[Part 1 of this email--it exceeds DW comment character limits]
Omg, you are an amazing person, and I would *love* to try to help you produce something for selenak! Also, I am delighted and impressed that you've gotten so quickly to the point of feeling like you could take on a fic at all, even with a historical consultant. Go you! :D Also, your actual YT fic is going to be great, I totally believe in you! *cheers*
I have to admit, I've been thinking that if I had someone to write the musical parts, my Fredersdorf fic would be a million times better, and I've been wishing you and I could co-author something for her. I have mixed feelings about the prospect of you editing my fic directly--I would love the idea if I were in any state to be more of an active partner, but I'm not, and I'm so unhappy with that fic I want to shred it and start over. On top of all the things we've discussed about it, I'm also getting increasingly uncomfortable with some of the chronological liberties.
But if you wanted to cannibalize that fic and/or use it for a jumping-off point, without actually modifying the file itself, I'd be totally happy with that, and actually delighted if it ended up being able to provide anything that was of use to you. If I ever do manage to go back to writing Fritz/Fredersdorf hurt/comfort, I'm pretty sure my next attempt will be almost unrecognizable in terms of the draft I showed you, given the number of changes I want to make. So whatever you wanted to take from it is not going to conflict with my future work on the subject, and therefore you're welcome to it.
At any rate, whatever you choose to do, if you end up having time, or if you decide to write a fic even after Yuletide, I'm happy to provide as much help as my brain currently allows me to. Anything you come up with will be wonderful simply by dint of having actual music in it!
As a starting point, here are some facts about the chronology of Fritz at Küstrin and about Fredersdorf, that you can use or ignore at will. I will be the last person to say that a fic needs to be perfectly historically accurate--fiction needs come first--but having the background may inspire you or at least help you feel more confident writing a fic on the subject. Which, again, go you!
[ETA: Oh, god, this got long. How did that happen? :P It's going to take you longer to read this than to write your own fic. Anyway, here is a reference work, thoroughly salted with my opinions, which you can consult at will. Ahem.]
Chronology of Fritz at Küstrin August 5 is the failed escape attempt.
Late August or early September (I'd have to check, and I'm tired) is when he arrives at Küstrin.
November 6, 1730 is when Katte is killed.
Late November 1730 (I've seen different dates) is when Fritz is pardoned and released from the fortress. My having Fredersdorf visit him in the fortress in 1731 was the biggest of the liberties, and the one that I'm second-guessing. As fiction, it's more dramatic, but for someone who knows the history, I don't know how much it breaks the suspension of disbelief.
We don't know when or how Fritz and Fredersdorf first met, and we don't know when Fredersdorf started visiting regularly. We don't know to what extent FW was aware of these visits. Sometime in 1731 is everyone's best guess, but early 1731 or late 1731, no one is quite sure.
After November 1730, Fritz is kept in "prison" in the town of Küstrin, under strict supervision with people standing over him every minute of the day enforcing FW's very strict regimen for his rehabilitation. But it's a proper house/apartment which he gets to furnish (within reason/frugality) pretty early on, not a prison per se. (A prison by any other name...)
He's no longer in solitary confinement, but has a servant who sleeps at the foot of his bed (almost certainly not Fredersdorf). He's allowed very limited visitors, who are only allowed to speak in German, on very specific topics like economics (only German economics--no foreign countries), manufacture, etc. NO FRENCH. No literature, no music (at least at first). No women, obviously. (Um, FW, you may be barking up the wrong tree here.)
Huge amounts of religious instruction. They are still trying to beat predestination out of his head. Calvinists across Europe are starting to see the young Crown Prince as a martyr, because he refuses to give up his belief, even in prison and under duress. (LOLOLOL) They start writing him fan mail, and FW gets worried about a Calvinist plot to put Fritz on the throne. This, plus our DW convo on the subject, is the context for Fritz's "The only reason I still believe in predestination is to give my father's minions something to talk about. I'd rather have an argument than a sermon," in the draft of my fic that you read.
