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

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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

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From:

selenak

and if Wilhelmine and Fritz had been there I feel like they might have pointed out that they could both be the worst to different people?? I feel like W and F kind of understood that??

Hm, yes and no. I think that depends on when in their lives they were thinking about their parents? As long as both are still alive, it's worth noting Fritz always in his letters gives a kind of weather report to Bayreuth, i.e. "the Queen has gone somewhat cold on you" or "The Queen loves you", ditto for FW, and there is the one remark I quoted earlier to Mildred re: "it's impossible to make one happy without aggrieving the other" from 1733 or 1734. But there is absolutely nothing from him in any book I've read to equal Wilhelmine's most bitter statement - not given to Fritz - about her mother, that SD loved none of her children and was only using them as means to an end. Not that this was always Wilhelmine's consistent opinion, either; the lengthier characterisation she gives of SD in the memoirs does describe her with positive qualities as well bad ones.

They're more consistent in their FW opinion, both in the sense of regarding him as a menace to their lives and in being simultanously in awe of him and on some level never stopping to want him to be proud of them. But at least for Fritz, I would say post FW's death he has a "no one gets to diss my father but me" attitude. And Wilhelmine might kill off her father's avatar in Argenore after making that character sing about how he's destroyed his son and daughter, she might secretely write her memoirs painting her father as an abusive bastard - but she also was capable of writing "I am my father's daughter, I can face anything" early in the 7 Years War, i.e. retrospectively classifying those years of abuse as something she's currently drawing strength from in her miserable state.

So how would they have reacted had they been present in Wusterhausen? I suspect Wilhelmine would have tried to shut down the discussion early on, knowing nothing good could come of it, and she wouldn't have given her own opinion, but if Fritz afterwards, outside of everyone's earshot, had said something along the lines of "can you believe Amalie maligning Mom like that?", she might have replied "Well, Mom was a good mother...to you."

(Further tidbit from the Heinrich biography: SD visits Rheinsberg for the first time about a year or two after Heinrich has got it from Fritz as a main residence. Heinrich throws her a party much as AW has done in Oranienburg. SD: "How beautiful everything is here! How wonderfully well, with so much taste your brother has made this place his own. He truly is a marvel.")

From:

mildred_of_midgard

But at least for Fritz, I would say post FW's death he has a "no one gets to diss my father but me" attitude.

This. This is exactly Fritz post-FW's death. And Fritz goes overboard trying to be fair to FW, praising him to the skies as king and downplaying the abuse (while still acknowledging it).

I suspect Wilhelmine would have tried to shut down the discussion early on, knowing nothing good could come of it, and she wouldn't have given her own opinion, but if Fritz afterwards, outside of everyone's earshot, had said something along the lines of "can you believe Amalie maligning Mom like that?", she might have replied "Well, Mom was a good mother...to you."

That seems plausible to me.

From:

cahn

but she also was capable of writing "I am my father's daughter, I can face anything" early in the 7 Years War, i.e. retrospectively classifying those years of abuse as something she's currently drawing strength from in her miserable state.

Huh. I don't have context (are these in the memoirs? I stopped reading before that point) but is it possible that she's talking about FW's character (I mean, he seems to have been at least as stubborn as Fritz!) rather than the abuse in particular?

...but yeah, that all makes sense. (And Wilhelmine does seem like the most self-aware and peacemaking of them, in general.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

They can't have been from the memoirs, because she wrote the memoirs ten to fifteen years before the Seven Years' War. I suspect it's a letter.

is it possible that she's talking about FW's character (I mean, he seems to have been at least as stubborn as Fritz!) rather than the abuse in particular

I absolutely parsed this as FW's rather impressive and extremely Fritz-like endurance in the face of crippling pain/illness and other hardships, though I suppose it's also possible she saw her abusive childhood as the fire that tempered the steel? But yes, context might make it clear one way or the other.

From:

selenak

Yes, it's from a late letter, but alas I'm currently separated from my physical books due to being not at home, so I can't provide you with the exact quote.