cahn | Frederick the Great discussion post 9

First: Oh, Fritz.

I'm glad they got to have at least some positive long-distance interactions in the form of exchanging fruit.

Good job improving your condolence letters, Fritz! I'm not sure whether this is a sign of improved skill/emotional maturity or just reflects his differing opinions/lack thereof on the person involved, but nonetheless.

LOL at the Agatha Christie plot. EC would be least suspected but amply motivated! This would be a wonderful reveal.

Also, Mildred, is there a Charles-Émile/Karl Emil among the boyfriends

Not that I know of! I saw this when I was compiling and uploading the letters, and I was hoping you would know what the appeal of this name was all about. I only found one predecessor in the Hohenzollerns, and he doesn't seem like someone Fritz would go for (although an ideal son for FW). I will keep an eye out for possible candidates, though.

but what Fritz' beef with Jacques aka Jakob/James is, I don't know. Not wanting to piss off his one remaining ally the Hannover cousin in England?

Maybe? Total 180 after the war started, if so. And I guess "Jacob" is the eponymous name for the Jacobites, but the claimant who caused the most trouble fifteen years ago was named Charles, and he's still around making occasional noise, so...

I don't know. Fritz's taste in baby names takes me by surprise.

a rare concerned "get well" letter that does not include "live for me!"

Almost certainly, if you ask me, because he's not actually emotionally invested in her living. I suspect his better condolence letters to her are also when he had no emotional investment (unlikely the brother who'd been driving him crazy and he just *needed* to get that rant out of his system to all parties, ring theory be damned).

Mr. Micromanagement thinking through which rooms are most suitable for a child is oddly...nice.

Lol. No coffee bean is too small to be ground!

In addition to all the wonderful content-ful excerpts and summaries you provided, I also wish to present the array of Fritz's excuses for not writing to her, which constitute 15 of 117 of the letters (and don't include the excuses for not visiting her):

I leave you to judge whether, in these conditions, we are able to write long letters.

You will learn by all the news of the day the progress that has been made here, and besides I am led to believe that you do not take much interest in it; so I refer you to public news, begging you to believe me all yours.

I will no longer be able to write to you.

I will only tell you in two words that everything is fine here...I am so overwhelmed with a dreadful headache that it is impossible for me to tell you more.

I don't have time to tell you more.

If I don't write to you often, it won't be my fault, because we have little time traveling.

I have much to do; another time, my letter will be longer.

f I haven't written to you for a long time, it's because I didn't have time for me.

If I hadn't been tired, I would have thanked you myself. However, I will take my time to do it at the first opportunity.

The multitude of cases has prevented me from writing to you so far; It is therefore to take leave of you that I address this letter to you.

I only have time to assure you of my perfect friendship, to tell you that we are all doing very well, and to ask you to return them included to their addresses.

Communication is not yet as free as you think.

I am currently so overloaded with work, that I hardly have a moment left for me; which obliges me to finish my letter.

I would thank you for it in more detail, if the legions of affairs gave me the time.

And of course, the very last letter he wrote to her:

I am very much obliged to you for the vows which you deign to make; but a high fever which I took prevents me from answering you.

De facto unmarried Fritz!

This is even more hilarious knowing how much he wrote everyone else. (I mean, I know other people got "I don't have time to write much" letters, but (a) I think they got longer ones than hers anyway, and (b) they were a much smaller proportion of total text, lol.) Poor EC! Well, I dunno, maybe she was happier like that. I hope so!

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.

The first time

mildred_of_midgard brought up how Fritz wanted to make deaths all about hiiiiiim we were talking about how nowadays one has the internet to help us out with things like How To Write a Darned Condolence Letter in Ways That Are Less Fritzian, which of course Fritz didn't have access to, and I mentioned learning ring theory from the interwebs :)

Oh! I found the original comment. Wow, I knew a lot less stuff then :D And it was only a couple of months ago!

Thank you for explaining/reminding! Very useful for rl. And yes, would have been useful for Fritz, too, had he been able to listen, but the later EC letters do show some improvement.

We all knew a lot less then. I was barely there had been more than one Keith, had never heard of Algarotti, and couldn't have named even one Fritz dog. DW: truly the earthly paradise!

I've come a long way myself!

Depending on whether we count from when I started refreshing myself with Fritz bios before the three of us started chatting (June), or when our magical alchemy began (August)...in June I certainly had forgotten anything I had learned about the Keiths and Algarotti (but because of the bios I know I'd read twenty years ago, I must have learned about them once--all I remember is that there was a Jacobite named Keith, because anything Jacobite related stuck with me), and I doubt I ever knew anything about the names of the dogs, beyond the group name "marquises de Pompadour." By the time we started chatting, though, I had managed to work both Alcmene and Biche into a fic on AO3, so I must have caught up on the dogs quickly. ;)

Before our magical alchemy, though, wow, I was like aware that he had siblings apart from Wilhelmine, and of them, that AW died and Heinrich was a good general, maybe better than Fritz. Extended family? Details on his parents other than the obvious? Nope. Barest outlines of the relationship with Voltaire, and of Fredersdorf (whom, again, I must have learned about 20 years ago, but had to relearn from scratch when I picked up those bios again). Suhm who?

