Frederick the Great, discussion post 16

[cahn]

We have slowed down a lot, but are still (sporadically) going! And somehow filled up the last post while I wasn't looking!

...I was asked to start a new thread so that STDs could be discussed. Really! :D

Comments

The STD thread

[mildred_of_midgard]

STDs, here we come!

From our email discussion:

mildred_of_midgard: Btw, something that's been on my Trello list of things to talk about for a while now is that, for all the discussion we've had about Zimmerman and the STD, I don't think we've ever brought up the fact that the "STD treated badly -> (perceived) impotence" theory is in Voltaire's memoirs as well. This doesn't make the story more reliable, far from it, it just makes me wonder...who did this rumor originate with, and how many contemporaries knew about it (presumably everyone who read Voltaire's memoirs!), and of them, how many bought into it?

The other interesting part is that Zimmerman is using the penis theory to explain why Fritz the EXTREMELY NOT GAY NOT AT ALL was not sleeping with women, whereas Voltaire was going for "Fritz the Potsdamite had to bottom for other guys, ha!"

cahn: mildred, this is in Voltaire's memoirs?? and you never told me??

mildred_of_midgard: Well, the thing is, I did, but so long ago it was before we'd encountered Zimmermann. It was one of the first things I told you about (give me some credit! I am a good gossipy sensationalist! :P). But then by the time Zimmermann came along, I'd forgotten it was in Voltaire, and then when I remembered, we had entered the very recent Age of Limited Computer Time.

The other interesting thing to note is that it's *not* in the anonymous pamphlet, suggesting that if this rumor existed in 1752, it hadn't yet reached Voltaire.

selenak: I have a theory about that, but we should discuss it in public so others can learn from our wise words :-)

mildred_of_midgard: Here's the Voltare quote:

As soon as his Majesty was dressed and booted, Stoicism for a few moments gave way to Epicurism. Two or three of his favorites entered: these were either Lieutenants, Ensigns, Pages, Heiduqes, or young Cadets. Coffee was brought in, and he to whom the handkerchief was thrown, remained ten minutes tête-à-tête with his Majesty. Things were not carried to the last extremity, because while Prince, in his father's life-time, he had been very ill treated, and ill cured, in his amours de passade. He could not play principal, and was obliged to content himself with the second.

Take it away, selenak!

Re: The STD thread

[selenak]

Okay, my speculation(s) as to why this is in Voltaire's memoirs but not yet in the 1752 anonymous pamphlet. Aren't mutually exclusive but don't have to be true all at once.

1.) Difference in circumstance of writing. Voltaire wrote the pamphlet as part of his escalating pamphlet war with Fritz, but the book burning and the Frankfurt arrest had not happened yet, so he wasn't yet ready to go fully scorched earth. The memoirs he knew would get published once he was dead, so no problem there. This speculation assumes that the rumor already existed in 1752. However, it could also be that:

2.) There was no rumor, but Voltaire had several decades to think of something even more schoolboy taunt than "totally gay", to wit "gay but unable to penetrate because of badly treated STD! Totally bottoming!" for the memoirs, whereas in 1752 he was in something of a hurry.

3.) Difference in circumstance for Fritz. By 1752, it was very clear to all and sunder that his married life was non-existent, and that any favourites of his were more likely to be of the male persuasion. However not exclusively so: the grand finale of the Barbarina saga wasn't that long ago, and if I was a contemporary with limited-by-rumor-and-some-pamphlets access to information, you bet I'd have assumed the King and the ballerina he was willing to pay that much money for and threw such a fit about (twice) had had a sexual affair. And even better informed circles - like, say, all those ambassadors paying for information - in their reports mentioning handsome men (whether Fredersdorf or the odd husar) - definitely don't consider Fritz wa keeping those guys just to look at. Consider, too, that Fritz wasn't yet living the full hermit life he would post 7 Years War. He'd dumped most of the court obligations on EC and his brothers, but he did participate in the carnival each year, and on some other occasions, too. He wasn't yet seen as completely different from all the other monarchs. And the default assumption for an 18th century monarch is that they have a lot of sex. Then there's the fact that 1752 Fritz is still basking in the Undefeated Conqueror image of Militant Masculinity. So, gossip mongers weren't likely to hit on the idea that he had sex problems resulting in either bottoming or impotence.
However, by the 1770s or whenever Voltaire was writing his Fritzian memoirs (I like to think he kept going back to the manuscript and adding another dig through the decades), things were different. No more ballerinas (with favoured singers like Schmeling Mara, no one assumed Fritz was interested in her romantically at all), and not really male favourites to gossip about, either. Fritz had aged before his time through the war and was hardly seen in public anymore at all, save for the military revues and the occasional guest of state. And while he was admired as the genius who fought all of Europe to a stand still for seven years, the perception of him as invulnerable was gone. All this makes gossip of him bottoming and/or having long term STD caused problems far more easy to buy in the public perception.

4.) Dark horse possibility: not only was there a rumor but it was based on some factual stuff, but Voltaire didn't learn about it while he was still in Prussia. Because while he was still in Prussia, possible sources weren't suicidal, knowing Voltaire could just as well turn on them and either by intent or carelessness let the King know what they said. Now you'd think once he's settled down in Geneva, he'd have had less, not more access to spicy Prussian court gossip. HOWEVER. There's Doctor Theodore Tronchin. Who was treating Voltaire in Geneva while also making trips to Prussia. Which he even did during the war. He was the one to certify Ferdinand as REALLY REALLY ILL. I.e. he did treat members of the royal family (don't know whether he ever treated Fritz personally, but it's not impossible), and presumably hung out with what doctors were there when visiting Berlin. And in terms of his ethics, Tronchin is the one providing a lot of gossip about Voltaire's final weeks of life, of which he only witnessed a bit. So I wouldn't put it beyond him to have shared such a story with Voltaire, had he come across it one way or the other.

ETA: Almost forgot this: what also might factor in Voltaire either inventing or spreading the rumor: Fritz himself evidently thought it was the height of hilarity to accuse someone of having STD. Not just young Marwitz, but Louis XV. in one of the satiric poems Voltaire absconded with that got him arrested in Frankfurt. I also seem to recall (maybe wrongly?) he mentioned Algarotti having some problems in this regard to someone else? And even the censored Volz translated version of the Palladion has some STD jokes. So: maybe Voltaire thought turnabout was just fair game?

Re: The STD thread

[cahn]

LOLOLOLOL, I don't think I said, that Voltaire quote is awesome!

Not his type?

[selenak]

From the last post:

1.) mildred_of_midgard: I have never been convinced Heinrich was into being dominated.

I like your alternate suggestion from several posts ago that he might have enjoyed being made to work like no one's business for domination but in the end succeeding. Anyway, the domination theory, I suspect, happens because biographers throw their hands up along with Lehndorff when looking at most of Heinrich's guys and wonder out loud "but what does he see in them?"

2.) mildred_of_midgard: Hypothesis: Heinrich consistently started relationships with guys in their early 20s, whether he was 19 or 60. Counterevidence, selenak? I don't know all his boyfriends' birthdates, nor do I know when all the relationships started.

No, it fits. Doesn't mean he trades them in once they're closer to 30 - the relationship with Kaphengst lasted at the very least 15 years, possibly longer depending on where we assume the end point (not that easy to say because as opposed to Kalckreuth, Kaphengst doesn't get cut off but fades into the periphery of Heinrich's circle after those 15 years, but you're right, the beginning of the relationship, no matter whether Heinrich is young or old himself, is when they're in their early 20s.