Contact with the outside world is limited to two letters every three months, from his immediate family. He was smuggling letters to and from Wilhelmine like crazy, and Fredersdorf is suspected by historians of helping. Before Katte's death, Fritz managed to smuggle out at least one letter in invisible ink (using lemon juice) to Wilhelmine.
Candles are limited, for frugality's sake and because he's not supposed to stay up late reading anyway. One lovely anecdote that I left out of my fic, was that this guy visited him, and even stayed the night. When a soldier who was in charge of Fritz came to extinguish his candle at night (I've seen 7 pm and 9 pm given), as per the king's orders, Fouqué supposedly said, "Very good, you followed orders with respect to the Prince's candle. But the King has nothing to say about my candles," and then lit a couple of his own candles, for Fritz to use. He and Fritz were pretty close, and you'll see his name on my emotional isolation chronology. (Carlyle also mentions reports that the guys who would extinguish Fritz's candles would blow them out, as per orders, and then immediately relight them, because Fritz's entire childhood is full of anecdotes of people following the letter but not the spirit of FW's orders.)
Totally against orders, Fritz is writing reams of illicit sarcastic verse in French, because he's at least as into poetry as he is into music.
My tidbit about Fritz not being allowed to bundle up: I do not have any evidence that this was a condition of the Küstrin rehabilitation regimen, but, it was something FW notoriously did to Fritz as late as 1728, and we know that in August 1731, Fritz's clothes were shabby, so I took a bit of a liberty there that I think is fair for fiction.
He does not appear to have been starved or beaten after being released from the fortress in November 1730. People are apparently sneaking him food, and his jailers are looking the other way.
Even so, the regimen is severe enough that Fritz's governors ask for permission to lighten it before he loses his mind. It gradually gets better.
Around April he gets permission for letters outside the immediate family.
April is also when Fritz proposes the whole marriage to an Austrian Archduchess project that has everyone WTFing. (How's that for your martyr, Calvinists?)
In May, he gets his first letter from FW, and in August, FW visits him. This is the big reconciliation. Fritz throws himself at his father's feet (literally) and starts kissing his feet and crying, renounces predestination, admits that he seduced/corrupted (you've seen the ambiguity in the German word) Katte and not the other way around, and so on. FW is rather more lenient than Fritz expected, once he's had a chance to berate him and give him that speech about how he would have locked SD and Wilhelmine in deep, dark dungeons for life if Fritz had made it to England.
Fritz comes out of this encounter in shock, going, "OMG, my father's not that bad! He used to beat me for trifles, and then he comes to visit me in prison after my escape attempt and I'm expecting the worst, and he's like, 'Don't do it again.' Maybe he loves me after all." (FW's attempt to play both good cop and bad cop finally pays off, after threatening to kill his son, making him watch Katte die, enforcing a rehabilitation regimen on Fritz that probably would have broken him if people hadn't been willing to mitigate it, and then summing it all up with, "Don't do it again." The unexpected relief I think messes with Fritz's mind.)
After August, Fritz gets a lighter regimen and is allowed to go boating or hunting (we all know he hates hunting with a passion, but at least it's not the same old, same old prison walls). Still no females, and his servant has to sleep with him at all times. (I know nothing about this servant except that, with FW's luck, he was probably hand-picked by FW to be extremely gay. :P)
At the end of August, Fritz gets a brief visit to Berlin to see Wilhelmine before she's married off in November. His regiment has been given to younger brother AW (now 9 years old), and his room in the palace has been emptied of all his stuff, his books and papers burned, and redecorated in FW's taste. Then he promptly gets shipped back to Küstrin for more rehabilitation.
August or September is also apparently when Fouqué got to pay that visit and light some candles.
On February 26, 1732, Fritz is finally released from Küstrin, having agreed to marry EC. He's never met her, but hasn't heard much that he likes about her, and he's not happy. Then he gets a regiment at Ruppin, where he gets to try to kidnap tall shepherds for Dad. He gets Fredersdorf released from the army to come be his valet. He's just turned twenty.
He may or may not have met Fredersdorf until December of 1731. I personally put it earlier in the year for fic's sake, because that's when all the juicy stuff is happening. (Although the marriage negotiations with EC are in full force starting in November, so if you want Fritz ranting and threatening to commit suicide rather than marry her when he meets Fredersdorf, now's the time.)
On Fredersdorf Background Fredersdorf is three years older than Fritz, a commoner, and the son of an army musician from a peasant family. He plays the oboe in the regiment at a town not far from Küstrin. Fritz somehow gets permission for him to come visit him and play the flute for him while he's in prison, then gets to keep him as valet. Fredersdorf was apparently extremely good at the flute, good enough to be able to accompany Quantz in later years at Fritz's court.
We know Fritz was super classist in the same way he was super misogynist, and that he made exceptions for non-nobles the same way he made exceptions for women. He was actually weirdly inconsistent, being a freemason and professing belief in equality and brotherhood of men across class lines, but increasingly autocratic as he got older and more embedded in absolute power, and always prone to spouting off classist remarks. There may be even fewer non-classists in the 18th century than non-misogynists--he did not invent classism. But it's worth knowing that he's making an exception for Fredersdorf not only in that Fredersdorf only speaks German, but in general that he's lower class (these facts are related, of course--well-educated members of the upper class spoke French).
It's debated whether Fritz ennobled Fredersdorf. That's how little we know about Fredersdorf. But we do know he gave him that estate at Zernikow that Fontane visited, and that has been described as a huge exception on Fritz's part, even more than giving him a title would be, because he was otherwise absolutely opposed to non-nobles getting their hands on noble property.
Responsibilities Once Fritz becomes king, Fredersdorf is officially promoted to chamberlain, but unofficially his job is best described as "just do everything." He controls the palace, the treasury, the secret service, who gets an audience with Fritz and who doesn't, what official paperwork makes it through to Fritz and what doesn't, everything. Now, the way Fritz micromanages his kingdom is by never meeting with any officials. They write reports, they submit the reports to him, he reads them and notes his decisions in the margin, and sends them back. Almost nobody gets to talk to him. Except Fredersdorf. Fredersdorf gets to filter which reports make it onto his desk. Then he gets to sit down with Fritz in the wee hours of the morning, when everyone else is asleep, and go over the reports with him. That is an immense amount of power to have in, not just an absolute monarchy (France is an absolute monarchy, where, as you know, Louis does very little), but an absolute monarchy micromanaged by one person. That is an immense amount of trust from Fritz. In the hands of an uneducated (or not Classically educated, anyway), German-speaking, commoner.
Digression: The other biggest exception to not getting to meet with Fritz is, of course, Eichel. Eichel we know almost nothing about except that he's an even bigger workaholic than Fritz. Fritz likes to attend concerts, read books, play the flute, have long dinners with friends like Algarotti and Voltaire. Eichel just wakes up earlier than Fritz, does paperwork all day, takes a nap in the evening, resumes doing paperwork until bedtime. He sits in a room in the palace and nobody except Fritz sees him for months or years at a time. Dies unmarried and fantastically rich (we're not sure how, because Fritz sure didn't pay that well).
Fredersdorf, in contrast, has a life outside of work. He's also a workaholic, but like Fritz, he has a greater range of interests. You saw the report from Fontane that selenak posted; I won't repeat it. I'll just elaborate that alchemy ends up being one of his interests, and his correspondence with Fritz reveals that he would try to talk Fritz into get-rich-quick deals that Fritz occasionally went along with and then regretted.
And as I've discussed recently in our chats, secondary sources keep telling me Fredersdorf was found guilty of small-scale embezzlement and dismissed dishonorably in 1757. While on the one hand, Fritz was known for scapegoating the innocent, on the other, if it's true, it doesn't seem inconsistent with Fredersdorf's apparent lifelong obsession with money. Plus Fredersdorf might well have justified it to himself on the grounds of his salary not being equal to the amount of work he was putting in (a totally typical situation with Fritz, who later saw a lot of his best people poached by Catherine the Great). I am still trying to look into this; the primary sources I've found so far say that Fredersdorf stepped down voluntarily, but they wouldn't necessarily have been privy to all the details.
