cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 5: or: Yuletide requests are out!

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mildred_of_midgard

And as you say, Wilhelmine in 1730 doesn’t have to have the same beliefs (or lack of same) she has in the 1740s and 50s.

Yes, it's quite normal for people raised in a religion to take until their twenties (or later) to fully give it up.

he finds it striking that Wilhelmine despite her powerful resentment against both her parents (which btw is one of the way she differs from Fritz who I don’t think resented his mother) also never quite manages not to long for their approval and affection

Yep, that's extremely striking just from her memoirs. Standard child abuse stuff, comparable to adult Fritz badly wanting FW's approval decades after he died.

which btw is one of the way she differs from Fritz who I don’t think resented his mother

Agreed, I haven't seen any signs of him resenting her. I also haven't seen many signs of her mistreating him, but that could go either way. Either he didn't record the verbal abuse and Wilhelmine did because Wilhelmine resented it and Fritz was just so grateful to have an ally against his main enemy that he didn't feel the need to complain about it, or SD focused all of her verbal abuse on her daughter and Fritz got off light from her.

Wilhelmine presents herself as someone caught in the middle trying to achieve the impossible task of pleasing both her parents; Fritz comes across as someone locked in a non-stop battle of wills with his father; while both of them were trying to be true to themselves and loyal to each other in the face of parental resistance.

Man, it really, really sucked to be either of them.

This to me sounds like she’s a deist

Oh, yeah. That's 18th century Lucretian-informed deism right there. Interesting!

From:

selenak

SD focused all of her verbal abuse on her daughter and Fritz got off light from her

That's my theory, not least because of the difference in gender. Fritz was the longed for surviving son and heir. He also was SD's key to future happiness, freedom and respect once FW was dead. And he moved out of her sphere and into her husband's after early childhood, which meant his visits in her household were treasured occasions where he could relax, enjoy art. He did not live in her proximity on a day to day basis.

Whereas Wilhelmine did. She also started out as a disappointment simply due to being a daughter, not a son, something that wasn't true so much for her younger sisters since at that point sons were already there. And then I think she became to SD a second chance to get the life SD herself wanted to have, second hand: Queen of England, not stuck in tiny Prussia with this awful, weird husband whose mannerisms make him the laughing stock of European princes. If she could accomplish that, then SD's life would not have been wasted. So anything that made it look like Wilhelmine wasn't 100% on board with becoming the second SD, the one who gets to be Queen of a powerful nation and live in style and admiration was a personal attack and betrayal.

(Note that Ulrike, the only one of the daughters who actually did become a Queen - of Sweden, granted, less glamorous than England, to be sure, but still, Queen - was also SD's favourite. Validation at last!)

To me, one of the most telling details remains that it needed Fritz' first governess to point out to SD that Leti was physically abusing Wilhelmine and would cripple her for life is this went on much longer. That Wilhelmine didn't feel she could tell this to her mother is of course not that uncommon in abuse situations, because the child is ashamed and feels it's her/his fault, and that doesn't necessarily signify how good or bad the parent/child situation is. Especially in a social situation where parents aren't the one doing the actual hands-on child raising but leave that to servants. But still. If an employee who is actually in charge of another kid is able to notice, I feel judgmental enough to say SD should have.

From:

cahn

And then I think she became to SD a second chance to get the life SD herself wanted to have, second hand: Queen of England, not stuck in tiny Prussia with this awful, weird husband whose mannerisms make him the laughing stock of European princes.

Huh. This is making a lot of sense to me of a lot of what Wilhelmine says in her memoirs.

So part of me is thinking that presumably Fritz' governess, being both another servant and in charge of a child who plays a lot with Wilhelmine, is in fact somewhat more likely to notice than SD. But on the other hand I can't imagine, say, Maria Theresia not noticing her kid is getting beat up on a regular basis so badly she might get permanently crippled, whether the servants are raising the kid or not.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

And then I think she became to SD a second chance to get the life SD herself wanted to have, second hand

I was actually going to say, it's really telling when Wilhelmine says that the English marriage project would be a perfect fit for her *mother*, but not for her at all. And it is super common for abusive or even emotionally neglectful parents to live vicariously through their children, which it's pretty clear SD is doing here. It's also probably how SD justified her verbal abuse (which she wouldn't have seen as such): she's trying to give her child the best life possible, so why is child so ungrateful??

