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.
Re: Stanislaw August Poniatowski
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.