Frederick the Great, discussion post 5: or: Yuletide requests are out!

[cahn]

All Yuletide requests are out!

Yuletide related:
-it is sad that I can't watch opera quickly enough these days to have offered any of them, these requests are delightful!

-That is... sure a lot of prompts for MCS/Jingyan. But happily some that are not :D (I like MCS/Jingyan! But there are So Many Other characters!)

Frederician-specific:
-I am so excited someone requested Fritz/Voltaire, please someone write it!!

-I also really want someone to write that request for Poniatowski, although that is... definitely a niche request, even for this niche fandom. But he has memoirs?? apparently they are translated from Polish into French

-But while we are waiting/writing/etc., check out this crack commentfic where Heinrich and Franz Stefan are drinking together while Maria Theresia and Frederick the Great have their secret summit, which turns into a plot to marry the future Emperor Joseph to Fritz...

Master link to Frederick the Great posts and associated online links

Comments

Re: What the Prussian Ambassador Wrote

[cahn]

Yes, exactly! I think they would have bonded on a certain level, with the music and books. Just... they would also have clashed a lot too. this is why I want someone to write it

Passive aggressive generals

[mildred_of_midgard]

Before I got so rudely interrupted by medical problems, I was continuing that biography of General Seydlitz, and I made a note to pass this anecdote on. Check out this hilarious bit of mutual passive-aggressiveness on the part of two of Fritz's officers.

"[Seydlitz] was particular in procuring good and various wines, and was annoyed if a guest sought to conceal a preference for any particular kind of wine, out of modesty. And this was a repugnance which General von Natzmer* loved to excite; for when he came to Trebnitz to inspect the squadron, and sat at the major's table, he invariably asked for the ordinary French wine, to show that he did not live well himself, and that he despised luxury. The haughty host, however, to confront the unwelcome lesson with the offence which the general affected to reprehend, caused the finest and most costly wines to be served to himself and his other guests."

Way to go, guys! Such mature, very officer, wow. :P

Meanwhile, as you may recall, Fritz served only the cheapest wine when dining with his men. If you wanted something better, you brought it yourself. All of which he thought was hilarious. "Because if there's one thing I learned from Dad, it's--okay, verbally abusing people. But if there's two things I learned from Dad, it's verbally abusing people and saving money. :DD"

* Different Natzmer from the one who converted FW to Pietism and gave Katte three hours to escape before reluctantly being forced to arrest him.

Re: Wilhelmine

[mildred_of_midgard]

often around the time someone was horribly abusing her (which of coures doesn't narrow it down a whole lot)

Lolsob.

Agreed, I've been attributing Wilhelmine's physical issues to some combination of shallow royal gene pool with lots of recessive conditions, 18th century medical care, and stress. Ongoing sex she didn't want may have formed some part of the stress, but, with all that trauma, probably not the whole of it.

ETA: Also, practically every time I open a letter from Fritz, and I've opened a lot in the last few days for my mapping project, no matter who the recipient is, there's some line where Fritz is commenting on the other person's health, whether it's "Please get better," or "I'm sorry you're feeling worse," or "Oh, thank God you're better!" or "Do you have any updates on so-and-so? I'm worried." It's gotten to the point where I'm surprised if someone in the 18th century is healthy.

Re: Emotional isolation

[mildred_of_midgard]

Okay, so you know the Fritz as crime boss AU? The author writes a mash-up of 18th and 19th century characters in the series in question. One is Shaka Zulu. From the author's notes, I got this anecdote, which is in Wikipedia with a source of some modern historian that idk whether to trust, so grain of salt, but here you go:

"After the death of his mother Nandi...Shaka ordered that no crops should be planted during the following year of mourning, no milk (the basis of the Zulu diet at the time) was to be used, and any woman who became pregnant was to be killed along with her husband. At least 7,000 people who were deemed to be insufficiently grief-stricken were executed, although the killing was not restricted to humans: cows were slaughtered so that their calves would know what losing a mother felt like."

Predictably, he was assassinated less than a year after this.

How's that for PTSD and absolute power?

Re: Fritz chronological maps, or a labor of love

[mildred_of_midgard]

Look, I did it! I wrangled all the data for his personal correspondence and turned it into gifs. \o/ *happy dance*

- 1740-1745
- 1745-1756
- 1756-1763
- 1763-1786
- And the granddaddy of all gifs: 1740-1786

It was easier than I thought, and apparently researching coordinates for 18th century place names is a suitably mindless and time-consuming pastime on 3 hours of sleep and insomnia.

I got two surprises out of the finished product, one cool and one sad.

Cool: I keep reading about the autumn military maneuvers Fritz held in Silesia, and you can watch them happen on this map! What you can't see on the map is that he kept going every year until his death, because in 1785 he famously insisted on sitting on his horse in the pouring rain for 6 hours reviewing the troops, and then got so sick he couldn't get out of bed the next day. That was the beginning of the one-year decline toward August 17, 1786.

Sad: The 1780s autumn maneuvers, aka Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Map. That's because the map turned out to be an inadvertently very poignant illustration of his emotional isolation. You may notice the itinerary gets less and less granular at the end, as his correspondents die off one by one. There's a sharp drop-off in volume after Voltaire goes in 1778 and Maria Antonia in 1780. :(

Which, of course, makes me even more annoyed that the transcription of his political correspondence cuts off in March 1782. I'm just not going to be able to put together a decent map after that date. Ditto before 1740, the data's just too sparse.

