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: Fritz Does His Bit For European Unity (And So Does Voltaire)

[selenak]

Boswell was so good at getting excellent quotes out of people that it is one of my lasting regrets he didn't manage to gatecrash Fritz. If his French was good enough to chat with Voltaire and Rousseau, he could have carried a conversation with Frederic Le Grand, or rather, provided cues for Fritz to spout terse aphorisms.

* Did he know about all the human sacrifice? Was he having a noble savage moment without realizing it?

Oh, he knew. Not least because the Spaniards made damn sure all of Europe knew, this being part of the "we brought light to the heathens" tale. Heinrich Heine (now here's a poet one wishes Fritz would spar with - Francophile, free thinker, loathed the Prussian military and Prussians in general as most Rhinelanders did) wrote a poem in which the gods of the Aztecs decide to avenge their people's slaughter by Cortez by joining the Spaniards on their way back to Europe and inspire the wars of religion that ravaged the continent through the ensuing centuries as the Christian version of human sacrifice.


Fritz' contemporary Rousseau didn't invent the trope of the Noble Savage, but he certainly helped popularize it; it was in the later 18th century air. In terms of serious discussion of the Spanish behavior vs the Aztecs (and other native Americans), though, it's worth pointing out that given Las Casas famously pleaded in front of Charles V. that the treatment of the "Indians" was horrible, unchristian and had to stop, i.e. you had inner Spanish objections to conquistadoring as early as a generation after it had started, I'd say it's likely Fritz' pro-Aztecs libretto expressed a majority opinion of his time at least in terms of "the Spaniards were the bad guys here", though not in terms of "...what human sacrfice are you talking about?")

The "Friedrich II und die Musik" book I was reading two months ago also points out his Montezuma opera points out that the Aztecs were lacking a strong leader to stand up to Catholic tyranny and conquest and represent their interest, that Montezuma honoring his promises and treaties instead of practical and using pre-emptive counterstrikes just doomed him. Which of course was written without any thought of contemporary application and propaganda at all, I'm sure.

Re: Fritz Does His Bit For European Unity (And So Does Voltaire)

[cahn]

the Aztecs were lacking a strong leader to stand up to Catholic tyranny and conquest and represent their interest, that Montezuma honoring his promises and treaties instead of practical and using pre-emptive counterstrikes just doomed him.

All together now: oh, Fritz.