Frederick the Great discussion post 12

[cahn]

Every time I am amazed and enchanted that this is still going on! Truly DW is the Earthly Paradise!

All the good stuff continues to be archived at rheinsberg :)

Comments

Re: The Lehndorff Report: 1777- A

[selenak]

Well, Lehndorff's documented ideas of being tough to Heinrich included "not visiting until Heinrich explicitly asks me to, twice" and "show up at Heinrich's with a dashing young Englishman and tell him I'm so going to move abroad". I don't think he has it in him to be deliberately hurtful to someone, especially when he loves them - at least not in the three decades in his life I've read about so far. The meanest he gets are his constant comments on EC's dullness, and he doesn't make them to anyone but his diary.

Incidentally, remember when we had the extended top/bottom discussion re: Fritz and his boyfriends? Clearly, one of the problems here is that Heinrich is clearly into being dominated (though in a pushy bottom manner - most of those boyfriends get dumped by him eventually, after all, not the other way around), and Lehndorff could never, ever do it. Which is another reason why it's a good thing he managed to build himself a happy home life in the provinces, even if he can't resist the occasion trip to Rheinsberg and Berlin even in retirement.

Re: The Lehndorff Report: 1777- A

[mildred_of_midgard]

Heinrich is clearly into being dominated (though in a pushy bottom

I'm leaning more and more toward Heinrich being not into being dominated so much as being into dominating a pushy bottom who taunts him, provokes him, and gets under his skin until he snaps and comes down on *them*, and they capitulate. So I actually think he might be a top, but a very specific kind of top that wants a lot of resistance. If you think the imprinting on charismatic bastards comes from Fritz, I think actually the prospect of doing what he couldn't do in real life, namely winning the encounter after being made to work for it, would get him hot like nothing else. The equivalent of putting up that obelisk ONLY DURING FRITZ'S LIFETIME.

I could be wrong. But this is now my headcanon.

And yes, Lehndorff is never going to push those buttons. Sorry, Lehndorff! You hang out with therapy-less Hohenzollerns, you're gonna run into some downsides.

Re: The Lehndorff Report: 1777- A

[cahn]

*nods* Yeah, like, I think he can intellectually understand that Heinrich responds more strongly to people who are hurtful and impudent, but he's incapable of doing it himself to someone he loves.

The meanest he gets are his constant comments on EC's dullness, and he doesn't make them to anyone but his diary.

And then he comes back years later and annotates them with "oh, you know, I was being mean there because I was unhappy." Lehndorff is the best <3333333