But what I've got so far is still cool! As approximations go, I'm pretty stoked about what I've put together. And proud, I have to admit. Do you think Old Fritz would be proud?

For my next trick, I'm planning to see how much work would be involved in wrangling the more granular data from his political correspondence, and then making a decision whether to proceed. :D

Re: Fritz chronological maps, or a labor of love

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, funny anecdote. *So many* times, the only hits I could get for the 18th century spelling I had were Frederick the Great hits. If I hadn't been having fun, it would have been frustrating. As it was, it was just a really super geeky scavenger hunt. :P

Anyway, on one occasion, almost the entire first page of hits was works by or about Fritz, and the first was Carlyle. The blurb Google showed me reads: "Friedrich now has nothing for it but to try if he cannot possibly get hold of Kunzendorf (readers may look in their Map)."

Yes, if only it were still named that, Carlyle! I laughed pretty hard. It reminded me of a touristy t-shirt I got in Bratislava that read, "Where the fuck is Bratislava?"

Where the fuck is Kunzendorf?

Re: Sibling Correspondance - I

[selenak]

Still on the road (for today, back home this night) and with intermittent email access, but: I‘ve now read Uwe Oster‘s biography of Wilhelmine from 2007, which is, at 352 pages, pretty short, concise, and fluently written. Most importantly, it provides me with a few useful dates and some more background info I didn‘t have before, as well as with more quoted letters from various family members, and adds to my speculation as to the reason why Wilhelmine, despite things being already strained with Fritz, risked meeting MT in person when she had to know how he‘d take it. (The rest of the family didn‘t take it any better, more about this in a moment.) After all, she could have pretended to be ill and let the Margrave do the lunch, which would still have pissed Fritz off, but not nearly to the same degree.

Also I found out who the Erlangen journalist was. And where he went after escaping arrest. Naturally, he went to Vienna. :)

Okay, letter quotes: Cahn, as Mildred mentioned, SD and FW had to try a few times before having a surviving male child, and there were in fact two more boys born between Wilhelmine and Fritz, who both died. Grandpa F1 (the maligned by his grandson baroque party boy) was still alive then, and thus has the honor of being the first to report on the Wilhelmine/Fritz relationship. When reporting this latest grandson is still surviving, F1 writes in a letter from February 8th 1712 on his grandchildren: „Our children are still all healthy, especially the prince of Prussia, and it is strange that the princess loves him so dearly, for she despised her first two brothers.“

Bear in mind we’re talking about a toddler here (Wilhelmine was three years older than Fritz.) Now given Wilhelmine was the oldest, and was left in no doubt that she should have been a boy and the boys born after her were the ones to really count, which presumably meant they were also getting the majority of attention in the nursery, I‘m not surprised baby Wilhelmine didn‘t like the other babies; it‘s more surprising three-years-old Wilhelmine should take to the latest arrival. But apparantly she did, without question. (And since F1 isn‘t a later biographer blessed with hindsight but writing in his present with no knowledge this newest boy would survive, he can‘t have made it up.)

I confess I tended to take Wilhelmine‘s memoir claims to having been a clever, admired child early on with a grain of salt, but no, the English ambassador (admittedly with the awareness SD was pushing the English marriage and thus keeping an extra eye on her) reports in 1716: „The oldest princess is one of the most charming children I‘ve seen. She dances very well, her attitude surpasses her years, and so does her mind.“ Alas, grandfather George I was less impressed; that scene in „Der Thronfolger“ when he says to SD „she‘s tall for her age“ and otherwise mainly talks to Fritz is confirmed by ambassador as well.

Leti, for all that she was an abusive fright, also managed to give Wilhelmine a first class education. Wilhelmine started with not yet five years of age to write letters to her father, with only a few days interruption, at this point not solely in French but also in German, which is interesting since Leti was Italian and her other teacher, Monsieur de Croze, was French (so who did talk German to her?), but later exclusively in French. (Which, remember, FW for all his later rants at Fritz was fluent in since it had been his first language as well, courtesy of his own French governess.) These early letters are by Wilhelmine (i.e. not in the handwriting of the governess) and show her as a child eager to impress her father and longing for his affection; on May 8th 1717 she reports proudly that she‘s been brave as two of her (milk) teeth have been pulled and includes them in her letter (they still exist). She swears five years Fritz is doing really really well with the military drill he‘s supposed to undergo, FW can be proud of him, but she also reports on more harmless stuff: „On Sunday a man will come who has a dog who can talk to his master in German, French and English!“

There‘s one of these letters from child!Wilhelmine, though, which shows that much as she loved Fritz, she had her moments of resenting having to take second place to him, too. In May 1719, she writes to FW:

„I am very hurt that you have done my brother the honor of writing to him whereas I, who have written 100 000 letters to you, have never received a single one from you in return. I know very well that my brother deserves more acknowledgement as he is a boy, but it is not my fault that I am not, and I am my dear Papa‘s daughter, too, and I love him. I have been told that my dear Papa only writes to officers, and if this is true, I would like to have a military rank as well. Mademoiselle Leti says I could be a good dragooner‘s captain, if my dear Papa would accept one who wears a dress, but I believe she is making fun of me when she says this.“

