Frederick the Great discussion post 9

[cahn]

...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

Comments

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

[cahn]

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!

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

[selenak]

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!

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

[mildred_of_midgard]

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.