cahn | Yuletide tags are out: Frederician version

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frederick the great

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

Not that Count Rothenburg, selenak, his less well known French cousin the envoy to Prussia. (And yes, that was confusing to me at first.)

Given that better-known-Rothenburg was the one who gifted Fritz with Biche and Fritz said about his death "I lost a second Caesarion", I was confused, yes.

(BTW the English ambassador was less impressed by him and wrote about him when alive: "Count R. is lethally hated by everyone here; he specializes in the belittlement and slander of others." Thereby delivering another example of how everyone sees something else.)

Is there one AU in which FW actually goes through with his retirement plan (in which he also would have abdicated in Fritz' favour) and lives the religious hermit life in the country side, the one that Wilhelmine wrote about? (See, if Shakespeare actually would have had a shot at getting read at this point in Prussia I would have suspected someone of having told FW about King Lear about why this is not a good idea and if he thinks that his wife and daughters will actually play housekeepers for him in such a situation once he doesn't have absolute royal power over them anymore while Fritz does...) Since he had that idea for some months before he and Fritz visited Dresden it must have been when Fritz was 15 or 16? Since, however, Shakespeare was anathema to the lovers of French literature and not yet discovered by the German reading crowd when Fritz was a teen, FW must have reconsidered for other reasons.

Being an evil person sometimes, I also wonder about an AU in which Katte survives... but where FW actually does follow Philip II's example, though not Peter the Great's, has his son killed (though not tortured to death a la Peter). Maybe Katte survives because he got out of Berlin in time, or maybe FW needs to soothe his conscience about the son-killing by not pressing for a death sentence for Katte but accepts the original military tribunal sentence of imprisonment. But Fritz dies, and Katte survives. What would happen?

Yeah, Rothenburg was tricky to research, not least because 1) more famous cousin, 2) no Wikipedia page that I could find on English, German, *or* French Wikipedia (oh, look, Polish Wikipedia has a one-line stub, haha), 3) only searchable by the French spelling of his name, whereas my Fritz bios used the German spelling, smh. Once I figured (3) out, the doors of Google were unlocked.

But then it was perfect, because I found just enough information to get inspired, but not so much that I can't write him as a basically original character, instead of having to do a ton of research to try to stay true to canon, or at least know when I'm departing for creative reasons. (This is exactly what I did in my last fandom too: took the characters who had 0-2 lines of dialogue in the novels, fleshed them out into half a million words of fanfic.)

Is there one AU in which FW actually goes through with his retirement plan (in which he also would have abdicated in Fritz' favour)

I hadn't thought of that one! Interesting idea. One of the main contenders was "FW *doesn't* rise from his deathbed during one of his many illnesses, and Fritz inherits young (enough that Katte's still alive)." But this one is interesting. I have to imagine step 1 is: Fritz summons Wilhelmine to court for Very Important Reasons and just never lets her go again.

Being an evil person sometimes

Caaaahn! Selena's being mean to my characters! Tell her she's being mean. :PPP

No, seriously, I am an evil person who killed off my main character in my last AU in an already tragic PTSD- and death-riddled fandom (Hunger Games) in which said character had already canonically died in a somewhat different way, but so far, all my instincts in this fandom are to put Fritz and Katte in a room together with a flute and pat them and never let them be separated again.

Katte may say that if he had a thousand lives, he would give them all up for Fritz, but I say if I have a thousand AUs in this fandom, I will give them all to reuniting Fritz/Katte. <3 (And unlike my last fandom, it still won't make an iota of difference to their reality. </3 )

Maybe Katte survives because he got out of Berlin in time, or maybe FW needs to soothe his conscience about the son-killing by not pressing for a death sentence for Katte but accepts the original military tribunal sentence of imprisonment.

Well. I'm going to say if FW has Fritz executed and has the power to have Katte executed, then he has to have Katte executed just to justify the decision to kill Fritz, i.e., be consistent about the severity of the offense. But, if we go with the story (which one of my sources says is apocryphal and not based on any contemporary documentary evidence) about FW drawing his sword and threatening to run Fritz through with it the first time he saw Fritz after the escape attempt (

cahn, one of FW's officers is said to have stepped in front of Fritz and said, "Kill me, Your Majesty, but please spare your son")...IF FW impulsively kills Fritz and then regrets it, then, yeah, I can see him being forced to back down and not kill everyone else.