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Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:25 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 1
[Part 1 of this email--it exceeds DW comment character limits]
Omg, you are an amazing person, and I would *love* to try to help you produce something for selenak! Also, I am delighted and impressed that you've gotten so quickly to the point of feeling like you could take on a fic at all, even with a historical consultant. Go you! :D Also, your actual YT fic is going to be great, I totally believe in you! *cheers*
I have to admit, I've been thinking that if I had someone to write the musical parts, my Fredersdorf fic would be a million times better, and I've been wishing you and I could co-author something for her. I have mixed feelings about the prospect of you editing my fic directly--I would love the idea if I were in any state to be more of an active partner, but I'm not, and I'm so unhappy with that fic I want to shred it and start over. On top of all the things we've discussed about it, I'm also getting increasingly uncomfortable with some of the chronological liberties.
But if you wanted to cannibalize that fic and/or use it for a jumping-off point, without actually modifying the file itself, I'd be totally happy with that, and actually delighted if it ended up being able to provide anything that was of use to you. If I ever do manage to go back to writing Fritz/Fredersdorf hurt/comfort, I'm pretty sure my next attempt will be almost unrecognizable in terms of the draft I showed you, given the number of changes I want to make. So whatever you wanted to take from it is not going to conflict with my future work on the subject, and therefore you're welcome to it.
At any rate, whatever you choose to do, if you end up having time, or if you decide to write a fic even after Yuletide, I'm happy to provide as much help as my brain currently allows me to. Anything you come up with will be wonderful simply by dint of having actual music in it!
As a starting point, here are some facts about the chronology of Fritz at Küstrin and about Fredersdorf, that you can use or ignore at will. I will be the last person to say that a fic needs to be perfectly historically accurate--fiction needs come first--but having the background may inspire you or at least help you feel more confident writing a fic on the subject. Which, again, go you!
[ETA: Oh, god, this got long. How did that happen? :P It's going to take you longer to read this than to write your own fic. Anyway, here is a reference work, thoroughly salted with my opinions, which you can consult at will. Ahem.]
Chronology of Fritz at Küstrin
August 5 is the failed escape attempt.
Late August or early September (I'd have to check, and I'm tired) is when he arrives at Küstrin.
November 6, 1730 is when Katte is killed.
Late November 1730 (I've seen different dates) is when Fritz is pardoned and released from the fortress. My having Fredersdorf visit him in the fortress in 1731 was the biggest of the liberties, and the one that I'm second-guessing. As fiction, it's more dramatic, but for someone who knows the history, I don't know how much it breaks the suspension of disbelief.
We don't know when or how Fritz and Fredersdorf first met, and we don't know when Fredersdorf started visiting regularly. We don't know to what extent FW was aware of these visits. Sometime in 1731 is everyone's best guess, but early 1731 or late 1731, no one is quite sure.
After November 1730, Fritz is kept in "prison" in the town of Küstrin, under strict supervision with people standing over him every minute of the day enforcing FW's very strict regimen for his rehabilitation. But it's a proper house/apartment which he gets to furnish (within reason/frugality) pretty early on, not a prison per se. (A prison by any other name...)
He's no longer in solitary confinement, but has a servant who sleeps at the foot of his bed (almost certainly not Fredersdorf). He's allowed very limited visitors, who are only allowed to speak in German, on very specific topics like economics (only German economics--no foreign countries), manufacture, etc. NO FRENCH. No literature, no music (at least at first). No women, obviously. (Um, FW, you may be barking up the wrong tree here.)
Huge amounts of religious instruction. They are still trying to beat predestination out of his head. Calvinists across Europe are starting to see the young Crown Prince as a martyr, because he refuses to give up his belief, even in prison and under duress. (LOLOLOL) They start writing him fan mail, and FW gets worried about a Calvinist plot to put Fritz on the throne. This, plus our DW convo on the subject, is the context for Fritz's "The only reason I still believe in predestination is to give my father's minions something to talk about. I'd rather have an argument than a sermon," in the draft of my fic that you read.