She was ten when she wrote this, and it was, of course, (near the end of) a time when she didn‘t actually seee much of her father; a more present FW and the developing warfare between him and SD, complete with first row sight on what it actually meant for Fritz to have FW's full attention, was a cure against longing for his presence, but the longing for acknowledgement and affection despite the simultanously growing resentment because of how abusive he got never completely went away. And this letter from ten-years-old Wilhelmine along with quotes I was already familiar with re: her birth in her memoirs, or that quote in a letter to Fritz about her granddaughter („of that gender first despised and then put on a pedestal and bartered away“) feed into my theory that for that she was of course a product of her time and accepted a great many of its attitudes, some sense of injustice at the way she was regarded as lesser, because female, never went away. And I do think this lay at the heart of her wanting to meet MT in person (and her lame „no, I don‘t admire the Queen of Hungary, I just acknowledge her abilities like those of everyone else“ defense to Fritz afterwards). Because MT, with one and three quarters Silesian Wars behind her, might not have been able to keep Silesia from Fritz but she‘d managed to keep the rest of her Empire intact when basically everyone had expected it would get carved up, she had defied everyone‘s predictions and was proving that a woman could, in fact, rule and get obeyed, not in far away England or Russia, but in the HRE. And this was the one chance in a lifetime to meet her.

(The political reason for someone from Bayreuth to receive MT at all was obvious. Due to her deal with Max von Wittelsbach - Bavaria back vs FS as Emperor - the small principality of Bayreuth know was surrounded by pro-Habsburg countries, not to mention that since FS was about to be crowned, MT was about to be Empress and thus at least nominally the Margrave's liege lady. But like I said - Wilhelmine could have played sick - given the number of times she actually was sick, it wouldn't have been that much of a stretch - and she didn't.)

Oster, as mentioned, is mostly good with dates, and also with keeping in mind circumstances of writing and pointing out contraditctions (between memoirs and letters, for example), and when he quotes from the various ambassadors, he always mentions the then current interests of whichever country the ambassador in question represents. So, the dates for Wilhelmine's estrangement from plus reconciliaton with Fritz:

Summer of 1743: Württemberg trouble with the Dowager Duchess and Wilhelmine appearing, in Fritz' eyes, lukewarm about marrying her daughter to Carl Eugen

January 1744: L'Affaire Marwitz heads towards its climax as Wilhelmine pushes for the Marwitz/Burghaus marriage; this is when Fritz switches from the usual "dearest sister" greeting in the letters to "Madam Sister" (ouch), while Wilhelmine doesn't confess why she wants to marry Marwitz off (and out of the country) so urgently and instead counters the Fritzian argument of "when you left Berlin, you promised Dad you wouldn't marry off any of the Marwitz daughters to a non-Prussian" with "any promise I had to make to Dad was blackmailed and died with him, and I can't believe you're using that argument with me"

July 1744: Johann Gottfried Groß, chief editor of the "Christian-Erlangisches Zeitungs-Extrakt" starts to publish articles with a lot of Fritz critique

12. November 1744: Fritz writes to Wilhelmine that he would never allow any scribbler to print insulting things about his family in HIS country, and in his next letter includes two copies of particularly offensive to him editions of said newspaper

January 1745: Wilhelmine writes that Groß has been arrested, but when Fritz writes back that fine, the guy can go free if he is never allowed to publish again, she has to confess that in fact Groß hightailed it out of Bayreuth before an arrest could be made.

20. January 1745: Karl VII, the former Karl Albrecht of Wittelsbach dies; MT offers her "Bavaria vs vote for FS" deal to Max of Wittelsbach and starts to campaign among the other princes for votes

13. September 1745: FS is officially voted in as Emperor by all the German princes elector (minus Fritz who has a votes Prince Elector of Brandenburg; eventually, as part of the second Silesian peace treaty, he'll provide his belated vote as well))

20. September 1745: Coronation of FS in Frankfurt; en route to said coronation, but the biography does not specify on which day exactly, MT passes through Emskirchen which is Bayreuth principality territory, and there has lunch with Wilhelmine

=> all hell breaks loose.

Before Fritz fires off his letter, though, everyone else does, starting with SD, who writes to brother AW: "Your Bayreuth sister has committed a new idiocy by going to Emskirchen to see the Queen of Hungary. I have written a deservedly angry letter to her about this affair. I don't know what the King will say to this latest extravaganza of hers, but I am deeply distressed", and adds that Friederike Luise, who is married to the Margrave of Ansbach (next door to Bayreuth, so to speak, in terms of principalities) has to be stopped from committing the same "madness". Ulrike from Sweden joins in with a letter to Wilhelmine along the same "how could you be so foolish and treacherous?" lines.

22. November 1745: Fritz invades Saxony (the first time). This basically ends the second Silesian War, with MT agreeing to letting Fritz have Silesia, Fritz belatedly voting for FS as Emperor and writes to Wilhelmine the "have made peace with YOUR FRIEND THE QUEEN OF HUNGARY" letter I already mentioned, along with Wilhelmine's "yay peace! she's not my friend, though cool" reply. Or, to quote it in the original phrasing: "Regarding the Queen of Hungary, I have never had a preference for her or a particular attachment to her interests. I simply do justice to her good qualities and consider it permitted to esteem all people who possess these." (Countered with "you are a traitor and a miscreant" type of letters.)

First half of 1746: Wilhelmine writes a lot of apology and explanation letters.

July 1746: Fritz starts to sound somewhat mollified in his "my heart will speak in your favour even if my head doesn't" letter. More cautious correspondance ensues.

Summer of 1747: Wilhelmine gets sent to a spa by her doctors again. There, she meets a lady-in-waiting to Elisabeth Christine and conspires with her to a coup that will bring the definite reconciliation with her brother: a surprise visit to Berlin. She goes back with the lady to Berlin.