It's also worth pointing out that post-Marwitz, he seems to have made a point of not being monogamous. Because there's always overlap. When Lehndorff goes from friend to friend with benefits, the official favourite is actually Reisewitz, and Reisewitz hangs on until the 7 Years War in terms of being in Heinrich's circle, through the entire Lamberg as favourite and into the Kalckreuth as favourite era. And of course Kalckreuth and Kaphengst overlap post war until the big drama. While Kaphengst clearly is the favourite Heinrich went to the greatest financial lengths for, he wasn't exclusive, as evidenced by the fact Mara happened during the Kaphengst era as well. Now of course we don't know that he had sex with all of them, let alone at the same time. Maybe he really wanted nothing more from Mara than music. But emotionally, these were certainly romances, and unlike Fritz, Heinrich was never suspected of living celibate.

Going back to my observation that Heinrich as opposed to Fritz wasn't interested in an erastes figure when young, of course we have not nearly as much data about him as we have of young Fritz. Maybe he did have someone like that in his life and we just don't know because no envoy was interested in the thirteenth child and Heinrich didn't keep many letters. For example: Ziebura in two of her biographies includes the assurance that the princes (all three younger princes) liked their gay steward (the one AW wrote that raunchy letter to from Spandau) and that there's no indication he was in any way inappropriate to them. (That is, inappropriate by our standards - FW presumably would have freaked out if he'd known that the guy who was supposed to keep his sons from "silent sins" and evil talk instead raised them in a way that made them feel comfortable with sex jokes and see nothing wrong with the gay variation of same.) However, if teenage Heinrich did feel the need for a gay mentor or for an older man to crush on, this guy would have been an obvious choice.

But that's all speculation. And with the qualification of "going by all the relationships we do know about" Heinrich had a sexual type, and that type was young, handsome, in his early 20s, energetic, charming and none too reliable.

Re: Not his type?

[mildred_of_midgard]

Briefly...

I like your alternate suggestion from several posts ago that he might have enjoyed being made to work like no one's business for domination but in the end succeeding.

That's one of the possibilities I see. I have another, more boring and kink-free theory after having read Ziebura. Heinrich was a helper in a way that could be healthy--he liked taking young people under his wing and funding their educations and such--and could turn into trying to fix people who didn't want to be fixed. And it's possible that, when combined with a partner with a charismatic personality and possibly good sex, the more dysfunctional a relationship was, the more energy Heinrich tried to invest in helping the young man live up to his potential. It's the old "I can change him!" story.

It's often the case that the people you love the most are not the ones who've done the most for you, but the ones you've done the most for. There's also the sunk costs fallacy: the more you've invested in something, the more compelled you feel to keep investing, to justify your past investment, in hopes of getting an eventual payoff, instead of cutting your losses.

More dysfunctional than kinky, imo. But that's not to say that Heinrich might not also have been a pushy bottom in bed! Kinks can be independent of any other aspect of your life. And regardless, fiction can do whatever fiction wants, and Heinrich either as bottom or someone who works like nobody's business to finally win is a great dynamic. :D

Doesn't mean he trades them in once they're closer to 30

Yup, that's why I was careful to say "started relationships" and say that it was not only his sexual attraction to this particular age that mattered--the relationships clearly gathered momentum as they went on.

Heinrich not having an erastes: I was thinking exactly that, both that we have much less data and that he had that gay steward.

Heinrich had a sexual type, and that type was young, handsome, in his early 20s, energetic, charming and none too reliable.

Yep.

Re: Not his type?

[cahn]

because biographers throw their hands up along with Lehndorff when looking at most of Heinrich's guys and wonder out loud "but what does he see in them?"

I mean. The cello is a pretty sexy instrument :P (although I guess it's more sexy once Romanticism happens!)

Replies to <lj user="Cahn"> from the last post

[selenak]

although lol to the "sentimental era"

"Look, it's just Rococo emo"! is just such a handy excuse. :) Mind you, 18th century rethoric is way more emotional, and such things like bursting into tears haven't yet been coded as "feminine" or "unmanly". And if you read 18th century novels, the emo-ness is undeniable. But even so:

How could they miss the biggest thing in Lehndorff's life??

Well, for starters, they have only read the first volume as reprinted in 2007, not the others, which means they're missing out on even more Heinrich related entries in Volumes 2, 3 and 4. And secondly: I suspect that your avarage reviewer when first reading the Best of Lehndorff volume without any previous knowledge about who this guy might be looks first and foremost at stories about Fritz. Secondly about good war descriptions. Because your avarage reviewer will be going "Heinrich who?" and at best be vaguely aware there were siblings other than Wilhelmine; there will be no interest in Heinrich, and thus probably a lot of skipping while looking for Fritz stories.


This makes me feel even more: why would anyone write her about Fritz and AW reconciling :P

Cynically: Given how ultra embarassing the AW/Fritz fallout was for the later Hohenzollern - on the one hand, everyone of them is descended from AW, otoh, Fritz is the big national hero from whom they draw their claim to fame and throne - leading to basically the lot pretending to have been descended from Old Fritz, I wouldn't be surprised if some nineteenth century editor wanted to carry favour with the ruling dynasty by ineventing such a tale.

This said, I do think it's likely some courtier who know Sophie still felt strongly about AW wrote to her about his death and made it sound better than it was. But a story about Fritz writing a tender and concerned letter before his death is way too easily disapprovable if you're doing it as a contemporary who has to count on the fact Sophie could simply ask Amalie to read this letter, or something similar.

Re: Replies to <lj user="Cahn"> from the last post

[cahn]

haha, okay, that makes sense! I suppose we were only clued into it because we came to it via Ziebura :)

On Fritz and AW: yes on both counts. I can totally see why an invention (or possibly a wishful thinking that got out of hand) might have happened via a nineteenth century editor. And also why would someone at the time make something like that up -- I'm just imagining Sophie going "so Amalie, so glad to hear Fritz sent that nice letter before AW died!" and Amalie breathing fire in response :P

All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlotte

[selenak]

This biography, whose title says "Sophie Charlotte: Preußens erste Königin", is actually more the biography of two women, Sophie of Hannover and her daughter Sophie Charlotte. Partly because Sophie lived a far longer life - including outliving her daughter, who died at only 36 years of age - but also because Sophie left snarky memoirs and lots and lots of letters, whereas many of Sophie Charlotte's personal letters, aside of her correspondance with Leipniz, got disappeared over the years, which means we have a far more detailed picture of the first of the triad whom one historian refered to as "the three great Hannover Sophies" (the third one is of course SD).

Sophie the first was the daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen, daughter of James VI and I., and the sole reason why a lot of Germans ended up on the throne of England thereafter. I did actually read her memoirs a long time ago, and they are pretty entertaining, because Sophie is evenly sarcastic about the men in her life, including cousin Charles the later II, whom she met when he was penniless and in exile, and it went thusly:

Charles (with fare more finesse, but this is what he meant): I need cash. You're an heiress. How about it, Cousin?
Sophie: Nope. You're nice to flirt with, but no more.
Charles: Okay, but can you at least take a public stroll or two with me? Because then my creditors will be believe we're a match and will prolong my credit.
Sophie:.... I suppose.


