinking historical AU, just to be on the safe side and get it staged

or to be on the safe side and not bring down the haters on the internet? ;)

And, oh, MoscowPete, lol forever :D

*moment of silence for Katte on Nov 6*

You were loyal, brave, loving and true, Hans Herrmann von Katte. May your immortality as a romantic hero long continue.

Also

A vid showing Küstrin today, or what's left of it (it was a casualty of WWII)

Katte family history through the centuries: there were a few more notables, the current head is a woman, Dr. Maria von Katte, who has Lessing's old job as chief librarian of Wolffenbüttel.

Haha, I watch that video every time I start going stir-crazy about having to wait before I can travel to Europe again. ;)

Did not know the article, though. Thanks!

My Fritz/Katte shipping song. It's from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a movie I haven't seen (because since when do I watch things?), but the song is *so* Fritz/Katte I can no longer think of any of my other ships when I listen to it. <3 The fact that it's based on Plato's Symposium, which Fritz and Katte would love, and FW haaate, is just icing on the cake. :P

The lyrics, in case you're like me and mishear/can't hear lyrics unless you know what you're listening for.

Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version

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Alternate universes where everyone is at least incrementally more happy

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Game of Thrones, HRE Edition

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FW and Voltaire are the reason we can't have nice things

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Stanislaw August Poniatowski