15. August 1747: Wilhelmine sees Fritz for the first time in years. Hugs, tears and happiness ensue.

(She stayed for a while. The English ambassador to Prussia (a new one, who hadn't met her before and thus reports on her to London) writes home re: Wilhelmine at this point in her life: "She regards all time as wasted which isn't spent with books or with people who interest her. She spends all her time by conducting witty conversations with her brother, writing voluminous books and has other books read to her."

Oktober 1747: Wilhelmine is back in Bayreuth and kicks out Marwitz, or tries to. This is when Marwitz pulls the "make your brother pay me my inheritance, or I'll continue to screw your husband" gambit and Wilhelmine has to to explain all. (Marwitz then at last leaves Bayreuth in early 1748 with her Austrian husband.)


Worthy of note and unknown to me before: she explains it to AW as well as Fritz. Because during the time of estrangement, Fritz to convey his displeasure had made AW write to her in his place occasionally, which is when Wilhelmine's actual relationship to this younger brother starts. He also argued in her favour (the only family member to do so), as she will plead for him in the last year of her life and his. Heinrich, she properly meets as an adult for longer when he and youngest brother Ferdinand (they were 22 and 18 at that point) come to her daughter's wedding (September 1748).

The biography offers a bit more of a picture of the Margrave: he was on his Grand Tour when summoned back by his father to marry (which meant he got to see France and the Netherlands but no more). FW did a 180 on his opinion on him; at first, when he didn't know the young man, the future Margrave was simply a means to an end (get Wihelmine married to a non-English minor prince once and for all), and then when he actually got to know him he found out to his displeasure young Friedrich (!) didn't like hunting (!!), played the flute (!!!) and when FW made him drink an entire big cup of beer in one go (you know, the thing that had had unfortunate results with another Friedrich before), was angry enough about this treatment to actually tell his father-in-law just this. (Well, future Margrave had not grown up with FW and thus did not know you do not call out the King on being a bully and a boor.) This happened during Wilhelmine's first post-wedding and birth of daughter visit home to Berlin, and for the not yet Margrave, it was the last visit to his father-in-law as well. Unfortunately, they were financially dependent on FW. Not least because FW, as one last humililiation before the wedding, had Wilhelmine not just renounce her claims to the Prussian succession (as was the custom for all the pincesses once they married) but all claims to her mother's inheritance (i.e. money), which meant she was basically without a dowry. And her father-in-law had only wanted that marriage because of FW's famously filled treasury, what with Bayreuith being a small and indebted principality.

Re: Sibling Correspondance - II

[selenak]

The Italian journey: if Fritz was, in fact, afraid of her staying in Italy in that letter I quoted, he wasn't being paranoid. She was tempted, because she was happy there, the climate while at first not as warm as was typical agreed with her, and she liked a great many of the people she encountered. She loved exploring antiques, debating the new discoveries - at one point, they even paid her the compliment of calling her "Dotoressa di Bayreuth" (this isn't something Wilhelmine herself reports but Winckelmann does, who was the formost German expert on this of his day and met her in Italy) - and Protestant-turned-Deist or not, admired a great many of the churches and paintings she saw. But whether or not her husband would have been okay with her staying there (and unless she left him, he'd have to be, and even then, because someone would have to pay her living expenses), she also knew that if she did stay, she'd never see her brother again. So no permanent move to Italy. She did meet Algarotti in Venice, btw, writing to Fritz about it on July 25th 1755: "I met Algarotti, whom I hardly recognized, so much older and changed did he look. His health is still very damaged, but his mind is as quick as ever. He was very, very considerate of us and promised me he was only waiting for his complete recovery in order to return to Berlin. I esteem him higher than ever, for he proved his attachment to you on every occasion."

7 Years War: After the AW/Fritz break up, Fritz informed Wilhelmine of it (and told her what he told everyone at the time, that AW was guilty of the near catastrophe): To which Wilhelmine replied, urging Fritz to forgive him: "He has written two letters to me about his losses. He believes to have lost his honor and reputation. Maybe his behaviour was wrong; he is passionate and at times rules by his passions, but he is assuredly good natured."

She also wrote to AW: "You have no idea what evil results the estrangement between the both of you has. (...) Remember, the one you feel so much bitterness for is your brother, your blood and more. Please forget what has happened. I am convinced the King will then do the same. I'd give my life for all of you to be reconciled."

Then SD died; Fritz told Wilhelmine in his letter "We don't have a mother anymore", but at that point she already knew via their youngest sister Amalie, whose letter had reached her first. And then Fritz started to write despairing letters with a sort of suicidal sub (or not so sub) text ("If I had followed my inclination, I'd have made an end immediately after the unfortunate battle I lost (Kolin)") ; she wrote encouraging and loving letters back, but she was already very sick and definitely very worried, though she tried to keep the former from Fritz as long as she could (though she did write to Amalie about it). He started to win battles again in late 1757. AW died on June 12th 1758; Heinrich visited Wilhelmine in Bayreuth in July, but did not tell her, because he was deeply shocked when he saw her, recognizing at once she was dying herself, and wrote to Fritz "I am very much afraid that she will not recover from this illness". Fritz finally told her in his letter from July 12th, but the Margrave - who'd already been told by Heinrich - kept the letter from Wilhelmine for a while, fearing this would finish her. Naturally, not getting news from Fritz instead made her afraid something had happened to him, so the Margrave finally forwarded the letter after all. The last letters from Fritz thereafter are all frantic pleas with her not to die: "I was more dead than living when I received your letter. My god, your writing! (...) I beg you - avoid all efforts, so your illness does not get worse. As sick and miserable as you are, you still think about my miseries? That is going too far. PLease think of yourself instead and tell yourself that without you, there is no more happiness in life for me, and my life depends on yours."