She next got seriously entangled with the Hannover brothers. The older, one Georg Wilhelm, showed interest in the cash, the younger, Ernst August, in Sophie herself. Georg Wilhelm when they were already engaged then suddenly had this to say:

GW: Sorry, Soph. I got syphilis and want to spend my remaining years in debauchery in Venice. Would you mind taking my younger brother? I promise I won't screw you over and marry smeone else at the last minute. He'll totally be my heir.

Sophie: Gladly.
EA: *is charming the frst few years, does become the heir, but then* Soph, seeing as we still have Big Bro's former palace in Venice, I think we should use it. And when I say we I mean I. From this moment on, I'll spend five to six months a year debauching myself in Venice. Have fun ruling Hannover in the meantime!

Sophie: Men suck. I've decided to become the matriarch of Europe instead. Starting with co-raising my brother's kid Elisabeth Charlotte, aka Liselotte, whom I'll marry off to the Sun King's brother. I'm the main recipient of all her letters. Also, I'm encouraging the arts and starting a relationship with Leipniz which my daughter will later partake in. My daughter, btw, is also the goddaughter of Liselotte, who refers to her as "mein Patchen" in her letters.

Friedrich the not yet numbered: I'm the third son of the Great Elector of Brandenburg, coming through Hannover with my first beloved wife because Dad married my beastly stepmother and she's been poisoning my other full brothers. Setting a precedent for a crown prince getting out of the country without asking Dad first and on really bad terms with same. Hi, Hannover folk! Can I crash at your place for a while?

Sophie: Sure. Mind supporting my husband's plea with the Emperor to make him Prince Elector instead of just Duke of Hannover?

Friedrich: You're on.

Friedrich: *gets home after his father has given a guarantee he won't get murdered*

Lieselotte: Ma tante, how about you and mein Patchen visit me in France? She's hitting puberty, and I'm thinking...

Sophie: Hannover/France match the second? Maybe the Dauphin for my little Figuelotte (nickname for Sophie Charlotte)? You're on!

Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV: *dies*

Sophie: Or I could marry her to the Sun King himself.

Madame de Maintenon: No way. I have first dibs there. Begone, German relations of Madame! You shall never enter Versailles again.

Sophie: Ah well. Hang on, what's this I hear from Brandenburg? Young Friedrich's wife has died? Young Friedrich who still owes me, big time? Your highness, pray visit us again so we can comfort you in your grief. My daughter is now sixteen.

Friedrich: Barbara Beuys likes me way more than my grandson did and writes me as a woobie whose father never truly loved him because of my humpback. I've taken to the Hannover crowd as a replacement family like a duck to water.

Friedrich: *proposes*

Sophie Charlotte: *becomes Mrs. Kurprinz*

Barbara Beuys: Now, I know you heard the tales of how he loved her but she didn't love him and made fun of him, but listen, those are mostly told by the bitchy French ambassador and I don't think they are true. They did, however, have some obstacles at first. Two dead babies in a row, and also when his father died and Friedrich became Prince Elector, his former steward Danckelmann became PM and became the enemy of Sophie Charlotte, fearing she'd push Hannover interests above Prussian ones.

Selenak: I'm having a strange sense of deja vue.

Sophie Charlotte: *gives birth to Tiny Terror FW, who survives unlike the first two babies*

Universal rejoicing: *happens* (Not an emotion FW would evoke much in future years)

Leipniz: Want to become pen pals with me as well, your highness? I'm looking for a second patron and also I dig you, and will forever describe you as both the most beautiful and most smart woman of Europe

Leipniz: has to make two vain attempts before succeeding with his third letter, because Sophie Charlotte is busy changing Berlin into Athens on the Spree

Henritte von Pöllnitz: I'm Sophie Charlotte's right hand woman. I never marry and we're bffs; I write operas and masques for most court celebrations and hire and fire artists. No, Barbara Beuys does not mention how I am related to chatty writer Pöllnitz. But I'm way more discreet. SC tells me everything but I destroy nearly all of her letters after her death.

Peter the not yet Great: I'm making my first undercover visit to Europe at age 25, and spend a nice evening with Sophie, Sophie Charlotte and Henriette von Pöllnitz. They all agree I'm not a barbarian at all.

Sophie Charlotte: Speaking of, good lord. I just visited my kid, and that steward sucks beyond the telling of it. Husband, we need to appoint someone else pronto.

Friedrich: But Danckelmann said...

Sophie Charlotte: Listen, you just asked Mom to support you when you're about to petition the Emperor to make you King in Prussia. I'm just saying.

Friedrich: Danckelmann, you may retire. Sophie Charlotte, appoint whom you see fit. Wartensleben, want to become my new PM?

Wartensleben: Sure thing. How about you make my wife the official mistress?

Friedrich: I actually love my wife.

Wartensleben: You're going to be a King, and every King has a mistress. Trust me on this.

Friedrich: Frau von Wartensleben, you're now my official mistress. We don't need to have sex, do we?

Frau von Wartensleben: As long as your wife receives me in public, and my husband gets lots of cash, I'm fine with anything.

Friedrich: Are you cool with this as well, beloved wife?

Sophie Charlotte: As long as I get all the money I want for project "Make Berlin Athens".

Sophie Charlotte: makes Tiny Terror FW dance ballet at a cour masque; he dances Cupid*

Grandma Sophie: Awwwwww.

Barbara Beuys: Yeah, yeah, I know all the stories about the angry temper tantrums he threw as a child. I'm just saying that Sophie in her letters is totally melting at the adorableness of her grandson. Maybe both was true and he wasn't Tiny Terror all the time but also Little Cherub FW?

Selenak: Or maybe he decided to hate ballet for the rest of his life after having to dance in front of everyone as Cupid.

Sophie Charlotte: I support artists and philosophers like no one's business and gift my son with the new besteller by Fènelon, Telemaque, about how to be a compassionate, art-loving ruler. Mom, I'm totally optimistic about the future here! And moving on with the program "Making my kid love the arts", I'm now having him portrayed as young David. This is my favourite portrait of him:



Barbara Beuys: Nazi era biographer C. Hinrich called my girl Sophie Charlotte a narcissist who only loved her son as an extension of herself, and went on about how lucky he was to develop ethics and moral seriousness anyway, but I say bollocks to this. She did love her son and did her best to shape him into a tolerant, enlightened guy. Not her fault it didn't work out this way. Also the few surviving letters between them are affectionate. Though Grandma Sophie at some point stopped going awwww about her grandson, which is interesting.

Sophie: *to third party* Grandson FW is healthy. His father adores him.

Beuys: Note the "his father". Just a few years earlier, she adored him as well.

Sophie: Incidentally, I had news from England. Since cousin Anne is evidently not going to produce any more living kids, parliament has decided I'm the next Protestant heir. Now I doubt I'll survive her, seeing as I am a generation older, but my son Georg Ludwig is definitely going to be King now. Two of my kids with crowns! I'm so pleased. Granddaughter Sophia Dorothea, that's a goal to aspire to.

Sophie Charlotte: My foster daughter Caroline is about to get married. HabsburgCharles is an option, but you know: not sure becoming a Habsburg is going to make her happy. That family is a) so feudal, and b) so fanatically religious. Look, I'm not a hardcore Protestant; I'd have converted to marry the old Sun King, for example. But all those rosaries and the thought of the inquisition freak me out. Don't do it, Caroline. Take my Hannover nephew instead.

