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

One woman, two pen pals

[selenak]

So here I was, going through the “Fritz and music” book again to extract dates for Mildred in the earlier reply, when I come across another mention of Maria Antonia of Bavaria (Antonia for short) , married Princess Elector of Saxony, this lady: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchess_Maria_Antonia_of_Bavaria

“Fritz and Music” book says that after Wilhelmine’s death, she became his go-to correspondant for all matters musical. Hang on, thought I, I know of her, but as Maria Theresia’s most frequent correspondant among German royalty and sort of spy! Back I go to my MT biography, and yep, it’s the same lady. Daughter of MT’s rival on the throne, the short termed Wittelsbach Emperor, sister to that same Max whom MT blackmailed into voting for FS as Emperor and abandon the Wittelsbach claim on the throne if he wanted his dad’s duchy back. During the 7-Years-War (when, you know, Fritz had invaded Saxony) she went into exile to Prague but returned when the dust had settled. Her musical credentials were indeed impeccable, see wiki entry, and she not only composed operas but published them under the nome de plume Ermelinda Talea Pastorella Arcadia, ETPA for short. Because Wilhelmine isn’t the only one who can compose fictionalized RPF operas, one of ETPA’s operas, Talestris, pitches Talestris, Queen of the Amazons, versus Orontes, King of the Scythians. (That opera has a happy ending and war is averted by Amazon/Scythian marriage.)

What I’d like to know: how come Fritz, renowned misogynist with a very very few exceptions, made another one of these for MT’s pen pal?

Re: One woman, two pen pals

[mildred_of_midgard]

One of my sources says Antonia played the piano at a royal concert in Potsdam, accompanied by Fritz and Quantz on the flute, the prince of Brunswick on the violin, and the prince of Prussia (future FW 2) the cello. He must have had a high opinion of her talent.

What I’d like to know: how come Fritz, renowned misogynist with a very very few exceptions, made another one of these for MT’s pen pal?

I'm less surprised: I feel like Fritz was pretty willing to make exceptions in general, especially in a musical and poetical context. None of which exceptions, of course, ever changed his opinion of the sex as a whole, or led him to treat women as equals, or, say, want them at Sanssouci. "Some of my best friends" etc., etc.

Incidentally, he also attributed some of the apparent inferiority of women to nurture rather than nature. He proposed giving them (at least the nobility) better education, so they had something to think about besides their appearance and pleasure-chasing, and he had some nice things to say about the potential of individual women to be at least as smart/talented as men, as well as the fact that the whole sex could be doing better if they weren't so neglected.

How can you be so close, and yet so far, Fritz? Oh, well.

As far as her being MT's pen pal, Fritz's correspondence with her seems to begin in 1763, at which point he can presumably afford to be more chill about MT? When he went ballistic on Wilhelmine, he was kind of in the *middle* of his wars. And then they made up, what, 1746? You're the one who knows their correspondence in detail, but I'm thinking it was right around the time he got to keep Silesia for reals and calmed down a bit.