(BTW, Voltaire, who had kept up his correspondance with her post their encounter in France again, urged her to stay alive for peace in Europe, as he hoped she'd be able to mediate between Fritz and the other powers: "Never, Madame, did you have so much cause to live as right now." No pressure, Voltaire.)

Oster also quotes Henri de Catt quoting Fritz after he learned about her death: "How shall I get back my sister!" (It's a much longer outburst than that Oster quotes, but the first sentence struck me the most, because it's very King Lear - no more, no more. Oster says Wilhelmine died in the arms of her daughter (who'd left her husband Carl Eugen for good at that point and was living with her parents again) and husband, so she was not alone. She'd known she wouldn't recover for a while at that point, and had written to Fritz in her last letter: "I have accepted my fate. I will live and die content as long as I know you will be happy again."

Re: Meanwhile, in Sweden

[selenak]

Although at least from the movie synopsis, it seems to be the case that a large part of the problem was that Struensee went after power, which doesn't seem to have been so much the case here?

Well, Munck didn't do badly out of it. To quote wiki: He was appointed Master of the Horse (Riksstallmästare), knight and governor of the Royal Order of the Seraphim. He was created Baron (Friherre) Munck af Fulkila on 27 December 1778 (introduced in registry of the nobility in 1788, under nr 309), and finally Count Greve Munck af Fulkila on 4 July 1788 (introduced 16 May 1789 under nr 103). In 1787, Sophia Magdalena deposited a sum of 50.000 riksdaler in an account for Munck, which was generally rumoured to be a "farewell gift".

But still, Struensee became the de facto ruler of Denmark for a while, and his reforms were truly earth shattering for the time:

- abolition of torture
abolition of unfree labor (corvée)
abolition of the censorship of the press
abolition of the practice of preferring nobles for state offices
abolition of noble privileges
abolition of "undeserved" revenues for nobles
abolition of the etiquette rules at the Royal Court
abolition of the Royal Court's aristocracy
abolition of state funding of unproductive manufacturers
abolition of several holidays
introduction of a tax on gambling and luxury horses to fund nursing of foundlings
ban of slave trade in the Danish colonies
rewarding only actual achievements with feudal titles and decorations
criminalization and punishment of bribery
re-organization of the judicial institutions to minimize corruption
introduction of state-owned grain storages to balance out the grain price
assignment of farmland to peasants
re-organization and reduction of the army
university reforms
reform of the state-owned medical institutions

...and then he died a gruesome death for "lese majeste and usurpation of the royal authority". To quote wiki again: First, Struensee's right hand was cut off; next, after two failed attempts, his head was severed, stuck on a pole and presented to 30,000 bystanders; then, after disembowelment, his remains were quartered.

The King himself considered Struensee a great man, even after his death. Written in German on a drawing the king made in 1775, three years after Struensee’s execution, was the following: "Ich hätte gern beide gerettet" ("I would have liked to have saved them both").

BTW, in case you're wondering: a) German because Struensee was German (and the Queen sort of was, being a Hannover and George III's sister), b) normally one would wonder why he didn't save them then, being King, but between being mentally ill and the enraged nobility taking over, Christian does have an excuse. Anyway, with all this in mind as the most recent precedent, is it a surprise Munck was careful?

Re: husband for Marie Antoinette, presumably in this particular matter, she'd prefered the Swedish option, too, but Gustav was a lousy husband in general (what with the favorites and no particular interest in his wife beyond the heir getting), whereas Louis might have been terrible in bed, not to mention phlegmatic in general, but he was the first French King since centuries not to take a mistress or a non-sexual favourite, and emotionally actually was devoted to his wife. Also, note that Gustav's method resulted in immediate scandal, whereas (most) people didn't know about why it took seven years for MA to get pregnant until Joseph's letters in this regard were finally published in the 20th century. I mean, there was gossip and theories involving the fact that post-Joseph's visit, pregnancy finally ensued, obviously, but just what the problem had been was hotly debated.

(One theory favored by future revolutionaries was that MA was an evil nymphomaniac and hence not able to get pregnant, which was completely untrue but was eagerly believed, and when the children finally did come, of course their paternity got disputed.)

Re: Field of Cloth of Gold

[selenak]

It's in series 2, episode 12.

Re: What the Prussian Ambassador Wrote

[selenak]

That is a great description!

Re: the eyes, remember when I mentioned that Amalie was supposedly the sibling with the closest physical resemblance to Fritz? Goethe's late age pen pal Zelter, a musician, once got her to let him go through her cherished collection of rare original Bach manuscripts (as far as we know, she did not have an affair with Friedemann, but she did manage to gather the most impressive collection of hand-written Bach scores - both JB himself and his sons; Carl Emmanual also called her his patroness and wrote a dedication to her), and here's how Zelter describes it - Amalie was an old lady at that point:

"Princess Amalie once let me see her musical collection, but only the titles, through the glass of the cupboards. One of the works, she took out, but kept it in her hands, and only let me look. But then I grabbed it in order to further browse through it, and shocked, her eyes grew large as wheels. They were the eyes of her brother."