Barbara Beuys: No comment on FW as an option for Caroline from me. If you didn't now already he was, you wouldn't learn it here.

Leipniz: Let me tell you all about why this is a time to be optimistic, your majesty. We live in the best of all possible worlds.

Sophie Charlotte: I agree, but I also feel I have a cold. *coughs*

Sophie Charlotte: *dies after a short illness at age 36*

Friedrich: My heart is broken.

Sophie: Ditto.

Sophie: Though I'm also thinking... how about your son FW marries my boy Georg Ludwig's daughter SD? Then you'd have a Hannover royal at court again!

Friedrich: This is a wonderful idea. Let's do that at once.


Final comment: it's a readable book, but the supposedly central character remains surprisingly opaque, compared with everyone else. Also, while I'm perfectly willing to believe some of the anecdotes presenting Sophie Charlotte as disdainful of her husband aren‘t true, I'd like a reason given why Beuys is suspicious of the envoy report there, say, because "the surviving letters are respectful and affectionate" alone isn't it. I want something like Koser making mince meat out of Henri de Catt, preferably. Anyway: that was the life that was.

Re: All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlotte

[mildred_of_midgard]

I keep waking up to a free and fascinating education! Thank you!

Charles: Okay, but can you at least take a public stroll or two with me? Because then my creditors will be believe we're a match and will prolong my credit.

Hahaha, this is a great story.

I've taken to the Hannover crowd as a replacement family like a duck to water.

This reminds me of your "they were incredibly blatant about favouring future Billy the Butcher and hoping Fritz of Wales would somehow drop out of the picture. No wonder he took to Hervey like a duckling." Everyone is so messed up. :(

Barbara Beuys: Now, I know you heard the tales of how he loved her but she didn't love him and made fun of him

cahn, as a reminder, one of these is: That idiot Leibniz, who wants to teach me about the infinitesimally small! Has he therefore forgotten that I am the wife of Frederick the First, how can he imagine that I am unacquainted with my own husband?

Universal rejoicing: *happens* (Not an emotion FW would evoke much in future years)

I laughed so hard.

No, Barbara Beuys does not mention how I am related to chatty writer Pöllnitz.

Not closely as far as I can tell, that's all I can report. Computer limitations prevent me from spending more than 20 or 30 minutes on this question. (Yes, normally my genealogical endeavors take much, much more time.)

Friedrich: Wartensleben, want to become my new PM?

cahn: have we mentioned this guy often enough that you know how he's related to a major actor of the Fritzian generation?

Selenak: Or maybe he decided to hate ballet for the rest of his life after having to dance in front of everyone as Cupid.

Selenak is on to something, methinks!

gift my son with the new besteller by Fènelon, Telemaque, about how to be a compassionate, art-loving ruler.

Which will end up being one of Fritz's first formative books, at age 9!

Nazi era biographer C. Hinrich

Is this perchance Carl Hinrichs, author of the 1936 publication Kronprinzenprozeß that you were so kind as to summarize for us?

Beuys: Note the "his father". Just a few years earlier, she adored him as well.

Wow. That is pretty telling.

I'd like a reason given why Beuys is suspicious of the envoy report there, say, because "the surviving letters are respectful and affectionate" alone isn't it. I want something like Koser making mince meat out of Henri de Catt, preferably.

Yeah. Koser sets a high standard. I too am skeptical in the absence of firmer evidence.

Well, this was deeply entertaining and informative, as always! I still can't believe I lucked into having someone to read reams of books for me. :DD

(I wish I could tell you guys about all the stuff I'm reading, and I wish I could update our awesome chronology document. My Trello list is getting so long that items from a month or two ago, I'm no longer even sure from my cryptic shorthand what on earth I meant to talk about. :/)

Some FW Speculation

[selenak]

Thoughts partly prompted by my reading the Beuys biography, and partly by earlier discussions: so, we have FW, son and grandson of two ladies who weren't just smart and determined but actually in charge and/or dominating in their respective domains, and son of a man who aside from pushing to be King instead of "just" Prince Elector and aside from the (admittedly immense) conflict with his father about Stepmom and the suspicion of murder prefered compromise, and definitely abided by the rules his wife set in terms of their relationship no matter whether you agree with Beuys or not on the validity of the French ambassador anecdotes. It doesn't seem to be a big leap to assume that the bad opinion FW had of the female sex in general (and promptly transmitted to his sons), which Wilhelmine reports in her memoirs early on, his "my way or nothing" determination and celebration of manliness and as much all masculine company as possible were all in reaction to this, as much as his austerity programm was in reaction to everyone else's baroque opulence. (While the last one was of course also due to the dire necessity of restoring broke Prussia's finances, the former are textbook backlash of privileged masculinity going toxic, no?)

However, I wonder whether two more things aren't also due to this upbringing, in this case not actions against it but, despite himself, following it. If our speculation that SD stopped having sex with him post August 1730 (as indicated by the lack of pregnancies thereafter as well as FW for the first time straying and going - unsuccessfully - after another woman) is correct, then he doesn't seem to have, as the euphemism for marital rape goes, tried to force his marital rights. And we do know he did not make Frau von Pannewitz pay for rejecting and punching him. Now in the later case this might have been partly because by his own standards he was clearly in the wrong there and she was behaving as a good Christian wife (tm) should, but then FW in other matters was entirely capable of overriding his own standards (ask whipped for nothing Doris Ritter), especially when angry. So I'm wondering whether the fact that in both cases, he accepted the women's right to say no to sex wasn't due to some inner buried standard from his youth.

And then there's the fact he didn't divorce SD, or locked her up. Much as she hated him, she really dreaded the divorce prospect (not least due her own backstory with her mother), which we know from letters. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying FW should be congratulated for NOT doing awful things when he did do so many other awful things. I'm just curious about the factors that might have caused him drawing the line there. A Protestant divorce, unlike a Catholic annulment, would not have illegitimized his male offspring. SD's father did it to her mother while still keeping future G2 as heir without a problem. And from his pov, certainly his life would have been easier - and the chances of him being the sole influence on his son(s) greater - if, after several years of marital battle showed SD would never give up her English alliance idea - if he'd have done the despote thing of putting her in some remote castle somewhere. (Küstrin or Stettin come to mind.) Again, see SD's father, and see also, for that matter, Wilhelmine's father-in-law doing just this to his wife. Yes, SD didn't offer him the excuse of adultery, but he already thought (correctly) she was conspiring against him with foreign amabassadors, and this is FW; he certainly could have done it without anyone in his own country making much of a protest. (I assume brother G2 might have done a token protest, but I don't see him going to the baricades for her.) Even when he's ranting at Fritz during the August 1731 submission and painting a "what if" scenario, Wilhelmine is the one getting the imaginary prison away from sun or moon. SD gets unspecifically made very unhappy. Now both daughter and wife are in his complete social power... but I think the difference is that daughters aren't covered by childhood impressions. Wives and mothers are. Maybe that's the difference?

Re: Some FW Speculation

[mildred_of_midgard]

If our speculation that SD stopped having sex with him post August 1730 (as indicated by the lack of pregnancies thereafter as well as FW for the first time straying and going - unsuccessfully - after another woman) is correct, then he doesn't seem to have, as the euphemism for marital rape goes, tried to force his marital rights.