Contact with the outside world is limited to two letters every three months, from his immediate family. He was smuggling letters to and from Wilhelmine like crazy, and Fredersdorf is suspected by historians of helping. Before Katte's death, Fritz managed to smuggle out at least one letter in invisible ink (using lemon juice) to Wilhelmine.
Candles are limited, for frugality's sake and because he's not supposed to stay up late reading anyway. One lovely anecdote that I left out of my fic, was that this guy visited him, and even stayed the night. When a soldier who was in charge of Fritz came to extinguish his candle at night (I've seen 7 pm and 9 pm given), as per the king's orders, Fouqué supposedly said, "Very good, you followed orders with respect to the Prince's candle. But the King has nothing to say about my candles," and then lit a couple of his own candles, for Fritz to use. He and Fritz were pretty close, and you'll see his name on my emotional isolation chronology. (Carlyle also mentions reports that the guys who would extinguish Fritz's candles would blow them out, as per orders, and then immediately relight them, because Fritz's entire childhood is full of anecdotes of people following the letter but not the spirit of FW's orders.)
Totally against orders, Fritz is writing reams of illicit sarcastic verse in French, because he's at least as into poetry as he is into music.
My tidbit about Fritz not being allowed to bundle up: I do not have any evidence that this was a condition of the Küstrin rehabilitation regimen, but, it was something FW notoriously did to Fritz as late as 1728, and we know that in August 1731, Fritz's clothes were shabby, so I took a bit of a liberty there that I think is fair for fiction.
He does not appear to have been starved or beaten after being released from the fortress in November 1730. People are apparently sneaking him food, and his jailers are looking the other way.
Even so, the regimen is severe enough that Fritz's governors ask for permission to lighten it before he loses his mind. It gradually gets better.
Around April he gets permission for letters outside the immediate family.
April is also when Fritz proposes the whole marriage to an Austrian Archduchess project that has everyone WTFing. (How's that for your martyr, Calvinists?)
In May, he gets his first letter from FW, and in August, FW visits him. This is the big reconciliation. Fritz throws himself at his father's feet (literally) and starts kissing his feet and crying, renounces predestination, admits that he seduced/corrupted (you've seen the ambiguity in the German word) Katte and not the other way around, and so on. FW is rather more lenient than Fritz expected, once he's had a chance to berate him and give him that speech about how he would have locked SD and Wilhelmine in deep, dark dungeons for life if Fritz had made it to England.
Fritz comes out of this encounter in shock, going, "OMG, my father's not that bad! He used to beat me for trifles, and then he comes to visit me in prison after my escape attempt and I'm expecting the worst, and he's like, 'Don't do it again.' Maybe he loves me after all." (FW's attempt to play both good cop and bad cop finally pays off, after threatening to kill his son, making him watch Katte die, enforcing a rehabilitation regimen on Fritz that probably would have broken him if people hadn't been willing to mitigate it, and then summing it all up with, "Don't do it again." The unexpected relief I think messes with Fritz's mind.)
After August, Fritz gets a lighter regimen and is allowed to go boating or hunting (we all know he hates hunting with a passion, but at least it's not the same old, same old prison walls). Still no females, and his servant has to sleep with him at all times. (I know nothing about this servant except that, with FW's luck, he was probably hand-picked by FW to be extremely gay. :P)
At the end of August, Fritz gets a brief visit to Berlin to see Wilhelmine before she's married off in November. His regiment has been given to younger brother AW (now 9 years old), and his room in the palace has been emptied of all his stuff, his books and papers burned, and redecorated in FW's taste. Then he promptly gets shipped back to Küstrin for more rehabilitation.
August or September is also apparently when Fouqué got to pay that visit and light some candles.
On February 26, 1732, Fritz is finally released from Küstrin, having agreed to marry EC. He's never met her, but hasn't heard much that he likes about her, and he's not happy. Then he gets a regiment at Ruppin, where he gets to try to kidnap tall shepherds for Dad. He gets Fredersdorf released from the army to come be his valet. He's just turned twenty.