And I actually still believed Katte was executed in front of Fritz's window, and that his last words were "I die for you with joy in my heart," which I STILL haven't found outside Wikipedia.

It's been like a graduate-level history course! It has exceeded my wildest dreams. earthly paradise indeed! <3

Thank you for explaining/reminding! Very useful for rl.

ETA: Just meant to call attention to something in that thread, namely that if you use the term "ring theory" in real life, anyone with a STEM background, like me and

cahn, is going to think of algebra, not communication skills.

Edited 2020-01-25 22:32 (UTC)

Charles-Émile/Karl-Emil: okay, if you don't have a crossreference, I'm with cahn - Fritz probably got inspired by two random soldiers.

Makes sense to me! It reminds me of this passage from a Neal Stephenson novel: "When their discussion of the company’s name consumed more than the fifteen minutes Richard felt it deserved, he pulled some Dungeons & Dragons dice out of his pocket and rolled them to generate the random number 9592." And thus Richard's startup Corporation 9592 is founded.

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.)

Right? I actually went and checked the dates on some of these, and yeah, Suhm and Voltaire and other people are getting nice beefy letters. "I don't have time to write to you because I'm busy writing to more interesting people!" Though it was interesting that sometimes you can tell he really was busy on a given day, but then a few days later you'd see much longer letters to other people and not so much to her.

But there's no way she'd have put up with playing second fiddle to his mother and sisters.

But what I was thinking was that she wouldn't have to. I was thinking he actually would have let her be more of a proper queen, as long as she stayed away from politics. I don't think it's anything like an ideal marriage, no--ideally Fritz doesn't get married, at least in the pre-same-sex marriage era--but he might have liked her as a person (not just a mother) better than EC.

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

How different would those ideas have been from his, though? If he wanted his heir educated and cultured and also in the military, how much would she have objected? I'm sure she would have wanted a more extravagant court than he did, but the budget and treatment he did give her as Dowager Queen was evidently to her satisfaction, and I think they could have arrived at an agreement (again, since they did irl). Unless you think that was 100% her being his mother and not any kind of shared values, like the arts.

And the first time she'd gotten a condolence letter like the one about brother Albrecht from him, marital warfare would have ensued.

Haha, well, that would have been interesting. :P

Anyway, no, not an ideal marriage, but maybe better than the first impression EC made. (Of course, a lot has to do with how much Fritz has the marriage forced down his throat in this AU. EC had the deck stacked against her from the beginning, and then it didn't matter how hard she tried.)

More golden Trier archive index crossreferencing quotes: Barbe „Babette“ Cochois, the dancer and actress who first lived with D‘Argens and eventually and most scandalously for the Ancien Regime times married him, and who co-authored several of his later books with him as well as having learned several languages so she could do research; this really interesting sounding lady, who had of course already lived with D‘Argens in Prussia (specifically, on the Sanssouci grounds, where Fritz had given him living rights and a house) writes a condolence letter to Elisabeth Christine after Fritz‘ death. And EC (supposedly scandalized by Algarotti once upon a time in Rheinsberg, but here not sounding scandalized at all) writes back. Bear in mind that D‘Argens has died before Fritz, so they‘re both widows now, the former actress and the Queen:

I have always, my dear Marquise, distinguished your late husband as a
a very estimable man, and above all by his attachment to the late King,
my husband of glorious memory whose death plunges me into the most
severe pain. Rest assured that I am very sensitive to the sympathy that
you show and I will always be delighted that having fulfilled all your
duties towards your husband, you are rewarded by all the
possible happiness. These are the feelings that I will always have for you.
Your good Queen: Elisabeth

That's actually a really nice letter! (Ahem, Fritz. :P ) It's really hard for me to get a bead on EC; I like to think she was more interesting than Fritz let her be, but it's not super clear from what I've seen. Everything does point to her being really nice, though!

And EC (supposedly scandalized by Algarotti once upon a time in Rheinsberg, but here not sounding scandalized at all)

You mean not scandalized by d'Argens as critic of the church, or not scandalized by the relationship with Babette? Or both?

Because if the former, then one, I only have unreliable modern sources for that; it could have not happened at all. But two, I actually can see a situational difference. At Rheinsberg, EC is interacting with Algarotti in the presence of Fritz, and Algarotti is trying to impress *Fritz*. And Algarotti could apparently be mocking enough to put Lehndorff off wanting to be in the same room with him. So EC's impression of Algarotti is going to be of someone who's highly critical of religion and doesn't mind saying so in the most snarky way possible.

Whereas d'Argens didn't come to Prussia until Fritz was king, i.e. living apart from EC. So any time he interacted with EC, odds are he was paying court to EC specifically, and probably made a point of not gratuitously offending the queen known for her piety.

So all that tells me is that d'Argens could code-switch.

Now, maybe EC loved Algarotti too, but given that Lehndorff didn't, it's quite possible EC *was* shocked by Algarotti.

At any rate, that is a lovely letter, and I'm glad that EC was gracious with the dancer-cum-actress. Reminds me a bit of Melanie Wilkes with Belle Watling.

Frederick the Great discussion post 9

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance

Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance