There’s at least one Deconstructing Fritz biographer I’ve read who is of the “he didn’t love any of his siblings, including Wilhelmine, he was just being rethorical and obeying the emo letter writing mode of the era” conviction. Which, okay. If you think so, biographer.
Unsurprisingly, I agree with you. And yes, overwrought style and all, and even I sometimes follow rhetorical conventions (e.g., I will write "love" or "miss you" in places in emails when I feel like a normal human would, even though I'm kind of emotionally detached from other human beings), but while I think Fritz's willingness to express his emotions and the language in which he expresses them is a function of his time and shouldn't be interpreted in a modern context, his reaction to people's deaths alone gives the lie to the idea that all his declarations of love were just a stylistic convention. Stylistic convention is addressing fellow monarchs as "my brother" and then betraying them at every possible opportunity.
Re: Wilhelmine
Unsurprisingly, I agree with you. And yes, overwrought style and all, and even I sometimes follow rhetorical conventions (e.g., I will write "love" or "miss you" in places in emails when I feel like a normal human would, even though I'm kind of emotionally detached from other human beings), but while I think Fritz's willingness to express his emotions and the language in which he expresses them is a function of his time and shouldn't be interpreted in a modern context, his reaction to people's deaths alone gives the lie to the idea that all his declarations of love were just a stylistic convention. Stylistic convention is addressing fellow monarchs as "my brother" and then betraying them at every possible opportunity.
Mutual low sex drive: makes perfect sense to me.