But in this AU where Katte knows Fritz is dead, I say Katte gets the hell out of Berlin asap. Maybe IRL he delayed for reasons besides or in addition to not wanting to abandon Fritz, like hoping for milder consequences if he just didn't actually desert, but once the King has killed Fritz...well, idk, maybe those are the circumstances under which you don't do anything as risky as trying to flee, because look what happened to the last guy who tried to flee, and that was his own son. But maybe those are the circumstances under which you have nothing to gain by staying in the power of the bloodthirsty maniac running the country when your prince is gone, and you have nothing to lose by deserting now, and you might gain your life.

Could go either way, I guess. It's really hard for me to get inside Katte's head on that last day of freedom when he had his chance and didn't take it in time. Probably because there were so many reasons to stay and so many reasons to go that being in his head wouldn't have cleared matters up much: his head was probably whirling. ;)

But Fritz dies, and Katte survives. What would happen?

OMG. Who's incrementally more happy in this AU? Katte's family and friends? Not by much (see: successful desertion or imprisonment). Fritz might argue that he is, poor thing. :( Katte, idk.

As a side note, I actually kind of wonder, speaking of family and friends, what Hans Heinrich (and for that matter, the rest of the family) thought about his son's decision to accompany Fritz, since "please don't kill him" is such a low bar it doesn't give us much to go on. I mean, there's a long continuum from "OMG how could you disgrace the family like that; okay, execution is a bit much, but I raised you better than that!" to "Privately, I think the King is a terrible father* but you should never ever defy or even speak ill of the King, because he's the King and obedience comes first," to "You should definitely be punished, but at least I can still hold my head up among my fellow officers, because everyone knows you did it for love and pity, not anything worse like cowardice or venality," to "I and everyone I know are kind of silently WTFing at the way FW treats his son, so there were really no good choices there."

* After all, Hans Heinrich let (and by "let" I mean "paid for") *his* son attend university, study French, play the flute, paint, do the Grand Tour, etc., and apparently was okay with him not joining the military. So while he may have been a strict 18th century military dad, he seems to have been a socially conforming 18th century sane strict military dad, not a batshit "my contemporaries' values are all effeminate, burn ALL the books, smash ALL the flutes" Spartan dad. (ETA: Of course, some of Katte's activities he may have been sneaking around to do, such painting and the flute, but not, like, university or the Grand Tour. Those are harder to hide, and harder to do without at least some family member helping you out financially. Not to say it was necessarily Dad, but I'm not seeing any reason to believe otherwise.)

Now, here's an interesting avenue for Katte to survive in addition to the ones mentioned: that incriminating letter doesn't make it to FW, and Katte's never implicated one way or another. So he just silently lives with the irrational survivor's guilt of knowing he helped Fritz to his death, while trying to go about his normal life, keeping his secret bottled up, grieving, and not having the emotional catharsis of knowing he suffered as a result too (like I said, irrational). Even exile with Keith would give him a sense of "Well, we were all in it together, it failed, and we all paid the price."

:'-(

SO ANYWAY. I will be doing a completely different AU. Also, the series is titled "Five Ways Fritz and Katte Cheated Fate," not "Five Ways Fate Curb-Stomped Them Differently." :P (Yes, there's the "...and one way they didn't" format, which I have considered and so far always rejected.)

Edited 2019-10-24 06:03 (UTC)

One more angle on the "Fritz dies, Katte survives" idea: what does Wilhelmine do? Because the relationship with her brother was so absolutely quintessential to her life that I think one would be justified to let her do something radically different in such an AU. Such as running away herself. England (or at least Hannover) would have been an obvious destination; she was probably too much of a realist to expect being regarded as marriage material by the cousins under those circumstances (i.e. without a a dowery, and without being male, the crown prince and thus a useful political tool), but still, it was reasonable to expect them to take her in and give her a place at court.

Now, her pride wouldn't have dealt well with being the poor relation (especially at a court where she'd been raised to believe she'd be the future Queen), so she might not have remained long, plus maybe she deals with the terrible loss of Fritz by feeling vengeful. And FW prides himself on being the Emperor's loyal subject. So Wilhelmine decides to go to Vienna and make her case, accusing her father of point blank murder. There's medieval legal precedent here demanding a public hearing at last. Again, she's probably aware that this will not end in the Emperor doing something to actually punish her father, but the public embarassment as the Prussian royal family's dirty laundry is shown in front of the world? In great detail? In a world where dignity and representation means so very much? This is her avenging her brother.