*nod* The lack of pregnancies could be due to reduced fertility, but the not getting any, if we're correct, does suggest that she said no and he respected that, at least eventually. Because even if she was fully menopausal, Old Testament God let Sarah have a late-in-life pregnancy, so even if FW didn't believe in non-reproductive sex, he could have rationalized sex with a post-menopausal woman if he wanted to force the issue.

The last kid being born just 2.5 months before the big escape attempt did make me suspicious once you pointed it out.

Hmm. Looking at the birth years of their kids:

1707/08?
1709
1710
1711
1712
1714
1716
1717/18?
1719
1720
1722
1726
1730

Either fertility or marital relations or both broke down in the 1720s. I mean, there's the obvious first few years of trying desperately for a male heir who doesn't immediately die, but even after the 5 kids in 5 years, there's 6 more kids in 10 years, and then...2 kids in 8 years. It doesn't escape me that 1726-1730 is the height of the double marriage war. (Hmm. What was going on in August 1729?)

she was behaving as a good Christian wife (tm) should, but then FW in other matters was entirely capable of overriding his own standards (ask whipped for nothing Doris Ritter), especially when angry.

On the one hand, we could point out that Doris, though sexually innocent (per Dickens), was consorting with wretched son (tm) and accepting gifts (Fritz spending money! the horror!) during the time leading up to the escape, so I think that's much easier for FW to justify as misbehavior even if she's a virgin. Duhan got locked up for helping obtain the secret library, even though, as far as I know, he was innocent of involvement in the escape.

On the other hand, as you've repeatedly pointed out, the number of men who would accept Pannewitz's refusal like that is low enough that it does call for *some* explanation that FW would.

So I'm wondering whether the fact that in both cases, he accepted the women's right to say no to sex wasn't due to some inner buried standard from his youth.

And that's entirely plausible!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying FW should be congratulated for NOT doing awful things when he did do so many other awful things. I'm just curious about the factors that might have caused him drawing the line there.

Understood, and I share the curiosity and desire to seek an explanation.

Even when he's ranting at Fritz during the August 1731 submission and painting a "what if" scenario

Which, btw, is very helpful for my fix-it fic where Fritz does escape. Thanks, FW! (I guess.)

Now both daughter and wife are in his complete social power... but I think the difference is that daughters aren't covered by childhood impressions. Wives and mothers are. Maybe that's the difference?

Could be! It seems very plausible to me. And as someone (Hinrichs?) pointed out, FW may have hated everything his father stood for, but he still stubbornly did the dutiful son thing right up through the lavish funeral, at which point the "your new master bids you go to hell" began.

So dutiful son obeys father's wishes, dutiful husband doesn't lock up wife, dutiful father expects 100% perfect obedience from children all the time, and does whatever is necessary to break their wills. Including if the pastors say forcing one's daughter into marriage is a no go.

Fritz: The Disney version.

[selenak]

Brought to you by me watching one more Disney film due to having one month access to Disney plus.

Well, why not, given what Disney did to the Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Little Mermaid, both truly tragic stories in the original. And those are just the animated movies.

Funny animal sidekick: Biche, of course. (Sorry, other dogs.) Biche arrives several years too early, historical speaking, but never mind history, it's Disney. Folichon can come, too. Katte probably has his own funny animal sidekick, a horse.

"I want" song: Fritz early on, wanting music, travel, literature and not as much chicanery as a Disney movie will allow to be shown.

The villain: Sorry, Grumbkow and Seckendorf. This is Disney, which means Fritz' bio dad can't be so awful that the tearful reconciliation doesn't work. Therefore, FW's worst actions (those that survive into Disney-dom, that is) are retconned to be your actions, on behalf of MT's Dad the Emperor Charles, who gets transformed into an ominous shadowy supervillain hardly seen and out to destroy Prussia. Grumbkow & Seckendorf do most of the on screen villainous action by manipulating:

The ambigous character: FW, who of course does not have Katte executed but realises the truth at the last moment so Katte can be saved from beheading and Fritz freed by a valiant team effort, since the executioner works for G & S. Cue tearful "I love you, son!" reconciliation and all the Hohenzollern hugging and exclaiming "family is everything!". In the tag scene, we'll see young Fritz declaring he'll deal with the Evil Austrian Empire behind it all in the sequel.

Villain death by falling from somewhere high: Grumbkow and Seckendorf, in a duel with Fritz and Katte in the grand action finale on the walls of Küstrin

Love story: Disney's first movie with an official gay couple, if made today/slightly into the future. If we're talking golden age Disney, they'll probably go for Fritz/Doris Ritter and Katte/Wilhelmine.

Big action sequence other than the finale: Fritz' almost escape, beefed up to a hair-raising escape riding sequence only stopped at the very last minute by Grumbkow shouting they have Katte.

Big Villain song: G-S-Emperor trio "No power but mine/That boy must die!"

Big dance sequence: the Prussian soldiers exercising gets transformed into something like the opening sequence of West Side Story. FW looks on with a beaming smile.

Re: Fritz: The Disney version.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hee! This was fun.

I have to admit I'm now imagining the even more unhistorical version where Fritz's real dad is dead, and FW is the scheming uncle who gets thrown off a cliff and torn apart by hyenas at the end, just for my own personal satisfaction. But yours is much more like what Disney would actually put together!

I'm still laughing at Katte's sidekick horse.

Villain death by falling from somewhere high: Grumbkow and Seckendorf, in a duel with Fritz and Katte in the grand action finale on the walls of Küstrin

I'm in favor! They can land in the Oder and their bodies be carried far, far away.

Fritz + Katte forever.

Big dance sequence: the Prussian soldiers

Potsdam Giants! :D

ETA: Biche arrives several years too early, historical speaking

Worth pointing out that Fritz reused dog names! I don't know that he reused Biche specifically, but he definitely did Alcmene, and if the 19th century traveler who could still read the now weathered doggy gravestones is to be trusted, others as well.

[selenak]

And apparently he became a page for AW "after the peace," which I'm guessing is the peace of December 1745, so late 1746 was just possible. And Lehndorff wasn't around to report until 1748, right?

Yes indeed, and presumably if he didn't like Reisewitz at school, he didn't keep in contact and lost sight of him until they both ended up in Heinrich's circle.

Especially since, didn't Ziebura say Heinrich flattered Fritz in an entirely uncharacteristic way to get Kalckreuth a promotion during the Seven Years' War?

So she did, and he did. Leaving aside Fritz having a praise kink in general, I assume that since Heinrich usually didn't feed it, stuff like this was doubly effective.

re: Marwitz - his age (as documented by the Obelisk) was one big reason why we thought Obelisk Quartermaster Marwitz and Page Marwitz could not be identical, until Henckel delivered the identification in his journal. (Especially since due to Fritz' dated letters we do know when exactly the big climax happened.) Now, I see German wiki refers to Marwitz as a "Kammerjunker", not a page, and this would solve the age problem. For Lehndorf, who didn't witness the events of early 1746 himself but only learned about them later, and writers a diary entry in early 1757 for his own benefit and no other reader, it probably wasn't that important which rank Marwitz held during the Carnival of 1746; he knew Marwitz had started out as a page to Fritz, and so assumed this would have been it.

The only fly in this otherwise perfect ointment is that the same wiki entry says Marwitz was Heinrich's Kammerjunker, and he wasn't. (That he worked for Fritz is part of the point, wiki!) The citation wiki gives for this is Ziebura's Heinrich biography, but I don't think Ziebura gives Marwitz another rank than page during the relevant time span, either. Or maybe she does in later editions? Remember, I have read the first edition which is the one the Stabi has, and it does have at least the mistake about who the "empress" Wilhelmine meets is.

