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Frederick the Great discussion post 9
...I leave you guys alone for one weekend and it's time for a new Fritz post, lol!
I'm gonna reply to the previous post comments but I guess new letter-reading, etc. should go in this one :)
Frederick the Great links
I'm gonna reply to the previous post comments but I guess new letter-reading, etc. should go in this one :)
Frederick the Great links
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.
Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance
Oh! I found the original comment. Wow, I knew a lot less stuff then :D And it was only a couple of months ago!
Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance
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!
Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance
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
Re: Mr. and Mrs. King: Fritz - Elisabeth Christine: The Correspondance
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.)