(BTW, do we know when Fritz first started to use that phrase? I.e. would Ulrike have caught the implication at once?)
Well, I don't know how widespread his use of it was, and whether it would automatically click in Ulrika's mind like it does in ours, but the first reference I find to it is in his memoirs of the house of Brandenburg. Those were published 1747-1748, so if that letter is from 1755 or 1756, Fritz had definitely come up with the phrase and published it by then.
By the way, the context for this is "Grandpa F1 was *not* the first servant of the state."
Actual quote: "His court was one of the most fabulous in Europe; his embassies were as magnificent as those of the Portuguese; he trampled the poor, to fatten the rich; his favorites received large pensions, while his people were in misery; his buildings were sumptuous, his parties magnificent; his stables and his offices had more of Asian pomp than European dignity about them."
Two pages later begins the chapter about FW. I can see where this is going.
AW seeing both Fritz and FW as role models in terms of kingship: the inevitable result of a childhood as FW's favorite son and then an adolescence thinking Fritz was the coolest?
Maybe not strictly inevitable, but extremely natural, I would agree.
...or maybe, just maybe, both AW in his seeing the point of limiting royal power and Heinrich seeing the point of the French Revolution reflect a personal awareness of what unlimited royal power can do, historian.
Re: Heinrich the Younger, AW's son
Well, I don't know how widespread his use of it was, and whether it would automatically click in Ulrika's mind like it does in ours, but the first reference I find to it is in his memoirs of the house of Brandenburg. Those were published 1747-1748, so if that letter is from 1755 or 1756, Fritz had definitely come up with the phrase and published it by then.
By the way, the context for this is "Grandpa F1 was *not* the first servant of the state."
Actual quote: "His court was one of the most fabulous in Europe; his embassies were as magnificent as those of the Portuguese; he trampled the poor, to fatten the rich; his favorites received large pensions, while his people were in misery; his buildings were sumptuous, his parties magnificent; his stables and his offices had more of Asian pomp than European dignity about them."
Two pages later begins the chapter about FW. I can see where this is going.
AW seeing both Fritz and FW as role models in terms of kingship: the inevitable result of a childhood as FW's favorite son and then an adolescence thinking Fritz was the coolest?
Maybe not strictly inevitable, but extremely natural, I would agree.
...or maybe, just maybe, both AW in his seeing the point of limiting royal power and Heinrich seeing the point of the French Revolution reflect a personal awareness of what unlimited royal power can do, historian.
Yeeeeaaaah. Omg, those Prussian historians.