[mildred_of_midgard]

The only fly in this otherwise perfect ointment is that the same wiki entry says Marwitz was Heinrich's Kammerjunker, and he wasn't.

Not necessarily a fly. While it would, of course, be nice to have actual evidence of a different rank, an explanation for it (Lehndorff writing 10+ years after the fact about events he wasn't present for concerning someone he's not close to) suffices.

Or maybe she does in later editions?

I just checked the updated edition (which is in our very secret library if you ever want to access it), and I'm not seeing either a different rank than page or the word Kammerjunker anywhere in the volume (per search function).

I think our ointment is acceptable, pending further evidence.

Looking back through Ziebura, I am reminded that she says that Heinrich accused Marwitz of intriguing against Ferdinand and broke up with him. Do we know what her source for that is? Is it in Henckel?

Daddykink for iberiandoctor

[mildred_of_midgard]

Now, daddykink is not my thing (mentor/protege is), but when I read

the restrained Classical daddykink mentor/protege vibe of Fritz/Suhm

I had to laugh, because when Suhm writes to Fritz in 1736 that he's been so sick he almost died, Fritz writes:

What! my dear Suhm, your days, which are of infinite value to me, have been threatened! What! premature death would have hindered the effects of my recognition and the effectiveness of my good intentions! No, Heaven, which loves and commands the duties of virtue, did not want to take away an opportunity to be grateful. Live, my dear Suhm, live, since Heaven allows it; live for your friends, who, by the true attachment which they have for you, could not support the appalling thought of being separated from you. I admit and understand that you only had to expect, in the last period when you touched, only the rewards with which Heaven crowns virtue, and that thus, as regards yourself, you lose more by prolonging your days than ending your career. But, my dear Suhm, do not forget the tenderness which you owe to an infant whom you have not yet weaned in the school of philosophy. What would I have become? for I feel that I need your eyes to see, and that, losing sight of my guide, I run the risk of losing my way.

:D

Re: Daddykink for iberiandoctor

[iberiandoctor]

...see, I did in fact completely miss this. It's a response to my AO3 comment on the Fritz/Fredersdorf fic, or was it one of my comments here on dw? It definitely sounds like me, anyway.

But, my dear Suhm, do not forget the tenderness which you owe to an infant whom you have not yet weaned in the school of philosophy. What would I have become?

He weaned him on something, all right, like all good daddies would XD

He ain't heavy

[selenak]

Having spent several days in Saxony this week, I also visited Königstein Castle, where they have the very special big scales where August the Strong got himself and his guests of honor weighted. And thus I can report Fritz' weight in the year 1728, fully clothed, was 64 kilo. (FW was 108.) Sadly, I don't know his height by heart, but I fully expect Mildred to know it.

Re: He ain't heavy

[cahn]

That is awesome!

White Eagle Order

[selenak]

So, remember that both Fritz and Katte admitted in their interrogation that Fritz used the White Eagle medal given to him by August(us) the Strong to make some cash by selling off individual gems from it? This is what it looked like:

Re: White Eagle Order

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ooh, this is so neat! I love having a visual. Thank you so much for this!

Poor Fritz. :(

Lovers lying two and two

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'm going to have to spread out my discussion of our fics, but I'll start the threads tonight. :)

So partway through the writing of this fic, I popped back into a quiet thread and started asking specific questions about Lehndorff, Heinrich, and Lehndorff's One Who Got Away. Then, selenak, you started volunteering quotes and dates and page numbers in case we needed them for any reason.

We immediately concluded that you knew there was a Lehndorff fic in the works for you. :) And I did incorporate the altar in Lehndorff's heart to Heinrich as a direct result of you sharing the quote, In pagan times, they would have made him a god, in our time, all who know him build altars to him in their hearts.

I also tried to strike a balance between Lehndorff as Protestant and Lehndorff as chill and open-minded. I figured if his hero Heinrich could have pagan rituals at an altar, Lehndorff could go along with the practice in a secular, symbolic way.

One question I couldn't ask without tattooing "Hi! I'm writing a Lehndorff fic" on my metaphorical forehead and that I'm dying to know the answer to: did Lehndorff at any point in his life that you know of use a cane? I left out all references to canes, but it's been bugging me that I just don't know if I should put one in.

Re: Lovers lying two and two

[mildred_of_midgard]

The way this fic came to be was, in its own way, as much of a hilarious surprise (to me) as the multitude of Christmas 1732 fics. There was even some interplay with those two.

selenak, you linked me to the tagset with all the pairings you'd nominated. Shortly thereafter, your DW letter showed up on my reading page with mentions of Peter Keith, and no list of pairings you'd requested. I concluded that you had requested all the pairings.

"Great!" I thought. I had a Fritz/Peter WIP lying around I could dust off and finish. So I did that, cahn betaed, and we were putting the finishing touches on it when, June 9, I went and looked at the actual request on AO3.

Disaster! Not only had you not *requested* Fritz/Peter (I'm guessing you nominated these other pairings because if someone had requested them, you were prepared to write them?), but the exchange rules said a treat had to be for a fandom, pairing, and medium the recipient had requested.

So I concluded that I couldn't give you this Fritz/Peter as a treat.

This is when I emailed cahn, on June 9, to say:
1) I'm going to have to focus on Fritz/Fredersdorf, because I can't give Selena Fritz/Peter.
2) Cahn, I need you to also focus on your own Fritz/Fredersdorf, in case I can't finish mine in time, like at Yuletide!
3) A truly ambitious person would expand Fritz/Peter to include Peter/Lehndorff and Lehndorff/Heinrich, but I don't think I'm up for that.

On the morning of June 10, I emailed cahn to say:

1) I wrote 4,000 words of Fritz/Fredersdorf yesterday! I think this fic is happening!
2) I have ideas for Peter/Lehndorff and Lehndorff/Heinrich!

On the evening of June 10, I emailed cahn to say:
1) I wrote 5,000 words of Peter/Lehndorff and Lehndorff/Heinrich today to add to my Fritz/Peter!
2) Thank goodness yesterday was the day I uploaded the chronology, because Selena added reams of Lehndorff and Heinrich info that I desperately need.

The timing of the chronology was a total accident¹, as I'd been working on that for a week before I realized I couldn't give you the pure Fritz/Peter fic I'd planned.

Meanwhile, cahn was emailing me back that she had written incest and was having Christmas 1732 ideas, and that our conversation was waking up her muses and she thought she might have both ready in time. Please observe her notes to that fic on AO3: "Many thanks to my betas for pushing me to write this encouragement." :P She wasn't kidding!

Hilariously, now that I've seen you give iberiandoctor a treat in a fandom she didn't even request, I see the rules were more lax than I'd thought. (I remembered when you tried to give me a "Katte lives" treat in the main Yuletide collection and weren't allowed.)

But without my strict interpretation of the rules, I would likely not have expanded Fritz/Peter into the multi-ship work it became, and I wouldn't have been pushing cahn so hard for the joint Fritz/Fredersdorf effort with me, and I might not have finished my own Fritz/Fredersdorf. I was just so determined to get you at least ONE treat after I decided Fritz/Peter was disqualified. So I'm glad it worked out that way!