And who should be another witness but a Prussian officer in exile, one Hans Herrmann von Katte.

Also, while she's in Vienna: of course she meets the two arch duchesses. Befriending ensues!

There's medieval legal precedent here demanding a public hearing at last. Again, she's probably aware that this will not end in the Emperor doing something to actually punish her father, but the public embarassment as the Prussian royal family's dirty laundry is shown in front of the world? In great detail? In a world where dignity and representation means so very much? This is her avenging her brother.

And who should be another witness but a Prussian officer in exile, one Hans Herrmann von Katte.

I am finding just reading this synopsis of an AU that never happened extraordinarily cathartic. GO WILHELMINE GO.

Also, while she's in Vienna: of course she meets the two arch duchesses. Befriending ensues!

I WANT THIS.

I thought you might. :) The medieval legal precedent involves a royal daughter accusing her father's murderer in front of the assembled princes. Wilhelmine, as a princess of two electorate princely houses (Brandenburg and Hannover) and a direct blood relation to the dead victim, himself a prince of said houses, would be entitled to bring her suit in front of the Emperor, who has to hear her out in full. (And in public.) And we know from the memoirs she had a way with words if she wanted to. And the theatrical instinct of an opera composer. Imagine all the anachronistic Verdi soundtrack you want. (He wrote some mighty vengeance tunes, after all!)

I, uh. Might have added this to my Yuletide letter as Another Thing I Desperately Want :P :D

Now that you mention it, I ALSO really want the Verdi opera (and possibly Schiller play) that the censors made him write about some other place entirely (probably set in Boston :P ) with MT-Wilhelmine duet, and MT-Emperor-Wilhelmine-Katte quartet in the climactic crowd scene. Sadly this would be somewhat harder to come by :)

And I guess in this universe we don't have Don Carlo(s), which... well, since we're making this up, I'm totally going to make up that Schiller wrote this play that was at least as good, and Verdi's opera based on it was also at least as good :)

Umm, for science, where can I get my hands on something describing this medieval legal precedent?

Haha.

Also, please don't read anything into ~~the number of times I keep adding prompts~~ the amount of stuff I have written for each fandom

:-P

I can't help it you guys keep coming up with the best prompts! If someone were coming up with awesome Cordwainer Smith prompts Every Day I'd be adding to those too :P :D

Precedent: Alas we run into the language problem again. The one that came immediately to my mind when thinking about this involved a murder thta took place in my hometown, Bamberg. This was at a time when two dynasties, the Welfen and the Hohenstaufen, were duking it out for the throne - think War of the Roses in England, or Game of Thrones, whatever you prefer.

Dead victim and one of the two German Kings (not yet HR Emperors, since each was claiming to be the true contender; both were already crowned as King, though): Philip of Swabia. About to win the struggle after years. Gets killed by one Otto of Wittelsbach, not to be confused with:

Otto IV, his rival, the main benefitter of Philip's death. He did make it to Emperor thereafter, but eventually was toppled by Philip's nephew, Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, every bit as interesting and complex a man as his Prussian namesake and not of impact to this story, since he was a child in Sicily when it took place.

Anyway. Otto the Rival and future Emperor of course was invested in proving he had nothing to do with Otto of Wittelsbach conveniently offing Philip in my hometown where Philip had been to celebrate his niece's wedding with a guy called, you guessed it, Otto (of Merano - I tell you, medieval name-sameness is infuriating). So Otto the not yet IV who was, btw, Eleanor of Acuitaine's grandson and Richard the Lionheart's nephew allowed Philip's daughter Beatrice to present her case against Otto of Wittelsbach at the Imperial Diet in Frankfurt, the very same where Otto the not yet IV, as the sole remaining contender for the throne, would be declared now undisputed German king and future Emperor. Beatrice (still a minor, btw) made her case and formal accusation against Otto of Wittelsbach, who was then declared a murderer and criminal and subsequently hunted down and beheaded by her dad's bff Heinrich of Kalden. To further win over any disgruntled followers of the House of Hohenstaufen and prove he's sorry about Philip, honest, Otto the finally IV declared he'd marry Beatrice.

Which he did, a few years later, since she hadn't had her period yet by the time her father was murdered. Poor Beatrice died 24 days after Otto made the marriage legal by having sex with her. Draw your own conclusions from that. It's a horrible tale and Otto deserved his own downfall courtesy of Beatrice's cousin Frederick, but that's neither here nor there and has nothing to do with Wilhelmine in the AU.

Anyway: that's the legal precedent I meant. I linked the English wiki entries for Philip and Otto (IV); the Frankfurt Imperial Diet where Beatrice made her case doesn't have an extra one.

And yes, Schiller and Verdi after him simply used another historical subject to diguise what they were writing about!

This is amazing and awesome, although terrible for Beatrice :( Thank you!

Also, this is why your synopses are WAY better than reading Wikipedia:

Otto was related to every other King of Germany. He married twice:
1209 or 1212 to Beatrice of Swabia, daughter of the German King Philip of Swabia and Irene Angelina.[32]
19 May 1214, in Aachen to Maria of Brabant, daughter of Henry I, Duke of Brabant, and Matilda of Boulogne.[33]
Neither marriage produced any children. [bolding mine]

YOU THINK?

Right? I looked at Wikipedia and got *nothing* out of it that even hinted there was anything nearly as interesting as her write-up.

Edited 2019-11-01 19:22 (UTC)

I may have done extensive research on the era for professional reasons. Also, like I said, 'twas my hometown Philip's murder took place in. The wiki entry on Otto (IV) at least mentions he got flogged to death at his own request to expiate for his sins, which certainly is one of the most flamboyant of our Emperors' deaths, but given Beatrice died 24 days after the marriage got consumated, my sympathy for him is, err, non existent. (He also raped at least one mayor's wife when he toured the German cities after finally making it on the throne.)

Another true story wiki barely hints at is that young Frederick, who'd travelled across the Alps with a small entourage which Otto sought to prevent, arrived just three hours before Otto did at Late Konstanz and thus literally sat down and ate the meal prepared for Otto. He got let in because he had the excommunication bill against Otto with him, which made 17 years old Federico Secondo the sole remaining legal King of the Romans, Germans and of Sicily. If he'd arrived three hours later, though, after Otto's men had already occupied the city, he'd have been screwed.

Otto had it coming there, too. The main reason why the Pope until then had backed Otto and the Welfs against the Staufen was that he wanted to prevent the Church territories being sandwiched between the HRE on the one hand and the Kingdom of Sicily (which covered a large part of lower Italy in addition to the island and belonged to the Staufen since Frederick's father and Philip's older brother had married Constance d'Hauteville, heiress to the Norman Kings of Sicily) on the other, and he'd made Otto promise Otto would never claim Sicily. Of course, no sooner was Otto crowned as Emperor in Rome by the Pope that he took the army he'd conveniently brought with him ("just an escort, your holiness, honest") and marched on Sicily.

Now, young Frederick, who'd been orphaned at age 4, had survived various regents and grown up in Palermo partly raised by the local population (Sicilian-Norman-Arab, and his life long affinity to Muslim culture hails from there), had started to rule Sicily at 14 (which was when Norman Kings come of age) and had no army to speak of. He'd been screwed if Otto had actually invaded. But that particular Pope was one of the most ruthless and inventive politicians of the middle ages. Sure, he'd had excommunicated the late Philip of Swabia and backed Otto in order to keep the Staufen from owning the HRE and Sicily both, but now that Otto had broken the promise under which he'd been made Emperor, well, Innocent III excommunicated Otto and basically told young Federico that if he could make it to Germany alive across the Alps (where Otto's men were stationed), Germany was his. Otto, instead of advancing further to Sicily, hastily returned to cover his home base, and that was his mistake.

(In his time as Emperor, years later, Frederick also got excommunicated, twice, by two different Popes. The first time this happened, he dealt with it by going on Crusade - excommunicated, mind - , negotiated a peaceful solution with the Sultan, and crowned himself - since no Priest was allowed to - King of Jerusalem right there without having had to fight a single battle. The Templars tried to kill him, though, and failed. Pope Gregory then had to end the excommunication on him.)

Edited 2019-11-02 13:47 (UTC)

Wooooow. This is amazing! Wow, Innocent III, way to... not live up to your name. :)

Pope Gregory then had to end the excommunication on him.

