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.)
Re: Alternate universes where everyone is at least incrementally more happy
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 (
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.)