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: 1776

[selenak]

I gotta say that as much as I adore Lehndorff, I don't think he would have made a good diplomat at all. He doesn't strike me as the type to be able to on the fly come up with a good way to tell various people that Fritz didn't really mean that obnoxious thing he said about Franzl! (Or whomever.)

I think what he'd been able to do is what we'd more likely call a "cultural attaché" these days. Befriending the locals, with genuine interest in their cultural pursuits, while also advertising what's great about Prussia. (Lehndorff: "We have the best princes in the world!") Now, while serving with EC for decades while finding her very boring - and being present on those rare occasions when Fritz shows up and is rude, like the infamous "Madame has grown corpulent", but also a pre war occasion when Fritz said that all the pretty women had already left the court and what was left were stupid ugly geese - has schooled him in pretense and making a bland face, but on those occasions he wasn't required to say anything. I agree that issueing convincing denials when being put to the spot by some foreign court official, let alone the foreign monarchs themselves, doesn't strike me as something Lehndorff would have been good at. As for hardcore treaty negotiations, trying to get the best deal for your country, good lord. Nope.

I laughed pretty hard at this!

So did I, hence me sharing it. :)

You know, I like that he did abandon his plan. I mean, he could have gone and I dare say no one would have thought much about it except his wife (and least of all Heinrich himself) but he didn't, even though it was something he really wanted to do. I mean, maybe my 18th C standards are terribly low at this point, but still :)

I know what you mean, though I have to point out he was already in the carriage when a fever struck the first time around.

This is going in a Fritz/Heinrich dysfunctional siblings fic, right??

Probably, though it's already in "Promises to Keep". It's something Fritz wrote to 19 years old Heinrich after Heinrich had given him the silent treatment for six months post Marwitz.

But yes, Heinrich being able to talk the husband of a dying woman into an alternate match that keeps young Paul tied to Prussia before she's exhaled her last breath is a pretty good illustration for that. I mean, the original marriage hadn't been a love match, it had been arranged, too, but still. As I told you: just because he was a different type of general than Fritz and was into sparing lives when he could doesn't mean he didn't have that kind of ruthlessness and capacity for inner ice in him as well.

(In conclusion: marriage and childbirth in the 18th century = life threatening and often life ruining enterprise for the women. Hence my letting MT explode when Fritz says to her "what do you know of death?" in AU No.3.)

ETA: I'm also reminded of Heinrich, when Catherine dies, writing to Ferdinand, a letter in wich on the one hand he's sincerely sorry for her death, mourns for her, talks about how amazing she was and isn't too impressed by son Paul, for that matter - "what remains now is very small" -, but on the other hand also notes "Politically, her death is a stroke of luck for us", since Catherine never let being born Prussian herself get in the way of prioritizing a led-by-her-Russia. (Whereas Paul thinks starting where legal Dad left off is just the ticket. Including making the army switch from Russian uniforms to Prussian uniforms. Paul: dead four years later.) Heinrich, like Catherine herself, was quite capable of differentiating between personal relationships and political use of same. Which makes the Hamilton-Pangels "he had no politics beyond "Yay, France!" and only liked the French Revoluton because it was French" such a dumb thing to say. /end of ETA

Aww, I'm so glad Lehndorff and Heinrich are still buddies (with benefits??)

Your guess is as good as mine. They're now in their 50s, which hardly makes them impotent, but more restrained, one would imagine. Also, Lehndorff is married. Whether that translates to marital physical fidelity in this 18th century nobleman - I honestly can't say. There's no mention of having sex with anyone else, but then, he doesn't explicitly write "and then I had sex with Heinrich" in those stormy infatuated 1752 entries, either, it's just that I find it hard to interpret "what little reason I have leaves me when he touches me" and similar phrasings otherwise.

On Heinrich's side, 1776 is two years after Fritz told him "in unprintable language" to dump Kaphengst and Heinrich responded by indeed dismissing Kaphengst officially from his services but also by buying him a palace close to Rheinsberg and writing Fritz his "I hereby report I did dismiss Kaphengst" annoucement from said palace. This means Kaphengst is still sort of there, but only sort of, and he's at any rate not along for the second Russia trip. (Would you bring a good looking hard-partying skilled at sex boytoy along when visiting Catherine the Great? Only at the risk of her keeping him.) And I don't think Tauentzien (son of Fritzian general, will come along on Heinrich's second Paris trip and play that theatre "prank" on Heinrich) is on the horizon yet. So chances are Heinrich travels as a single man on that occasion. "I was with him all day" might or might not mean more than talking happened, but then again, Lehndorff doesn't write "I was alone with him all day", and he does make that distinction in his diaries. This wasn't a private pleasure trip on Heinrich's part, but a political journey, and he wasn't travelling even nominally incognito, as Wilhelmine had done or as Joseph did on his marriage counselling in Paris did. Which meant lots of constant visits by every town official ever.

All of which goes to say: a reunion kiss or several was probably in the cards, but I doubt more happened. Then again: we just don't know!

Re: The Lehndorff Report: 1776

[cahn]

The cultural attache thing does sound like something Lehndorff would be very good at -- one of the delightful things about him is that he sounds just very interested in everybody <3 Oh man, I hadn't even thought of hardcore treaty negotiations. Nope, nope, nope.

(I recently watched The Merry Widow (in English translation, hence the English title) -- I swear I have opera posts in the queue, someday -- and Lehndorff might make a good Pontevedran ambassador along the lines of Count Danilo's job? :P :) )

Ah, yes, it's in "Promises to Keep," though it didn't immediately ping to me because it's between Wilhelmine and Heinrich -- I would love a Fritz/Heinrich fic where they both got to be cold :D

but also by buying him a palace close to Rheinsberg and writing Fritz his "I hereby report I did dismiss Kaphengst" annoucement from said palace

lolololol, I'm sure you told me about this before but I didn't have the context to remember it then, this is HILARIOUS, Heinrich I <3 your dedication to upsetting your brother!

I'm just glad Lendorff got to hang out with his prince <3

Re: The Lehndorff Report: 1776

[mildred_of_midgard]

lolololol, I'm sure you told me about this before but I didn't have the context to remember it then, this is HILARIOUS, Heinrich I <3 your dedication to upsetting your brother!

Oh, cahn, you need to reread the original! Context is Fritz being oddly good at detecting relationships that are doomed to fail, as long as they don't involve him and Voltaire (or possibly Glasow).