Heh, I knew that the more detail I put in the more I was going to run afoul of something. :D Anyway, I think in broad outline we mostly agree -- that if he said anything even slightly that Fritz would push back and Fredersdorf would just drop it, and that he might try to do small things :)

While I can see the appeal of making Fredersdorf the always-reasonable objectively-correct observer of Hohenzollern dysfunction

Lol, guilty. I also find it very appealing, as I've said, to make Lehndorff the always-clueless-but-perceptive observer (even if he is less clueless than he lets on, sometimes).

But also, the thing I don't really have a good sense of, as most of this information is coming through Hohenzollern private correspondence (which presumably Fredersdorf didn't get to read??), is how much everyone else knew about all this and what everyone thought. Like, if everyone on the street and his brother is all "Geez, AW got a terrible deal here," I can see Fredersdorf's internal reaction being very different than if everyone's all "The One King!" and the only thing he ever hears about it is Fritz complaining about how his siblings are out to get him.