Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version

[cahn]

Come join us in this crazy Frederick the Great fandom and learn more about all these crazy associated people, like the star-crossed and heartbreaking romance between Maria Theresia's daughter Maria Christina and her daughter-in-law Isabella, wow.

OK, so, there are FOURTEEN characters nominated:
Anna Karolina Orzelska (Frederician RPF)
Elisabeth Christine von Preußen | Elisabeth Christine Queen of Prussia (Frederician RPF)
Francesco Algarotti (Frederician RPF)
François-Marie Arouet | Voltaire (Frederician RPF)
Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great (Frederician RPF)
Hans Hermann Von Katte (Frederician RPF)
Joseph II Holy Roman Emperor (Frederician RPF)
Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria (Frederician RPF)
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf (Frederician RPF)
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith (Frederician RPF)
Sophia Dorothea of Hanover (Frederician RPF)
Stanisław August Poniatowski (Frederician RPF)
Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758) (Frederician RPF)
Yekatarina II Alekseyevna | Catherine the Great of Russia (Frederician RPF)

This means some fourth person kindly nominated Algarotti and -- I think? -- Stanislaw August Poniatowski! YAY! Thank you fourth person! Come be our friend! :D Yuletide is so great!

I am definitely requesting Maria Theresia, Wilhelmine, and Fritz (Put them in a room together. Shake. How big is the explosion?), and thinking about Elisabeth Christine, but maybe not this year.

I am also declaring this post another Frederician post, as the last one was getting out of hand. I think I'll still use that one as the overall index to these, though, to keep all the links in one place.

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

Comments

Re: Addendum on Joseph and Isabella's daughter

[cahn]

Okay, I didn't realize my heart was going to be broken this morning :P

Oh, poor Joseph :((((((((((

Re: Addendum on Joseph and Isabella's daughter

[selenak]

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.

Re: Addendum on Joseph and Isabella's daughter

[cahn]

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 :(