Waaaaait, I didn't realize that W meets MT right after she's been crowned Empress! (Or FS has been crowned emperor, whatever.) Not surprising Fritz is upset, being Fritz.
Technically Wilhelmine met her after FS had been voted in as Emperor (September 13th) and before his coronation (September 20th), MT was en route to same. Which is why SD in her letters is all "don't you dare meeting that woman on her way back to Austria as well!!!"
Hopefully he and Wilhelmine got along (besides the mistresses)?
As noble/royal marriages went, they had a reasonably good one. Their best time was just after that disastrous visit to Berlin where FW gave her husband the Fritz treatment. When they returned to Bayreuth and were reunited with their baby daughter (whom they hadn't brought along, because bringing a baby on the long way from Bayreuth to Berin was basically inviting death to the kid), the future Margrave turned out to be an a loving dad. (Obvious comparisons to FW and SD being obvious.) Writes Wilhelmine to Fritz: He spends the entire day with the child and rises two hours earlier than usual to go to her. He considers her a masterpiece of nature, like the owl in the fable who thinks its young far more beautiful than any others. He basically asked me on his knees not to tell you, for he is ashamed of this, but I ask you to tease him about it, for I consider it adorable. As he has admitted to me, he prefers the child's cries to the most beautiful music.
Basically the one jerk move he made in the marriage was to make his first mistress a woman Wilhelmine had until then considered a close friend, and that's as much on Marwitz' shoulders as on his. (Post-Marwitz, he still cheated occasionally, but with one night stands, not with another maitresse en titre.) He does come across as concerned for her (that trip to France and Italy was for her, and at some risk to him due to the "they're going to convert to Catholicism!" rumors), and certainly put up with his wife's insane family reasonably well (FW excepted), corresponding not just with the purse-string holding oldest brother but the younger ones as well. And he loved music and literature enough so they really had shared interests. Given Wilhelmine had to pick between him and two other candidates post-Katte's death when FW bullied her into it, and the two other candidates later turned out to be lousy husbands to the wives they did get, she certainly made the right choice.
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Re: Sibling Correspondance - I
Date: 2019-11-19 09:13 am (UTC)Technically Wilhelmine met her after FS had been voted in as Emperor (September 13th) and before his coronation (September 20th), MT was en route to same. Which is why SD in her letters is all "don't you dare meeting that woman on her way back to Austria as well!!!"
Hopefully he and Wilhelmine got along (besides the mistresses)?
As noble/royal marriages went, they had a reasonably good one. Their best time was just after that disastrous visit to Berlin where FW gave her husband the Fritz treatment. When they returned to Bayreuth and were reunited with their baby daughter (whom they hadn't brought along, because bringing a baby on the long way from Bayreuth to Berin was basically inviting death to the kid), the future Margrave turned out to be an a loving dad. (Obvious comparisons to FW and SD being obvious.) Writes Wilhelmine to Fritz: He spends the entire day with the child and rises two hours earlier than usual to go to her. He considers her a masterpiece of nature, like the owl in the fable who thinks its young far more beautiful than any others. He basically asked me on his knees not to tell you, for he is ashamed of this, but I ask you to tease him about it, for I consider it adorable. As he has admitted to me, he prefers the child's cries to the most beautiful music.
Basically the one jerk move he made in the marriage was to make his first mistress a woman Wilhelmine had until then considered a close friend, and that's as much on Marwitz' shoulders as on his. (Post-Marwitz, he still cheated occasionally, but with one night stands, not with another maitresse en titre.) He does come across as concerned for her (that trip to France and Italy was for her, and at some risk to him due to the "they're going to convert to Catholicism!" rumors), and certainly put up with his wife's insane family reasonably well (FW excepted), corresponding not just with the purse-string holding oldest brother but the younger ones as well. And he loved music and literature enough so they really had shared interests. Given Wilhelmine had to pick between him and two other candidates post-Katte's death when FW bullied her into it, and the two other candidates later turned out to be lousy husbands to the wives they did get, she certainly made the right choice.