[Part 2 of this email--it exceeds DW comment character limits]
You know something? As I write all this, it occurs to me that I went on that spiel to you about how Fritz trusting Fredersdorf and getting close to him was not as exceptional as it's sometimes made out to be. He had that long list of people he loved and was quite clingy with, and whom he trusted, even if he was prone to quarreling and becoming estranged from them. And I think that's a fundamentally correct assessment. But in addition to the class and language differences that make Fredersdorf an exception...Fritz trusted him *politically*. It seems to me that that's the real exception here. The very first thing Fritz did on accession was pay his mother lots of honors, give her a bigger budget and more importance than the queen (which was unusual), tell her that she should never address him as "Your Majesty," because being her son was much more important to him, and the words "my son" were music to his ears...and make sure she was far, far away from the center of power, so that she could have absolutely no political influence at all. He dedicated his entire life to making sure no one could influence him politically, and kept his personal life and political life wholly separate. Only Fredersdorf that I can think of straddles the two spheres so thoroughly. And that is truly astounding.
I'm inclined to think that Fredersdorf being lower class actually had something to do with it. I think it made him much less of a potential threat than someone like AW, who could easily get a party behind him if given the chance. (I'm convinced Fritz's refusal to ever train an heir or let his heir even know what was going on was paranoia about putting anyone in a position to make a power grab.) Fredersdorf was wholly dependent on Fritz for whatever power he had. But while that accounts for Fritz's lack of paranoia, it doesn't account for the positive trust. Something made Fredersdorf special in that regard. And Fredersdorf being so special is why we all want fic. <3
Voltaire If you want a snarky quote that's almost certainly from from Voltaire, when he visited Fritz's court, he wrote:
There is a chancellor, who never speaks, a master of the hunt who wouldn’t dare harm a quail, a grand master who does nothing, a steward who would he hard pressed to tell you whether there is any wine in the cellars, a grand equerry who hasn’t the power to have a horse saddled, a chamberlain, who has never handed him a shirt, a grand master of the wardrobe, who doesn’t know the identity of the court tailor; the functions of all these high-faluting offices are exercised by one man, who is called Fredersdorf.
He was mocking the fact that Fritz had the least elaborate court in Europe (and Voltaire was coming from Versailles), but also calling attention to the fact that Fredersdorf had all the jobs.
Personality There's too little data on Fredersdorf to get a real direct read on his personality--outside reports are mostly people, like Voltaire, jealous of his influence with Fritz, and he doesn't seem to have let the usual suspects get to know him very well. We know he was musical, hyper-competent, a workaholic, and evidently fairly reserved. He didn't have a fancy education--never even spoke French--but he must have immediately hit it off somehow with Fritz, both because Fritz was largely a man of first impressions, and because they didn't have a lot of time to gradually get to know each other. Evidently, they met, and next thing you know, Fritz is requesting his repeated presence. I'm guessing music must have had a lot to do with that--I'm not actually clear on the timeline of when Fritz started getting music back in his life, either with FW's permission or without. If he in fact met Fredersdorf before he was even given his flute back, it might have been a case of, "OMG super good flautist GIMME NOW," and then they got to know each other during those meetings.
When I try to construct a picture of Fredersdorf, I end up working backward from what I know of Fritz and what he valued in people. That leads me to guess that Fredersdorf has to have been intelligent in a way that shows despite his lack of education, and probably not tongue-tied in the presence of royalty, because Fritz made snap judgments on whether you were quick-witted enough to be worth talking to or not. But he also has to have been..."something" enough to live practically in Fritz's pocket for twenty years and not have any conflicts significant enough to register in the pages of history, and to have Fritz still asking him to come to the window so he can see him ride by, after those twenty years. What that "something" might be is open for debate. Canonically, I suspect knowing when to keep his mouth shut had a lot to do with that. My take on him is "quiet and thoughtful." Personally, I like to think of him as a keen observer, with some emotional intelligence, who never confronted Fritz outright, but would figure out how to tell him what he didn't want to hear in such a way that he was willing to hear it, at least from someone he trusted.