He may or may not have met Fredersdorf until December of 1731. I personally put it earlier in the year for fic's sake, because that's when all the juicy stuff is happening. (Although the marriage negotiations with EC are in full force starting in November, so if you want Fritz ranting and threatening to commit suicide rather than marry her when he meets Fredersdorf, now's the time.)
On Fredersdorf
Background
Fredersdorf is three years older than Fritz, a commoner, and the son of an army musician from a peasant family. He plays the oboe in the regiment at a town not far from Küstrin. Fritz somehow gets permission for him to come visit him and play the flute for him while he's in prison, then gets to keep him as valet. Fredersdorf was apparently extremely good at the flute, good enough to be able to accompany Quantz in later years at Fritz's court.
We know Fritz was super classist in the same way he was super misogynist, and that he made exceptions for non-nobles the same way he made exceptions for women. He was actually weirdly inconsistent, being a freemason and professing belief in equality and brotherhood of men across class lines, but increasingly autocratic as he got older and more embedded in absolute power, and always prone to spouting off classist remarks. There may be even fewer non-classists in the 18th century than non-misogynists--he did not invent classism. But it's worth knowing that he's making an exception for Fredersdorf not only in that Fredersdorf only speaks German, but in general that he's lower class (these facts are related, of course--well-educated members of the upper class spoke French).
It's debated whether Fritz ennobled Fredersdorf. That's how little we know about Fredersdorf. But we do know he gave him that estate at Zernikow that Fontane visited, and that has been described as a huge exception on Fritz's part, even more than giving him a title would be, because he was otherwise absolutely opposed to non-nobles getting their hands on noble property.
Responsibilities
Once Fritz becomes king, Fredersdorf is officially promoted to chamberlain, but unofficially his job is best described as "just do everything." He controls the palace, the treasury, the secret service, who gets an audience with Fritz and who doesn't, what official paperwork makes it through to Fritz and what doesn't, everything. Now, the way Fritz micromanages his kingdom is by never meeting with any officials. They write reports, they submit the reports to him, he reads them and notes his decisions in the margin, and sends them back. Almost nobody gets to talk to him. Except Fredersdorf. Fredersdorf gets to filter which reports make it onto his desk. Then he gets to sit down with Fritz in the wee hours of the morning, when everyone else is asleep, and go over the reports with him. That is an immense amount of power to have in, not just an absolute monarchy (France is an absolute monarchy, where, as you know, Louis does very little), but an absolute monarchy micromanaged by one person. That is an immense amount of trust from Fritz. In the hands of an uneducated (or not Classically educated, anyway), German-speaking, commoner.
Digression: The other biggest exception to not getting to meet with Fritz is, of course, Eichel. Eichel we know almost nothing about except that he's an even bigger workaholic than Fritz. Fritz likes to attend concerts, read books, play the flute, have long dinners with friends like Algarotti and Voltaire. Eichel just wakes up earlier than Fritz, does paperwork all day, takes a nap in the evening, resumes doing paperwork until bedtime. He sits in a room in the palace and nobody except Fritz sees him for months or years at a time. Dies unmarried and fantastically rich (we're not sure how, because Fritz sure didn't pay that well).
Fredersdorf, in contrast, has a life outside of work. He's also a workaholic, but like Fritz, he has a greater range of interests. You saw the report from Fontane that selenak posted; I won't repeat it. I'll just elaborate that alchemy ends up being one of his interests, and his correspondence with Fritz reveals that he would try to talk Fritz into get-rich-quick deals that Fritz occasionally went along with and then regretted.
And as I've discussed recently in our chats, secondary sources keep telling me Fredersdorf was found guilty of small-scale embezzlement and dismissed dishonorably in 1757. While on the one hand, Fritz was known for scapegoating the innocent, on the other, if it's true, it doesn't seem inconsistent with Fredersdorf's apparent lifelong obsession with money. Plus Fredersdorf might well have justified it to himself on the grounds of his salary not being equal to the amount of work he was putting in (a totally typical situation with Fritz, who later saw a lot of his best people poached by Catherine the Great). I am still trying to look into this; the primary sources I've found so far say that Fredersdorf stepped down voluntarily, but they wouldn't necessarily have been privy to all the details.