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

Re: Wilhelmine

[mildred_of_midgard]

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.

Mutual low sex drive: makes perfect sense to me.

Re: Wilhelmine

[selenak]

It did occur to me that all the "so not gay!" protests from earlier historians not withstanding, any prince not at the very least suspected of being, post late teens/early 20s at the latest, uninterested in the female and solely interested in the male sex would be side-eyed for writing lines to his sister like: "I wish with longing (...) for the return of those happy days when your Principe and my Principessa will kiss" and years leter re: his wife apropos their wedding, "She appeared prettier to me today than in the beginning, but that's because she toasted to your health. I said yes to her, not without shedding a few tears. For I have never loved you as much as right now, and I never wished more that you believe me."

Instead, depending on their interpretations, biographers to this day go either "eh, that Rokoko emo rethoric is sure something, but of course it's all fake" or "aw, sibling affection". :)