cahn | Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

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rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Maybe he did at least try to provide Dad, Grumbkow and everyone else with the impression he was, in fact, putting boundaries between them.

Wow. That's a very persuasive theory. Those poor kids. They have ONE good thing going for them in their lives, and then FW has to go fuck that up too. Start with imprisoning Fritz and pressuring Wilhelmine into a marriage, then put Fritz in a position where he has to be more aloof than usual around her and act like it's his idea. Man.

Also, thanks so much for this write-up. I had seen summaries but never a full translation, and I don't at all remember seeing the advice to have boundaries with Wilhelmine.

But the SD and Wilhelmine threats would undoubtedly have been carried out. It's hostage taker logic at its most ruthless.

Yep. Something that comes into play in my AUs where he makes it.

Let's also remember that Wilhelmine has her own reasons for pent-up resentment of Fritz, not just for being all "the best of all possible mothers" with SD, but for being willing to abandon her to the abuse, in a way that will lead to a worsening of her abuse. And with a plan that obviously poorly thought out, to boot.

Is this Fritz's fault? No, I will defend to the death the right of any abuse victim to get out of an abusive situation, even if it means leaving hostages behind to be punished. But as Wilhelmine psychology goes, I don't think she'd be human if she wasn't hurt at all, just as I don't think Fritz could help being hurt that she didn't support him getting out of there, however valid her reasons (like the fact that that plan was never going to work).

Honestly, props to them both for sticking by each other as much as they did, and in however messed up a way.

From:

selenak

They have ONE good thing going for them in their lives, and then FW has to go fuck that up too. Start with imprisoning Fritz and pressuring Wilhelmine into a marriage, then put Fritz in a position where he has to be more aloof than usual around her and act like it's his idea. Man.

My thoughts precisely. The odds were incredibly against them; like you say, props to them for sticking by each other as much as as they did. I'm so relieved that neither of them died in 1746, I can't tell you, and that they had the additional decade of renewed closeness, long distance as it often was.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I'm so relieved that neither of them died in 1746

God, I hadn't even thought of that. Wow, yes. I'm glad neither of them died then, and also that he never saw her memoirs after her death (or at all).

I also meant to say earlier, well-spotted on your cross-referencing of Grumbkow's advice to Fritz and Wilhelmine's observation of Fritz's unusual aloofness on that occasion. Subdetective insights FTW!