Which in turn leads me to this remark in your comment:

Lehndorff's pov is also an excellent way of easing a reader into Peter's situation and backstory, and to me more effective than if you'd started with Peter's pov right away.

I found it hilarious and a little spooky that you should mention this, because it was originally a Peter-only POV fic, and was basically finished as such. On June 9, when I made the discovery that a Fritz/Peter fic was a no-go, the fic was mostly done except for the struggles cahn and I were still having with the opening. We tried and tried and could not get it to where either of us was satisfied with that part.

Only the next day, when I decided this had to be a Peter and Lehndorff fic at heart, did it occur to me that Lehndorff was the right opening POV. I was so excited when I realized that that would work better. And the first thing cahn did when she read that draft was comment how much better the exposition for Peter's situation and backstory worked from Lehndorff's POV and how much she was digging this change.

So it's as if you said, "Hey, this is so much better than your first several drafts. :)" and I'm thinking, "...Why yes, but how did you know?" ;)

Then cahn was of great help while I tried to unite all these disjointed ships spread out over 25+ years into a single fic. I think of the resulting structure as a horseshoe: two parallel bands consisting of Fritz/Peter + Fritz/Fredersdorf + Peter with wife and kids and Heinrich/Lehndorff + Heinrich/Mara + Lehndorff with wife and kids, with Peter/Lehndorff as the bridge uniting them.

The fact that both my fics ended up having strong marriage themes was a total accident, but I think I'm pleased that we ended up with Fritz's forced marriage and Fritz forcing a marriage on Heinrich, plus the happy (if sometimes tragic) Lehndorff and Keith marriages.

If you hadn't prompted for Lehndorff getting mentored by his slight crush Peter Keith, I don't think this fic would have come to be, so thank you! You also, of course, helped me plot it out back in the day.

You even worked in Lehndorff's One Who Got Away and the bonding with Keith over Kattes.

I remember you wanted this, and at the time we were chatting, I was a bit "ack!" at the thought of them discussing that, because my headcanon is that Peter is not resentful so much as horribly insecure about the Kattes. But positioning the mentoring well *after* the big conversation with Fritz, so that Peter no longer believes that Fritz thinks he should have died, allowed me to work the Katte bonding in. It still stings a little for Peter, but it's not an open wound any more. Which leads me to:

And as for Friedrich's gratitude, he had that too.

Now that the misunderstanding has been cleared up, he knows he does, and you make a great case.

He does, intellectually, but this is also Peter making the case to *himself*, because emotionally he still feels like the also-ran. He's talking himself into seeing the glass as half full, just as Lehndorff later does by reminding himself that Heinrich's boyfriends come and go.

Which was kind of the moral of the story. And now that I think of it, the other fic I wrote as well: building a new life for yourself and making the most of it when you can't be with the one you love.

Oh, back when this was a Fritz/Peter story that was only about them clearing up the big misunderstanding, I knew that I'd have zero anonymity even if I didn't have a writing style that you could recognize, because that's my headcanon for what really happened. (Not the conversation, sadly. I don't think communication between them was that good, not to mention the unlikely kiss. But the mutual misunderstanding seems very likely.)

¹: What wasn't an accident, in case you're wondering, is that after months of expressing longing for the Peter Keith eulogy, I turned it up on June 1. I suddenly got a looot more motivated. :P

With You, There's a Heaven

[mildred_of_midgard]

I still can't stop laughing my head off over the fact that three of us decided to cover Fritz/Fredersdorf in the same time period. cahn and I both did Christmas 1732 (thank you, Wilhelmine!), and selenak covered a somewhat longer time period, including but not limited to Christmas 1732.

This and "How I Survived My First Christmas with the Hohenzollerns" came about because:

- I had a Fritz/Suhm WIP already written that was based around Suhm shipping Fritz/Fredersdorf. It included him offering to do the French/German glosses for them (which is obviously an allusion to his translation of Wolff for Fritz a few years later).

- I needed to build some Fritz/Fredersdorf around that core, but was blanking on plot.

- I remembered cahn's very secret diary and decided it was perfect!

- I asked her if I could borrow some ideas.

- She generously agreed, but said that she'd already written a couple scenes and might want to turn it into a real fic someday. She said we could call it a remix.

- I both wanted to read her fic, which I was convinced would be awesome, and to make sure you got a treat, selenak, in case I wasn't able to finish in time (health being what it is). So I proposed we both do our best to try to write it. Best case: two fics! Worst case: you'd have a shot at getting at least *one* treat.

- Her response: "Great idea! But first I have to write hateshippy incest, because now that I've seen your idea about comfort sex/hate sex, I CAN'T UNSEE IT."

As we were getting close to being done with our fics, iberiandoctor reported that there was a Fritz/Fredersdorf in the collection. cahn thought it was mine at first! But I told her mine wasn't quite ready yet, and I was sure it was yours and it was a gift for iberiandoctor. My reasoning? While it's unlikely but not impossible that somebody random might write Fritz/Fredersdorf, nobody's going to write Suhm unless they've been hanging out with me. :P

Most of all, I am still SHOCKED I wasn't the first person to tag Suhm on AO3! I was so sure "With You, There's a Heaven" was going to be it!

And I'm just so grateful, since even though I didn't sign up for the exchange, I consider all fics with Suhm to be gifts for me, in the same way your "Katte lives" fic is a gift for me in my heart.

*sparkly hearts*

Oh, cahn and I then spent a fair amount of time trying to make sure the two Christmas 1732 fics you were going to receive at the same time would complement, not repeat, each other.

We tried to fit them into the same universe, but couldn't quite, so they're very close parallel universes.

And then we read yours, and it had some amazingly close parallels itself, though of course it was the most different, as well as being the slashiest (omg that ending, thank you for that ending).

This exchange has been the best! We knew you knew you were getting a fic, but we were pretty sure we could still surprise you with the fact that you were getting FOUR. And I remain very pleased with the surprise that *I* got one. ;)

Re: With You, There's a Heaven - Suhm

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wherever it's darkest, you let the light through."

Terrific and touching explanation for the Diaphanes nickname!

AAAHHH you picked up on this! I put it in there knowing no one else would, and very much hoping you would. :DD

That's my headcanon for the nickname. I know most of Fritz's friends got silly or random or obvious nicknames, but this one is so obscure, with different historians putting forth different speculations, that I could do what I wanted, and I want something that's meaningful. And Blanning says Fritz was really big on light/dark metaphors as part of the whole Enlightenment thing. So this was perfect.

I didn't spell out that it was a nickname for two reasons. One, I couldn't make it fit as anything but a tangent. Two, I *do* have it spelled out in my fix-it fic¹, and on the off chance that I ever finish it, I want to keep it there.

Until I got to this scene, it hadn't occurred to me that this would have been likely the first they met since before Katte's death.

I can't be sure it was, but it seems likely.

June 1730: Zeithain camp. Fritz and Katte are there. *Surely* Suhm is, short of being deathly ill.

1730, mid-July: Fritz leaves on the trip west with FW.

Rest of 1730: Fritz tries to run away, gets locked up.

November 1731: Fritz let out for the first time, to attend Wilhelmine's wedding. Now, maybe he met Suhm on this occasion, but Suhm wasn't in Berlin full time, I believe, and Fritz was still under house arrest and being watched like a hawk, so if they did meet, it might have been brief and supervised.

