cahn | Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version

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)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Totally forgot to address the second part. I don't know the FW-AW dynamic in enough detail to have an informed opinion, but from what little I know, AW was pretty willing to go along with what Dad wanted: wear uniforms, play with soldiers, not sneak off and do all the forbidden things, etc.

You know how I think I had more conflicts with my parents than my siblings did, because my unshakeably strong sense of self and belief that my parents were stupid meant that I was willing to stand and die by my convictions, instead of playing along? I think Fritz might have had more conflict with FW than his siblings not only because he was the heir (which is related to why, say, Wilhelmine didn't get the focus of Dad's abuse), but because he and FW shared that terrier aspect to their personalities.

Whereas AW might have been like, "Yeah, sure, Dad, whatever you say. Sounds great," after Fritz was dead, and FW might have had some relief (mixed up with all the guilt and defensiveness) that things had worked out in the end for the benefit of Prussia. And maybe even (because humans are great at rationalizing, watch Fritz rationalize everything ever) convinced himself that Divine Providence had a hand in Fritz's death, thus absolving FW. How convenient!

Btw, I have read (I need a Turkish particle for this) that after the escape attempt, FW said no more education for AW, because French and philosophy had led Fritz astray.

Me: *facepalm*

Then, of course, when Fritz came to the throne, he was like, "Okay, younger bros, you're all getting educations now, which I will generously micromanage! Just think how lucky you are now that I'm in charge. In *my* day, we didn't get educations, and if we did, we had to see to it ourselves, no help from the monarch. I'm sure as adults, you'll all proceed to demonstrate your undying gratitude toward me for overseeing your education like this."

"Our Insane Family: The Next Generation" ensues.

Speaking of insane families and generations, I was looking at

selenak's YT letter, and this line about SD jumped out at me: "emotionally abusive, too, especially towards her daughter. She also had had a traumatic childhood herself"

*sings, Lion King-style*: The ciiiiiircle, the ciiiiiircle of abuse!

/o\

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.

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.")

AW, otoh, comes across as a spaniel to me.

Hee -- this does seem consistent with everything you've told me!

It makes sense to me that AW might not have been able to cope with being the oldest son (had he been born first instead of Fritz), but I wonder if stepping into that position, with a penitent FW, and not having terrier tendencies, might actually work not terribly for him (as in, he could roll with FW's weirdness instead of digging in his heels).

Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version

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

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

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

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

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