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

mostly Fredersdorf

[cahn]

Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me -- I mean, it's pretty common for abused kids to grow up and be emotionally stunted, right? Especially in the absence of therapy.

Re Fredersdorf: so you think he was holding on to him, hmm, socially/politically and possibly sexually, but not emotionally? Interesting.

It also occurs to me also that there is an aspect of emotional relationship security that he couldn't have by definition with a subordinate who was paid to attend him, as Fredersdorf was. The closest he could get was Wilhelmine, which probably worked as a band-aid, at least, until she died.

Re: mostly Fredersdorf

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me -- I mean, it's pretty common for abused kids to grow up and be emotionally stunted, right? Especially in the absence of therapy.

Oh, yeah, that's totally normal. I mean, it's possible to come out non-functional or barely functional, with a very weak sense of self, which Fritz didn't (hence my objection to "broken"); and it's possible to come out basically intact, with a lot of wounds and scars, and lacking in certain of the more complex skills that you might have developed with a more solid foundation. And interpersonal skills are among the most complex in the animal world. (From an evolutionary standpoint, a lot of our intelligence as primates is thought to be tied inextricably to the size of our social groups; as in, your ability to grasp calculus is a side effect of your ability to sit through a Thanksgiving dinner with in-laws, and to a certain extent, vice versa. I mean this at the species level and not at the individual level, btw.)

Re Fredersdorf: so you think he was holding on to him, hmm, socially/politically and possibly sexually, but not emotionally? Interesting.

Well, there's what I *think*, which is that there are many possibilities and I have no idea. And then there's how my brain is fleshing things out to achieve some sort of consistent characterization in the absence of evidence.

I mean, there are so many possibilities, among them the following.

1) Conventional close mutual romantic/sexual relationship that didn't solve Fritz's emotional problems enough that he could be mature about other people's relationships.
2) Conventional close mutual romantic/sexual relationship that Fritz couldn't fully get security from, because he was emotionally fucked up.
3) Non-romantic/non-sexual close friendship, full of love and affection, which was all Fritz or Fredersdorf wanted from each other. Fritz remained emotionally fucked up.
4) Non-romantic/non-sexual close friendship, full of love and affection, where one or both of them wanted conventional romance and/or sex, but the fucked-up-ness of the whole situation was such that neither of them ever took the step of risking something that was working for something that might not. And that was related to Fritz's resentment of other people's relationships, including Fredersdorf's eventual marriage.

Are all extremely likely. But the last one is the one that I find myself filling in the blanks with. They meet at a time where they can't do conventional romance/sex. There are serious social differences between them, including but not limited to employer/employee. Fritz is emotionally fucked up in many ways. Fredersdorf comes across to me as quiet and reserved. The fact that he is quiet and reserved probably accounts for a lot of the way the relationship was so stable for so long, but the combination of the complex situation, his personality, and Fritz's trauma may mean that they got into a pattern of affectionate friendship and then just never went into romance/marriage when one or both might have wanted to, consciously or sub-consciously.

Added to that is the question mark around Fredersdorf's sexuality, and how his personality led him to express it. He may not have been participating in the homoerotic banter, or at least only going along with it because it was the Done Thing at Fritz's court; he may not have been having affairs with or even showing interest in other guys; he may have been keeping his sex life in a completely separate sphere; his sexuality may not have been any more clear to Fritz than it is to us, or it may have been clear he was outright straight. (Fritz's letter to him suggesting he take a scout or page with him when he got married means no more to me without context than the Marwitz letters--Fritz could be bitter and nasty where other people's relationships are concerned, and he is far from a reliable source.) In short, in addition to probably not being the type of person who would hit on his boss, Fredersdorf may not have been sending "hitting on me would be welcome" vibes toward Fritz. (I might have more data on this if I 1) had the letters, 2) could read them. I reserve the right to change my opinion in the face of more data.)

And so it's possible Fritz wanted a marriage-level commitment that he wasn't getting, even if he had other forms of emotional closeness such as mutual affection and a confidant he trusted. And maybe even if they were having sex; maybe Fredersdorf was giving off "Sure, you can have sex with me and also other people, and I'm also free to look elsewhere" vibes.

Oh, and when I say "vibes," I do mean vibes--you know how Fritz and Wilhelmine don't always communicate when it would really be in their best interests to? Good communication is one of those advanced skills that requires emotional maturity and is very vulnerable to trauma. (The relationship between talking and trauma is also extremely complex, and it gets a lot of coverage in the trauma literature. Tangentially, so is the relationship between trauma and memory: one thing that horrifies me is that if it's true that Katte was executed in sight of Fritz's window per FW's orders--and a lot of accounts say he was deliberately executed around the corner and out of sight--it remains entirely possible that Fritz witnessed the execution and didn't lose consciousness until afterward, and that the event simply didn't get recorded in his memory, such that he thought he fainted right before it happened. I prefer to think that it happened around the corner, and that he fainted before he could even hear anything. It remains possible, of course, that he fainted after he heard it but didn't record the memory of that either.) And in a situation as complex and involving as much emotional vulnerability as this, Fritz wanting marriage-level commitment and reassurance might not translate to him communicating "I want marriage-level commitment and reassurance" in a way that would be both understood as such and likely to elicit the desired response.

It also occurs to me also that there is an aspect of emotional relationship security that he couldn't have by definition with a subordinate who was paid to attend him, as Fredersdorf was.

I would say that that it's obviously not ideal, but it was a lot more common in previous centuries, both because the odds of you falling in love with someone outside your class were greater the closer you were to the top of the pyramid, and because meeting someone you couldn't have a public relationship with and then hiring them so you had an excuse to be together was a fairly common workaround. The resulting power imbalance is obviously going to make things tricky, but I feel like a lot of couples managed to make it work, and if Fritz had been less messed up, he might have been able to get that kind of security from Fredersdorf. (And maybe he did, and their relationship just ran its course like any other relationship would. Twenty years is a long time.)

I do agree the relationship with Wilhelmine was critical for both of them. And probably more than a band-aid; it was probably structurally important in those formative years, when they were both coming out basically intact.

Crackfic

[mildred_of_midgard]

So I guess what I'm saying is, if we marry him off to his social equal* Joseph, maybe other people can visit England with their lovers. :-PPP

Hell, Joseph likes to travel. Maybe Fritz can visit England with his lover. (Doubt he'd want to, but maybe Chill New Fritz is different.)

* Joseph disagrees, but Fritz says, "You and what army?" to the whole Emperor point.

"The one at Leuthen? Or Hohenfriedberg?"

"The one at Hochkirch," Joseph counters.

"Burkersdorf?"

"Hasn't happened yet. The secret summit is 1761. Your irrational fanboy is still twiddling his thumbs."

"I was trying to decide whether to say Bavarian Succession, but...okay. We'll call it a draw."