(„Prinzeß Amalie ließ mich einmal ihre Musikalien sehen, aber nur die Titel, durch das Glas der Schränke. Ein Werk nahm sie heraus, behielt es aber in Händen und ließ mich nur hineingucken. Da griff ich aber zu, um darin blättern zu können, und sie, erschrocken, machte Augen wie Wagenräder. Es waren die Augen ihres Bruders.“)

Re: Chronicle of a a failed foreign policy venture

[selenak]

Re: biography, can't help you, as the only one I ever read was eons ago and a German one - I was still in school then, and I don't remember the title, the author was Helmut something or the other.

But here are some nice things to look at, from the Doctor Who episode starring her. Basic background info for non-Whovians - the Doctor is an alien time traveller, but in this particular case, the way he keeps running into Reinette (btw that was an actual nickname, the episode didn't make that up, and that her mother nicknamed her "little Queen" already tells you all about her mother) isn't by his usual means of (time) transportation but via a portal in a mysterious space ship he and his friends are stranded on, full of automatons that want something from Reinette and keep showing up at different points in her life via said portal. Our hero follows and thus runs into her as well, first as a child, then as an adult.

first time the Doctor meets an adult Reinette, played by Sophia Myles who manages to radiate intelligence and mischief beautifully.

Rokoko era mindmeld, as the Doctor tries to figure out what the hell the automatons want from Reinette

Versailles under attack, and Reinette shows why she's the first woman of France

Re: Wilhelmine

[selenak]

Boromir and Faramir work for me really well in this regard, too, and I agree that "older, protective" might make the difference to how Fritz in rl dealt with AW. But I still felt this made the fic's version of Wilhelmine into practically an OC (and her bond with Fritz into a new relationship), because someone without any damage, her own emotional needs and mistakes are not a version of Wilhelmine I still recognise as her, which is my criteria for AUs. I mean, I know she's just a supporting character and mainly there so that AU Fritz has someone in his childhood. And it's not that I wish miseries on any version of Wilhelmine! But I do think her share of trauma made her, well, her, instead of marvelously normal and supportive female character X.

To go back to Boromir and Faramir again, they're a case of protective older sibling who is not resented by abused younger sibling despite being favored by their father, but Boromir, both film and book version, is anything but idealized. It's hard to compare, because as opposed to AU Wilhelmine he's a main character in the first part of the book/first film, and thus gets way more narrative space to be fleshed out. But let's assume a Gondor-centric version of the story that starts with Faramir's dream and stays with him. Boromir would appear a sympathetic character in regards to Faramir, but there would, presumably, still be some indication on how their father's beliefs and attitudes have formed him as well.

Re: Crackfic

[selenak]

that you translated it as "offended" rather than "sinned"

*nods* The word "sin" either as verb or noun does not show up, and we have it - "sündigen". "Offended against honor" was the most literal translation - less literally, I could have translated it as "we did not act dishonorably". But I'd never translate it as "we haven't sinned", because the religious implication is utterly missing in the original. Also, I would say that especially in a military context and with this particular character as the one having the inner monologue, the original to me implies he's not denying Katte having been his lover, he's denying they did anything he regards as dishonorable.

I've read that FW's "Did you [verb] Katte or did he [verb] you?" to Fritz is ambiguous as to whether he meant "seduce [sexually]" or "corrupt [morally, into desertion]" in German.

Is the verb "verführen"? In which case, yes, it can mean either. As we're talking linguistics: would FW have necessarily be thinking in German - his version of German has a lot of French-derived words in it and some excentric grammar, so it might be worth considering how the sentence would have been phrased in French.

Re: Sibling Correspondance

[selenak]

So is the UNESCO, as it's declared a World Cultural Heritage. Have a look here! (A vid made apropos the finished restoration in 2018).

Bayreuth went from being a sleepy provincial town to, well, still a sleepy town but with some magnificent architecture and gardening, as well as a first class musical ensemble during Wilhelmine's life time and then, a century later, becoming a world musical centre again because Wagner originally had fallen in love with Wilhelmine's opera house before realising he still needed his own building to stage the Ring in. All of which is due to Wilhelmine, which is why current day Bayreuth loves her. It's still understandable 18th century Bayreuth had problems, though!

(Tellingly, when the town residence burned rumor claimed the Margrave burned it down himself because he and his wife wanted to build yet more new mansions. This was rubbish, not least because the Margrave wasn't suicidal or murder-inclined, and the wretched building had burned with him and Wilhelmine inside it. But it says something about how the population saw them.)

Re: Fritz chronological maps, or a labor of love

[selenak]

Now I finally have the chance to watch this, and wow. You're fantastic! So is the map!

ETA: Also, I'm slain by the fact you managed to come up with all the current Czech and Polish names to all the places.

Re: Crackfic

[mildred_of_midgard]

the original to me implies he's not denying Katte having been his lover, he's denying they did anything he regards as dishonorable.

Makes sense. Thanks so much!

Is the verb "verführen"?

I have no idea, I've only seen it in English translation. I was hoping you were familiar with the quote (because it's common enough that I've run into it in like 3 separate sources) in the original. I'll see if I can track it down.

While we're here getting clarification on the German vs. the subtitles (you are the best!), what about "I breathe in you" from the roleplay? I've been curious about the nuances of that since I saw it.

Re: Fritz chronological maps, or a labor of love

[mildred_of_midgard]

Thank you! I'm not a very visually creative person, so the only "fanart" I'm going to come up with is going to involve writing code to do it for me (some code went into the Sanssouci slideshow as well, lol).

Some of us in this fandom make contributions via knowledge of German and French, some of us manage to make contributions via knowledge of bash and R. ;)

Also, I'm slain by the fact you managed to come up with all the current Czech and Polish names to all the places.

