Charles-Émile/Karl-Emil: okay, if you don't have a crossreference, I'm with cahn - Fritz probably got inspired by two random soldiers.
re: Baby names - you know what's missing in his "as long as it's not..." list? Francois/Franz. On the one hand, MT's husband. On the other: Voltaire! (Can't decide whether that would be a pro or a con at that point.)
"Ring Theory": explain, please?
Excuses for not writing: ha. (Especially, as Cahn says, given how much he's simultanously writing to everyone else. Including Amalie who is, due to war time, living in close proximity to EC.)
What you said elsewhere about EC having been FW's idea of an ideal wife: on the one hand, yes, that's very apparant. She's utterly devoted, no matter how little of Fritz she gets, she's loyal, when she writes to him "you can count on me, Sire" , she means it. Biographers have often noted that FW's notion of marriage wasn't that of an aristocrat but of a burgher, hence insistence on marital fidelity on both sides and living together, not apart, and Lehndorff, frustrated with his boss, notes more than once she would have been happier as a burgher's wife. A married-to-FW EC would never have questioned his judgment, or used the kids as weapons in marital warfare. And of course they'd been on board with each other's religion.
I'm still not sure the reverse would have worked out, i.e. an SD type of wife for Fritz. Sure, she'd have been fine with living apart, and wouldn't have cared about what he got up to with valets or French intellectuals. But there's no way she'd have put up with playing second fiddle to his mother and sisters. She'd have had very definite ideas about how their heir (whether that potential heir would have been the son of their siblings or maybe the result of a half hearted try at marital life in the early days) should be raised and whom he should marry. And the first time she'd gotten a condolence letter like the one about brother Albrecht from him, marital warfare would have ensued.
Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance
re: Baby names - you know what's missing in his "as long as it's not..." list? Francois/Franz. On the one hand, MT's husband. On the other: Voltaire! (Can't decide whether that would be a pro or a con at that point.)
"Ring Theory": explain, please?
Excuses for not writing: ha. (Especially, as Cahn says, given how much he's simultanously writing to everyone else. Including Amalie who is, due to war time, living in close proximity to EC.)
What you said elsewhere about EC having been FW's idea of an ideal wife: on the one hand, yes, that's very apparant. She's utterly devoted, no matter how little of Fritz she gets, she's loyal, when she writes to him "you can count on me, Sire" , she means it. Biographers have often noted that FW's notion of marriage wasn't that of an aristocrat but of a burgher, hence insistence on marital fidelity on both sides and living together, not apart, and Lehndorff, frustrated with his boss, notes more than once she would have been happier as a burgher's wife. A married-to-FW EC would never have questioned his judgment, or used the kids as weapons in marital warfare. And of course they'd been on board with each other's religion.
I'm still not sure the reverse would have worked out, i.e. an SD type of wife for Fritz. Sure, she'd have been fine with living apart, and wouldn't have cared about what he got up to with valets or French intellectuals. But there's no way she'd have put up with playing second fiddle to his mother and sisters. She'd have had very definite ideas about how their heir (whether that potential heir would have been the son of their siblings or maybe the result of a half hearted try at marital life in the early days) should be raised and whom he should marry. And the first time she'd gotten a condolence letter like the one about brother Albrecht from him, marital warfare would have ensued.