Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

[cahn]

So for anyone who is reading this and would like to learn more about Frederick the Great and his contemporaries, but who doesn't want to wade through 500k (600k?) words worth of comments and an increasingly sprawling comment section:

We now have a community, rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D

Comments

Re: Grumbkow and Katte

[mildred_of_midgard]

but that he is seriously set on ruling one day this early on. Flight attempt or not.

I agree, and at this date, I would guess we're in the proto-control freak stages. By which I mean, he's not yet at the point where he wants to be king so he can micromanage everything. But he's reached the point where he's internalized that other people having power over him is BAD BAD BAD, and the last thing he wants is a brother with power over him who might treat him like Dad. Especially if little bro is Dad's favorite.

He's supposed to have said to Robert Keith, during the escape attempt, that once he got away, he was never coming back. Do I think that means he definitely wouldn't have? Of course not, he might well have, especially if he could get favorable terms. But I wouldn't be surprised if 18-yo Fritz could imagine life in exile as tolerable, but life in Prussia under a Prussian king would not be.

I think, as time went on, his fear of other people having even the tiniest amount of control expanded, to the point where he had to micromanage everything and keep his brothers and nephews well away from power, just to feel safe. But in these early days, he's only a proto-control freak: no one gets power over *him*, but he doesn't necessarily need power over everyone and everything yet.

Remember when I said Fritz learned that there are kind people and there are people in power, and if you want to be safe, you have to be in power, because people may love you but they can't protect you? I think that's why he won't give up the succession until it's Katte's life on the line. Whom he's also willing to give up his life for. And giving up the succession to let AW have power over him probably feels nearly equally dangerous.

It's also worth mentioning that if I'm right, that if in August and September he's offering his life for Katte because he thinks they *won't* take him up on it, the reason he avoids offering the succession might be because that he thinks they might.