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