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cahnFrederician fandom is the best! 3 stories in main archive and 2 stories in Madness, eeeeeeee and I have only managed to read my own gifts so far (well, I guess Madness isn't open yet either, but even if it had been I wouldn't have managed to have read them) but they are so goooooood
Also, I would like to apologize on behalf of the fandom that none of us apparently managed any Fritz/Voltaire. Some of us, uh, didn't know enough about Voltaire, and we are Taking Steps to attempt to rectify this in the future if anyone requests it, say, next year. Just saying.
I'm making this post because the last one has an insane number of comments, but I still owe SO many comments on the last post and I kiiiinda would like to read and comment on Yuletide stories for the next week as time permits so I almost hope this post doesn't get much action and then we resume in the new year? (Especially since there is a limited amount of discussion we can do on the fics right now!) :D I was thinking of making another post anyway for reveals.
(*) My husband D came up with this :P :)
Also, I would like to apologize on behalf of the fandom that none of us apparently managed any Fritz/Voltaire. Some of us, uh, didn't know enough about Voltaire, and we are Taking Steps to attempt to rectify this in the future if anyone requests it, say, next year. Just saying.
I'm making this post because the last one has an insane number of comments, but I still owe SO many comments on the last post and I kiiiinda would like to read and comment on Yuletide stories for the next week as time permits so I almost hope this post doesn't get much action and then we resume in the new year? (Especially since there is a limited amount of discussion we can do on the fics right now!) :D I was thinking of making another post anyway for reveals.
(*) My husband D came up with this :P :)
Re: Voltaire, Fritz and Deaths
Date: 2019-12-29 03:44 pm (UTC)Fritz: Freaking Émilie!
AHAHAHAHA omg THESE PEOPLE. Thank you for bringing the gold :D
*nods* Yes, I would translate "Voltaire déclame trop dans son affliction, ce qui me fait juger qu'il se consolera vite" as "Voltaire moans [lit: declaims] too much in his affliction -- this makes me think that he'll get over it quickly," that is, "The only way to grieve is LIKE ME, in a way where I never actually get over it but also never talk to anyone about it." (I'm thinking of Katte here -- but did he talk to other people about being sad re: e.g. Wilhelmine?) Also possibly implying (if I'm understanding the implications of "declaims") that Voltaire is overdramatic, which I'm also thinking he... might not be wrong about :P
This is a crackship, all right :D
Re: Voltaire, Fritz and Deaths
Date: 2019-12-29 04:05 pm (UTC)Well, there was that letter to Heinrich about how brother AW's death was making Fritz feel and would Heinrich please consider that, and the letter to Ulrike about how his grief for Henricus Minor who had all the virtues of AW minus the faults was breaking his heart, and I'm sure when he ordered Amalie to him post Hochkirch & Wilhelmine's death (and just a few months after Amalie witnessed AW's death, all three shattering days of it, while trying to prevent it), he told her all about his grief for both of their siblings...
More seriously and less dysfunctionally, those two letters to Voltaire do count as talking about his grief for Wilhelmine, and I think he talked about her to Catt a bit as well, Mildred?
Re: Voltaire, Fritz and Deaths
Date: 2019-12-30 01:31 am (UTC)Katte, worst acute trauma of Fritz's life, was rather exceptional in not getting talked about, but let's remember, his death was exceptional in other ways as well. Fritz was in solitary or near solitary confinement afterward, without a lot of people to talk *to*, and also we don't have a lot of his correspondence during the Küstrin period because he and Wilhelmine had to destroy their smuggled letters. So it's possible he got used to locking Katte's death in because he had to if he ever wanted to get free (biographers have gotten on Fritz's case for getting over it so quickly, and others have pointed out that FW needed very specific reports from Küstrin about how the rehabilitation program was working out great), and it's also possible Fritz talked more about it than we realize.
It was also not something Fritz wanted talked about afterward because it was inextricably part of the most *humiliating* episode of his life: "Hey, Your Majesty, remember when you tried to run away and you were court-martialed and imprisoned?" Pretending it never happened was a reasonable default MO. And we do know, at least if Catt isn't making it up, that he talked about it with Catt, and he may have talked about it with others, even if it's not in his surviving correspondence.
He did refrain from mentioning Biche immediately after she disappeared, presumed dead, after Soor, but when she really died, and when Alcmene died, believe me, everyone got to hear about it.
Everyone else: I could enumerate examples to add to Selena's: Rothenburg, Jordan, etc. When Fritz grieves, the world has to grieve with him. When anyone else grieves, they need to stop and think about how their grief will affect Fritz. When anyone else is sick, they need to get better, because they need to think about how them being sick or dying will affect Fritz. When anyone else isn't sick, they need to stay not sick, because it will upset Fritz if he has to worry about them.
This is why it was so exceptional when Wilhelmine was dying and Fritz wrote to her, "You're worrying about MY problems? This is too much!"
I think he talked about her to Catt a bit as well
Quite a bit. A lot. For pages at a time. More than once. With references to suicide, and I take back what I said in my 7 Years' War write-up: the non-Stoic kind of suicide. The depressed kind of suicide.