In my fic draft, you mentioned you read my take on him as "sweet." What I was really going for there, and as I mentioned I was struggling to depict anything the way I wanted it, was cautious and reserved, while also feeling his pity for Fritz starting to turn into real affection. Cautious and reserved because the class differences would make you default to being formal under normal circumstances, and then you add Fritz being in disgrace to that, and the situation becomes super complicated. And I think Fredersdorf must have managed to get in Fritz's good graces by navigating a complex situation without putting a foot wrong until the trust was already there. As noted, I think some of that had to do with Fritz being desperate and lonely, and willing to assume the best of intentions, because otherwise he has *no one*.
Sexuality? Got me. Canonically, he was tall and good-looking, so Fritz was suspected of being attracted to him even by contemporaries (Prussian Pompadour), but who Fredersdorf himself was attracted to is an open question. Getting married in 1753 could mean he was straight, bi, or gay in a heteronormative society where marriage brought a lot of benefits. It tells us nothing except that by that point in his life, he found being married preferable to living in Fritz's pocket year round. That may have had to do with him being so sick and Fritz constantly being on the move. Or he might have been wanting a break. I can't tell. As noted, the fact that Fritz was so resentful of other people's successful romantic and sexual relationships doesn't necessarily imply that he didn't have one himself, but it does make me wonder. But pretty much anything you write here will be plausible, anything from willing to tolerate a homosexual prince for the prospects of advancement, up to being head over heels in love with said prince and terrified of being the next Katte.
Religion? You may notice in my fic, set in 1731, I made him a Christian who's chill enough to be open-minded about Fritz's differences of opinions. This is an educated guess based on his class background. What his take on religion might have been during the later years at Fritz's court, I don't know. He might have been prime for conversion to freethinking once he was in a primarily freethinking circle. He might have kept his religious beliefs (Fritz would personally mock organized religion, but he didn't cut you out of the inner circle just on the basis of you being devout). Or he just might not have cared. The one thing I think we can deduce is that he was no FW, but you've got a lot of room to work with if you want to address that aspect at all, or just have it in the back of your mind as you write. (You may notice I deliberately had him think in terms of Biblical parallels rather than Classical ones.)
And there you have my take on Fredersdorf. Do with it what you will. I hope it was helpful at all. :)
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Re: The emails
Date: 2020-01-01 04:26 pm (UTC)Sent: Dec 1
[Part 2 of this email--it exceeds DW comment character limits]
You know something? As I write all this, it occurs to me that I went on that spiel to you about how Fritz trusting Fredersdorf and getting close to him was not as exceptional as it's sometimes made out to be. He had that long list of people he loved and was quite clingy with, and whom he trusted, even if he was prone to quarreling and becoming estranged from them. And I think that's a fundamentally correct assessment. But in addition to the class and language differences that make Fredersdorf an exception...Fritz trusted him *politically*. It seems to me that that's the real exception here. The very first thing Fritz did on accession was pay his mother lots of honors, give her a bigger budget and more importance than the queen (which was unusual), tell her that she should never address him as "Your Majesty," because being her son was much more important to him, and the words "my son" were music to his ears...and make sure she was far, far away from the center of power, so that she could have absolutely no political influence at all. He dedicated his entire life to making sure no one could influence him politically, and kept his personal life and political life wholly separate. Only Fredersdorf that I can think of straddles the two spheres so thoroughly. And that is truly astounding.
I'm inclined to think that Fredersdorf being lower class actually had something to do with it. I think it made him much less of a potential threat than someone like AW, who could easily get a party behind him if given the chance. (I'm convinced Fritz's refusal to ever train an heir or let his heir even know what was going on was paranoia about putting anyone in a position to make a power grab.) Fredersdorf was wholly dependent on Fritz for whatever power he had. But while that accounts for Fritz's lack of paranoia, it doesn't account for the positive trust. Something made Fredersdorf special in that regard. And Fredersdorf being so special is why we all want fic. <3
Voltaire
If you want a snarky quote that's almost certainly from from Voltaire, when he visited Fritz's court, he wrote:
There is a chancellor, who never speaks, a master of the hunt who wouldn’t dare harm a quail, a grand master who does nothing, a steward who would he hard pressed to tell you whether there is any wine in the cellars, a grand equerry who hasn’t the power to have a horse saddled, a chamberlain, who has never handed him a shirt, a grand master of the wardrobe, who doesn’t know the identity of the court tailor; the functions of all these high-faluting offices are exercised by one man, who is called Fredersdorf.
