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