I might have actually laughed at that bit. Hee. Sorry (not sorry) Pope Gregory!

Omg, you know I hate killing off either of my pairing, but I LOOVE Wilhelmine avenging her brother. Maybe she and the Prussian officer can be platonic friends and bond in their grief?

Absolutely. In fact, since in this AU Katte was never found out because that letter didn't get into the wrong hands, maybe once he hears Fritz is dead he does the one thing he can be sure Fritz would want him to do, get not just himself but also Fritz' beloved sister away from FW? During the first part of the trip (Berlin - Hannover) he and Wilhelmine are still numb and shellshocked, but once in Hannover when the adrenaline from the escape has gone and the reality of Fritz' death really has time to sink in, that's when they start talking (and shouting, and crying), especially since Wilhelmine otherwise has to play nice with the Hannover cousins (or their representatives, depending who is there). Once she hits upon her vengeance idea and heads towards Vienna, she asks him to come along again (a noble woman travelling alone still needs an escort, and whether she admits it out loud or not, he's the last thing she has of her brother - and vice versa, I guess).

get not just himself but also Fritz' beloved sister away from FW

Oooooh. This is giving me *feelings*.

that's when they start talking (and shouting, and crying)

Yeah, when I imagined them hanging out immediately after Fritz's death, I imagined the situation as ripe for shouting and blaming, especially Wilhelmine -> Katte. But since this AU is already uber painful, they can have each other's backs even as they get the shouting out of their systems.

Oof.

I am having a TON of feelings about this too <33333

This is kind of my kryptonite, them having each other's backs. I suppose there might be some blaming, but underneath they know who's really to blame, and that they will be loyal to each other for Fritz' sake <3

heeeeee. I am also an evil person? So if Fritz is killed... is there any kind of anti-FW movement that gets started? (Guessing no, as Philip II and Peter the Great seem to have been OK after killing their sons.)

And then his brother becomes King when FW dies. (Does FW's abuse extend even more to his younger brothers if he doesn't have Fritz to kick around any more?) Then what happens?

Differences: Philip II may not have killed his son IRL, just locked up the crazy batshit guy. Peter, well, 1) Russia ~1700 is a little bit more anything-goes (Ivan the Terrible had earlier killed his son in a fit of rage), 2) Peter had more support for his decision and actually got a death sentence out of the court.

FW's court martial, as you may remember, was divided between death and life imprisonment for Katte (meaning the lighter of the two sentences won by law), and after he told them to vote again and come back with a death sentence, they came back with the exact same decision they'd made before, infuriating him and forcing him to pronounce the death sentence on this own. And even the ones who voted for death said, "Please consider how this will affect your son," which may have been the wrong thing to say. :/ FW: "How can I make this affect my son the MOST? I know, I'll have him watch, and tell everyone involved to make sure his heart is broken!"

(Fritz's heart: *is broken*)

And the court martial point-blank refused to have anything to do with judging Fritz.

Would there have been an actual overthrow? FW had been worried about one for a long time; that's partly why he overreacted so badly to the escape attempt, especially when he discovered that foreign powers were involved. I think I've read that earlier that year there was an actual treasonous plot (not directly involving Fritz) that FW had uncovered and he punished the offenders.

Would Charles VI and the Imperial Diet have had something to say about FW if he'd had his son killed? Presumably. Would they have *done* anything to the point of supporting an overthrow? Eh. Charles had tried to protect Peter's son too, but sure as hell wasn't invading Russia over it. That said, the Charles-FW dynamic is very different than the Charles-Peter dynamic, especially with FW and his Imperial leanings.

One problem for anyone supporting an overthrow is that the next candidate after Fritz is killed is only 8 years old. (I mean, that could be an appeal, if you feel like you can become the new power behind the throne, but it's a different kettle of fish than supporting 14-18-yo Fritz as new king.)

I suspect it makes a big difference if FW loses his temper and runs Fritz through with a sword on the spot, then is publicly penitent afterward, vs. if he issues death sentences to everyone.

Here's an evil AU for you: Katte escapes; therefore Fritz is killed. There are people who think having another, more acceptable target made FW more likely to get his thirst for blood out of his system so that he came down on the side of a pardon for Fritz. Pure speculation, and I personally think there were too many other factors for FW to decide in cold blood have his son killed even without Katte to punish, but AUs are for people making different decisions than they did in real life!

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).

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

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