He was mocking the fact that Fritz had the least elaborate court in Europe (and Voltaire was coming from Versailles), but also calling attention to the fact that Fredersdorf had all the jobs.
Personality
There's too little data on Fredersdorf to get a real direct read on his personality--outside reports are mostly people, like Voltaire, jealous of his influence with Fritz, and he doesn't seem to have let the usual suspects get to know him very well. We know he was musical, hyper-competent, a workaholic, and evidently fairly reserved. He didn't have a fancy education--never even spoke French--but he must have immediately hit it off somehow with Fritz, both because Fritz was largely a man of first impressions, and because they didn't have a lot of time to gradually get to know each other. Evidently, they met, and next thing you know, Fritz is requesting his repeated presence. I'm guessing music must have had a lot to do with that--I'm not actually clear on the timeline of when Fritz started getting music back in his life, either with FW's permission or without. If he in fact met Fredersdorf before he was even given his flute back, it might have been a case of, "OMG super good flautist GIMME NOW," and then they got to know each other during those meetings.
When I try to construct a picture of Fredersdorf, I end up working backward from what I know of Fritz and what he valued in people. That leads me to guess that Fredersdorf has to have been intelligent in a way that shows despite his lack of education, and probably not tongue-tied in the presence of royalty, because Fritz made snap judgments on whether you were quick-witted enough to be worth talking to or not. But he also has to have been..."something" enough to live practically in Fritz's pocket for twenty years and not have any conflicts significant enough to register in the pages of history, and to have Fritz still asking him to come to the window so he can see him ride by, after those twenty years. What that "something" might be is open for debate. Canonically, I suspect knowing when to keep his mouth shut had a lot to do with that. My take on him is "quiet and thoughtful." Personally, I like to think of him as a keen observer, with some emotional intelligence, who never confronted Fritz outright, but would figure out how to tell him what he didn't want to hear in such a way that he was willing to hear it, at least from someone he trusted.
In my fic draft, you mentioned you read my take on him as "sweet." What I was really going for there, and as I mentioned I was struggling to depict anything the way I wanted it, was cautious and reserved, while also feeling his pity for Fritz starting to turn into real affection. Cautious and reserved because the class differences would make you default to being formal under normal circumstances, and then you add Fritz being in disgrace to that, and the situation becomes super complicated. And I think Fredersdorf must have managed to get in Fritz's good graces by navigating a complex situation without putting a foot wrong until the trust was already there. As noted, I think some of that had to do with Fritz being desperate and lonely, and willing to assume the best of intentions, because otherwise he has *no one*.
Sexuality? Got me. Canonically, he was tall and good-looking, so Fritz was suspected of being attracted to him even by contemporaries (Prussian Pompadour), but who Fredersdorf himself was attracted to is an open question. Getting married in 1753 could mean he was straight, bi, or gay in a heteronormative society where marriage brought a lot of benefits. It tells us nothing except that by that point in his life, he found being married preferable to living in Fritz's pocket year round. That may have had to do with him being so sick and Fritz constantly being on the move. Or he might have been wanting a break. I can't tell. As noted, the fact that Fritz was so resentful of other people's successful romantic and sexual relationships doesn't necessarily imply that he didn't have one himself, but it does make me wonder. But pretty much anything you write here will be plausible, anything from willing to tolerate a homosexual prince for the prospects of advancement, up to being head over heels in love with said prince and terrified of being the next Katte.
Religion? You may notice in my fic, set in 1731, I made him a Christian who's chill enough to be open-minded about Fritz's differences of opinions. This is an educated guess based on his class background. What his take on religion might have been during the later years at Fritz's court, I don't know. He might have been prime for conversion to freethinking once he was in a primarily freethinking circle. He might have kept his religious beliefs (Fritz would personally mock organized religion, but he didn't cut you out of the inner circle just on the basis of you being devout). Or he just might not have cared. The one thing I think we can deduce is that he was no FW, but you've got a lot of room to work with if you want to address that aspect at all, or just have it in the back of your mind as you write. (You may notice I deliberately had him think in terms of Biblical parallels rather than Classical ones.)
And there you have my take on Fredersdorf. Do with it what you will. I hope it was helpful at all. :)