Haha, it was definitely the most time-consuming part, but I had to! It was the only way to get latitudes and longitudes so I could plot the locations on the map. Like I said, a lot of the original place names seem to exist in Frederick the Great-related sources and nothing else, according to Teh Googlez.

Also, just checking (since you replied to the first comment) that you saw the revised version(s), not just the far inferior black-and-white first draft?

Re: Fritz chronological maps, or a labor of love

[selenak]

I first saw the black and white and then the complete coloured map covering the entire time from 1730 to 1786!

Re: Fritz chronological maps, or a labor of love

[mildred_of_midgard]

Excellent!

1740, though--unfortunately--not 1730. I do have the data for 1730-1740 and am willing to generate the map if anyone is interested (it'll only take a few minutes), but it's so incredibly sparse that I wanted to make a better quality 1740-1786 map to stand alone. If anyone wanted to make a real map before 1740, they'd have to read through sources and gather the data themselves; there's just not enough extant correspondence to do it programmatically. Before 1730 is even worse.

Re: Crackfic

[selenak]

what about "I breathe in you" from the roleplay?

In the original he says "Du bist ich. Ich lebe in dir", which I'd translate as "You are me. I live in you", not "I breathe in you" - "leben" = "live", not "breathe" (which would be "atmen"), no need to get more poetical, and since Fritz is rp Katte, not himself, adressing Goltz as Fritz, him saying "I live in you" certainly is more poignant.

(BTW, he's using "Du" not "Sie", but then he's also adressing Goltz as Goltz with "Du" earlier. Otoh Goltz after his initial refusal switching from the formal mode to adress to "Du" signals he's accepted the rp.)

Re: Sibling Correspondance - II

[mildred_of_midgard]

This write-up is amaaaaazing, thank you so much. (Also for the Swedish write-up, and just generally the ongoing free education.)

two of her (milk) teeth have been pulled and includes them in her letter (they still exist)

Wooow. Are they on display somewhere?

Which reminds me, I have read (unreliable source) that Katte's grave was robbed by souvenir-hunters over the years, and people have helped themselves to teeth, the burial shroud, the cracked vertebra (how's that for gruesome?), and I forget what else. I say unreliable, but that's pretty damn typical of human beings, and Fritz memorabilia being in such high demand after 1786, so...I consider it plausible at the very least.

young Friedrich (!) didn't like hunting (!!), played the flute (!!!)

Wilhelmine: I can work with this.

FW made him drink an entire big cup of beer in one go (you know, the thing that had had unfortunate results with another Friedrich before)

Ahahahahaaa. Well, from FW's perspective, it didn't work out too badly! He did get to hear about how he was a bully and a boor first, but then he seemed just a bit disconcerted but generally pleased when Fritz started crying and kissing his hands.

(Go home, Fritz, you're drunk.)

Fritz to convey his displeasure had made AW write to her in his place occasionally

Wow. That was unknown to me. That's...some serious displeasure.

The Italian journey: if Fritz was, in fact, afraid of her staying in Italy in that letter I quoted, he wasn't being paranoid. She was tempted, because she was happy there, the climate while at first not as warm as was typical agreed with her

It's interesting seeing the same events from multiple perspectives. You mentioned a while back, in the first description you made of her trip, that Italy was unseasonably cold that year. When I went to read through the Algarotti/Fritz correspondence, I got to 1753/1754 and saw Algarotti complaining to Fritz, "We're getting about as much sun here as you would get in London," and I thought of Wilhelmine.

Then there was the letter where Algarotti tells Fritz how he met Wilhelmine, and everyone in Venice was really nice to her, and Fritz replies, "So I heard!" Now we get to see Wilhelmine talking about Algarotti, and backing his "I'm super sick!" story. (Like I said, his decreased productivity and travel after 1753 really backs the idea to me that he wasn't just avoiding Fritz.)

Cahn: As you can tell from the letter, she'd met Algarotti before. This was in 1740, just after Fritz became king, when he decided to visit her and then dart over to Strasbourg, incognito, with Algarotti, in hopes of doing a full Paris trip. As you recall, the incognito thing fell apart immediately, and he went home. But Wilhelmine recording liking Algarotti a lot, as pretty much everyone did. He seems to have had incredibly winning ways. (A footnote in the Lady Mary correspondence says that he was described as a total people-pleaser, which I think played a role in his gift for amicable non-breakups.)

As sick and miserable as you are, you still think about my miseries? That is going too far.

Wow. "I'm exempting you from the usual rule of putting me and my wars first!" That's some true sibling love right there.

No pressure, Voltaire.

No pressure! Also wow, in a different way.

Anyway, thanks for this whole thing, it was all gold. You are compensating in a serious way for my inability to read 1) German, 2) physical books. <3

Re: Crackfic

[mildred_of_midgard]

since Fritz is rp Katte, not himself, adressing Goltz as Fritz, him saying "I live in you" certainly is more poignant.

Oh, damn. Yes, that's way more powerful. Wow, these subtitles are just not doing justice. (Although I did like the poesy--the impact is harder with "live," given all the context. I mean, that's just a different way of phrasing the last line of "Pulvis et Umbra.")

he's using "Du" not "Sie"

Oh, interesting, so another fictional example of Fritz/Katte Du-ing each other.

Re: Sibling Correspondance

[mildred_of_midgard]

which is why current day Bayreuth loves her. It's still understandable 18th century Bayreuth had problems, though!