Along with

cahn, I'm inclined to cut SD a tiny bit of slack, given that

1) Wilhelmine says she was straight out lying to her mother about where all the injuries were coming from.
2) My impression of the social dynamics is that servants have a whole separate grapevine amongst themselves, in which people like SD are not supposed to participate. Even if a governess is a step above, say, a parlormaid, there's still a communication divide. So a fellow governess might pick up on abuse first.

But yeah, it's not great, and SD is far from blameless in this episode.

From:

selenak

So a fellow governess might pick up on abuse first.

That is, of course, true. BTW, one of the reasons why the Fritz Crime Boss AU you linked a while ago doesn't really work for me despite being in many regards well written is that AU!Wilhelmine was not abused in any way (other than having to witness what was done to Fritz) and otherwise has a good life, yet they still have their intense sibling bond. Honestly, I think that they were both abused, though not always in the same ways and by the same people, was a key ingredient to this you can't just remove without significantly altering the relationship itself. Leaving aside the question of how much of Fritz' feelings about AW carried resentment that AW was getting treated comparatively affectionate and lenient by FW:I don't think you can form an "us against the world" bond of that nature if the early life experience is so markedly different instead of "we're both in this hell together, but at least we have each other".

From:

cahn

Heh. Yeah. My personal experience as a child of... difficult... parents (who are great in many ways, I should append) is that there was certainly a lot of "us against the world" bonding that took place with me and my sister (who are otherwise sufficiently different that we might not have had a close relationship otherwise), whereas D and his siblings, whose parents were basically perfect, seem not to have that bond (though they like each other a lot).

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Hmm, I'm not entirely sure. I agree that the fic changes a *lot* of the external context and a lot of the characterization either directly or as a side effect, in combinations that don't always work for me, but two things:

1) I'd have to re-read, but I don't remember the AU bond coming across to me as quite so over-the-top intense in that fic as in real life. They're close, but they don't feel like "possible scandal that never happened because of his orientation/their low sex drives." Furthermore, she seems to need him *much* less in this AU than irl, and much less than he needs her.

2) I'm not entirely convinced a protective older sibling in an abuse situation wouldn't lead to a close (but not quite as borderline-romantically intense) relationship, especially one that's slanted more toward him needing her than vice versa. I would say the younger abused child might latch onto whatever affection he could get. (I do think the "older, protective" part is key--AW is a different kettle of fish.) For a fictional example of this dynamic that really works for me: Boromir and Faramir.

But I will think about this next time I reread the fic. It's an interesting thought.

From:

selenak

Boromir and Faramir work for me really well in this regard, too, and I agree that "older, protective" might make the difference to how Fritz in rl dealt with AW. But I still felt this made the fic's version of Wilhelmine into practically an OC (and her bond with Fritz into a new relationship), because someone without any damage, her own emotional needs and mistakes are not a version of Wilhelmine I still recognise as her, which is my criteria for AUs. I mean, I know she's just a supporting character and mainly there so that AU Fritz has someone in his childhood. And it's not that I wish miseries on any version of Wilhelmine! But I do think her share of trauma made her, well, her, instead of marvelously normal and supportive female character X.

To go back to Boromir and Faramir again, they're a case of protective older sibling who is not resented by abused younger sibling despite being favored by their father, but Boromir, both film and book version, is anything but idealized. It's hard to compare, because as opposed to AU Wilhelmine he's a main character in the first part of the book/first film, and thus gets way more narrative space to be fleshed out. But let's assume a Gondor-centric version of the story that starts with Faramir's dream and stays with him. Boromir would appear a sympathetic character in regards to Faramir, but there would, presumably, still be some indication on how their father's beliefs and attitudes have formed him as well.