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: What the Prussian Ambassador Wrote

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, hey, I found the full Lafayette quote! "To Potsdam I went to make my bow to the king, and notwithstanding what I had heard of him, could not help being struck with the dress and appearance of an old, broken, dirty corporal, covered all over with Spanish snuff, with his head almost leaning on one shoulder, and fingers almost distorted by the gout; but what surprises me much more is the fire, and sometimes the softness, of the most beautiful eyes I ever saw, which give as charming an expression to his physiognomy, as he can take a rough and threatening one at the head of his troops."

This is 1785, just a year before Fritz died--possibly from all that snuff-taking. I would love to see a portrait of Old Fritz that depicts the state of his clothes, but I guess that's too much realism even for him. :P I just keep running across it in like every description of a foreign visitor. Nobody can pass by him in their memoirs without mentioning that he's covered in snuff. (I guess it's memorable when you start sneezing as you approach him, which at least one visitor accused him of.)

Re: What the Prussian Ambassador Wrote

[cahn]

ahahahaaha wow. That's a pretty great description.

Re: What the Prussian Ambassador Wrote

[mildred_of_midgard]

It is! And here's the rest, not about his looks but his personality: "For eight days, I made dinners of three hours with him [in a small group] which gave me the opportunity to hear him throughout, and to admire the vivacity of his wit, the endearing charms of his address and politeness, so far that I did conceive people could forget what a tyrannic, hard-hearted, and selfish man he is."

Because I have the epic rap battle permanently stuck in my head, I am reminded by this, and also the "as charming an expression...as he can take a rough and threatening one at the head of his troops" in the above quote, of "I've got creative talents and battle malice; hard as steel on the field, genteel in the palace."

This is why people entitle biographies of him with words like "enigma" and "contradictions."

I am also reminded of his ability to charm young Catherine the Great at dinner. He could switch it on when he wanted to, no question.

Re: What the Prussian Ambassador Wrote

[selenak]

That is a great description!

Re: the eyes, remember when I mentioned that Amalie was supposedly the sibling with the closest physical resemblance to Fritz? Goethe's late age pen pal Zelter, a musician, once got her to let him go through her cherished collection of rare original Bach manuscripts (as far as we know, she did not have an affair with Friedemann, but she did manage to gather the most impressive collection of hand-written Bach scores - both JB himself and his sons; Carl Emmanual also called her his patroness and wrote a dedication to her), and here's how Zelter describes it - Amalie was an old lady at that point:

"Princess Amalie once let me see her musical collection, but only the titles, through the glass of the cupboards. One of the works, she took out, but kept it in her hands, and only let me look. But then I grabbed it in order to further browse through it, and shocked, her eyes grew large as wheels. They were the eyes of her brother."

(„Prinzeß Amalie ließ mich einmal ihre Musikalien sehen, aber nur die Titel, durch das Glas der Schränke. Ein Werk nahm sie heraus, behielt es aber in Händen und ließ mich nur hineingucken. Da griff ich aber zu, um darin blättern zu können, und sie, erschrocken, machte Augen wie Wagenräder. Es waren die Augen ihres Bruders.“)

Re: What the Prussian Ambassador Wrote

[mildred_of_midgard]

That must have been a memorable moment!

Re: What the Prussian Ambassador Wrote

[cahn]

Wow, that's a really neat story.