*nod* A lot of history is like this. Algarotti had the reverse problem! Everyone who met him loved him, but he didn't do enough for his birthplace to make future residents happy with him.

The opera house is lovely. Thank you for the video.

But it says something about how the population saw them.

Yeah, yikes. On another sweet sibling note, Fritz at least came through with replacement books, music, clothes, etc. for them.

Wilhelmine: Dear brother, you know how it goes when you're super depressed and you don't even have flute music to take your mind off your miseries? That's my husband right now. Could you maybe send a flute and some Quantz concertos to cheer him up? It would do him a world of good.

Fritz: Yes, yes, absolutely, they're on their way now. Anything for my sister. Please make a list of what else you lost, both of you, so I can make good on your losses. The important thing is that you didn't die. As long as you're alive, we can fix the rest. PLEASE DON'T DIE. NEVER DIE. (5 years before she died, about a year and a half before she and her husband left for Italy hoping to improve her health.)

Merrie Olde England

[mildred_of_midgard]

she has Anne of Bohemia, Richard's first wife, refer to herself as a girl from the back of beyond coming to the wonderful English court when marrying Richard.

Whuuuhh? Wow. That is some wishful thinking right there.

I mean, it's been waaay too long since I even looked at the period in question, and it was never "my period," so I could be misremembering, but didn't Matilda/Maud, a couple centuries earlier, alienate her English subjects during the civil war by considering herself Empress of the Romans first, and Queen of England/Lady of the English second? Granted a lot can change in a couple centuries, but I don't think England becoming *that* prestigious to Continental Europeans was one.

Matilda/Maud, cahn, was victim of another Pragmatic Sanction (although not called that) situation like MT's. Her father had no surviving male heirs and got all the rival claimants to sign an agreement saying they would recognize her claim as his successor. Five minutes after he died, her cousin Stephen was going, "Agreement, what agreement? That's a WOMAN on the throne," and having himself declared King of England. Civil war ensued.

Unfortunately for her, she was not as successful as MT. She never managed to be formally crowned, and though she contended with him for a long time and had a following, Stephen is the one recognized as king during this period, and she does not get listed as queen in most of the regnal histories, or if so is parenthesized and asterisked. Eventually, she gave up and went back to Normandy (all the rulers of England at this point were descended from Norman William the Conqueror and saw themselves as Normans at least as much, if not more than, rulers of England). Her son continued waging war on Stephen, and eventually there was a treaty in 1153 that recognized Stephen as king until his death, and Matilda's son Henry II as his heir.

Oh, the Holy Roman Empress thing comes in because she was married by her father to Henry V of the HRE when she was young. Very young, as I recall. Okay, Wikipedia says 12. Yep, pretty young. He died about ten years later, and she came home, but she never stopped seeing being empress as her primary claim to fame.

Also, her name is Matilda or Maude, depending on whether you go with the Germanic or French version--both are common in histories--and that's useful, because the name of literally every other woman at the time is also Matilda. Her mother was named Matilda, her father's mother (wife of William the Conqueror) was named Matilda, her cousin Stephen's wife was named Matilda, and it gets really really confusing, really really fast.

Oh, and the one anecdote about her that entered into popular legend that I still remember is that she was being held prisoner by Stephen's forces in a castle, and she made herself a rope out of blankets (??) and lowered herself out the window. It was winter, and everything was covered in snow, so she wore a white nightgown for camouflage, and her escape was successful.

As for Stephen...Wikipedia doesn't have this particular anecdote, but I remember him, aside from being a misogynist, being portrayed as a general softy. Whether you as a historian think this makes him weak or not depends on how much ruthlessness you think is acceptable or necessary in a monarch. But the anecdote I'm remembering, if I'm not thinking of someone else, was that he took a kid hostage and told his father not to do such-and-such in support of Matilda, or he'd kill the guy's son. Bluff called.

Hostage's dad: Fine, kill the kid. I can have another one.

Stephen: Dammit. I can't kill kids. Why did you have to go and put me in this position?

Stephen's supporters: You can't make threats and not follow through! That's what hostages are *for*! What the hell kind of king are you?

Stephen: One that has to sleep at night, dammit.

I feel like this gets contrasted with a case that happened when Stephen was younger and someone else (Henry I?) gouged out two boys' eyes when he had them as hostages? But I'm blanking on names and details.

Oh, man. I went and looked this up. I was right, but it even was worse than I remembered, or in some cases had even learned.

Henry I (Matilda's father, Stephen's uncle) was dealing with a rebellion by his illegitimate daughter Juliana and her husband Eustace. They exchanged hostages, Juliana/Eustace's kids in return for some other important kid belonging to someone on Henry's side. As the dispute went on, Eustace blinded the kid he had as hostage. Henry was then like, "Fine. Fuck it, we're blinding your kids. AKA MY GRANDKIDS."

Moral lesson ensues about how Henry is ruthless enough to be a good king while easy-go-lucky Stephen is not, or alternately how you might invite Stephen to dinner but not Henry. Your role model mileage may vary.

Anyway. This part I learned. Then there's the followup, which I am pretty sure (!!) I did not.

So now Juliana is pissed off and decides to take possession of a castle and put up a fight against Dad. During a truce with her father--a truce!--Juliana fires a bolt from a crossbow at him, but misses. Oops! Henry manages to take the castle from his daughter, but she swims across the moat of freezing water and escapes to join her husband Eustace.

Wow.

See, history is just full of things you never learn in school. And European royals are one big dysfunctional family.