November 1732: Fritz's next visit to Berlin? Where was he when he got engaged to EC and met FS?

Anyway, there's at least a decent chance November 1732 was his first meeting with Suhm, especially with Suhm coming and going between Berlin and Dresden, and Fritz under supervision. I'm assuming that as time went on, his leash gradually got longer.

As for why they meet at Suhm's place and not at court...Pfff, I can come up with all sorts of in-universe explanations, but the real reason is I wanted Suhm to feed him and touch him like FW's not in the picture. :P Especially since Wilhelmine is freaking out about the marriage and Fritz can't talk about Fredersdorf to anyone else. I figured Suhm isn't deeply traumatized, isn't dependent on Fritz for his emotional well-being, and only sees him rarely, so it's easier for him to consistently present a supportive front without letting his own emotions get in the way.

As great as Fritz confiding in Suhm about Fredersdorf was, I adore Fritz telling Fredersdorf this even more; such a psychologically plausible detail that gets Fredersdorf to make the step, asking the question.

Aww, yay, thank you for telling me this. I wanted them to have a catalyst, because there are just too many forces ranged against them as far as becoming lovers.

Finally...

the noble Suhm, who is old enough to be the Prince’s father, practically has stars in his eyes when talking to the Prince.

Not from my fic, but I'm still squeeing over this, thank you so much. SPARKLY HEARTS.

^1: Funnily enough, back in May, all my "Can't study German, must write fix-it fic!" really did start out about the fix-it fic. Then you signed up for the exchange, and I pretended for a while that I was still working on that fic. Then I started asking very specific Lehndorff questions and the jig was up. :P I still hope to go back to that fic at some point, but I'm trying to do some German first.

"How I Survived..." and "A Family Affair"

[cahn]

...sadly, it's my turn to be having some hand/shoulder issues from too much computer stuff (I can't imagine why :P ...well actually, it probably has more to do with pandemic and my entire life moving online than fic in particular :PP ) This has happened before and usually doing PT exercises helps it clear up, so we'll see.

So I won't be saying too much, at least not right now, but I just wanted to say that as I'm sure you knew, selenak, mildred betaed both of these and in addition to coming up with a LOT of random plot/character ideas and fixes, hopefully also fixed my seventeen billion historical mistakes (thank you!!), though if any remain please let us know and we'll fix them :D The best correction, which I'm still laughing about, is that at one point I had Fritz's breeches off of him and Mildred informed me that this would have been hard to do (in the rapid timescale of the fic). Historically accurate clothing mechanics in porn for the win! In addition, sprocket betaed "Survived" and fixed the structure so the thing actually flows properly (thank you!!)

I am totally blaming your (Selena's and Mildred's) discussion of Fritz/Heinrich a couple of months ago for "Affair," though :PP I swear I had not given it all that much thought beforehand (okay, maybe a little when reading selena's Marwitz fic) but that remark about how Heinrich thought it was hatesex and Fritz thought it was comfortsex -- like mildred says, I COULDN'T UNSEE IT.

The last section and first section of "Survived" were actually written at the same time I wrote Fredersdorf's Very Secret Diary, when you asked for it with that title, Selena. I had always wanted to write the less crack-filled, more servant-centric version for you, but lost my nerve and went for crack instead. Anyhow, I had always meant to write it, but I guess needed that extra push from mildred :P

Re: "How I Survived..." and "A Family Affair"

[selenak]

I feel very guilty now for having caused you both so much physical pain in the service of my presents! But still delighted beyond measure about having them!

at one point I had Fritz's breeches off of him and Mildred informed me that this would have been hard to do (in the rapid timescale of the fic

Undressing as well as dressing: required serious job skills, hence valets and chamber women. :) Your story took Mildred's "hatesex vs comfortsex perception" and ran with it, and a great time was had by all. Also, you're an incest pairing pioneer now! Truly, you rock.

And "Survived" was just lovely, with the original diary entries'hilarity enriched by lots of adorable detail. (Including people called Karl and Emil.)

Learning Frederick

[selenak]

Here I was, happily exhausted from a certain other project Mildred and Cahn know about, and also having managed my RMSE assignment. (Which, btw, also features one half of the pairing with a volatile temper and strong musical opinions. g*) I had a bit of free room before returning to the other project, and also some ideas about Fritz/Fredersdorf: The Early Days that didn't fit with any of the other story ideas I had which I've been meaning to save for next Yuletide. (To wit, "Fritz gets captured during the 7 Years War" AU and "Rokoko Adventures in Babysitting".) And I recalled iberiandoctor saying Fredersdorf was her favourite -dorf. Well, thought I, I can do short fic! I can!

I decided to make it an unofficial "five things" tale, a format I'm comfortable with and did in several fandoms, and divide it by theme to cover several aspects of Fredersdorf's new life with Fritz and his moving, as Mildred put it in a comment, from the valet role into the Pepper Potts role with Fritz. Because clearly, one of the big things Fredesdorf would have to discover was that the Hohenzollern are all bonkers, the 1732/33 winter holidays had to be included, which means they became the most written about event of the exchange. :) (Totally worth it, though.) Otoh, it was also clear from the start that this would be a relatively angst-light story. (Where I could also include my theory as to why Fredersdorf either didn't learn French or at least pretended not to speak it.) T

hough because of the difference in rank, and Fritz still building himself back together, I needed something that would push Fredersdorf to dare making an overture, and the combination of Suhm and then, in the last section, nightmare-having Fritz did nicely.

Re: Learning Frederick

[mildred_of_midgard]

The Early Days that didn't fit with any of the other story ideas I had which I've been meaning to save for next Yuletide. (To wit, "Fritz gets captured during the 7 Years War" AU and "Rokoko Adventures in Babysitting".)

Oh, nice! I was hoping Fritz-capture was still on your list, but I didn't realize/remember babysitting was in the works for Yuletide! If either or both of these show up in the collection, I will have NO idea who wrote them, just like every other time one of your fics appears. :D

I needed something that would push Fredersdorf to dare making an overture, and the combination of Suhm and then, in the last section, nightmare-having Fritz did nicely.

The parallels still delight me. Not only do you and I have Suhm pushing Fredersdorf to make the overture and cahn has Fouqué, but you and cahn have Fritz's nightmares (which she apparently forgot were canonical!), and you and cahn have strikingly similar lines in your respective final scenes that I was goggling at during my liveblog at her:

“I just. I need --” And he stopped there, as if any other words would be too much for him.

„I need…“ Friedrich begins, teeth chattering as if it was cold right now, not downright sweltering. „I need…“ He doesn’t finish the sentence.

Clearly, this is how it happened! Fritz said, "I need--" and Fredersdorf figured it out and made the first move.

Btw, for all that I'm sure Fritz made the first move with Peter Keith and Katte, by the time Fredersdorf came along, my headcanon is that he absolutely needed someone else to make the first move. Since Fredersdorf is in such a constrained position, I think it makes sense that we all three gave him a catalyst to go through with it!

Speaking of parallels, I chuckled over the way both you and I included Fritz's tastes in spicy food. I think it's great that your Fredersdorf, just getting to know Fritz, tries his food and has an OMGWTF moment (lesson learned!), and my Suhm, who's known him forever, is like, "No, no, it's all yours," with some excuse about his touchy stomach. :P

Oh, and another one I liveblogged, a parallel between you and cahn:

Now on the one hand, Fredersdorf should be glad that the Prince has a good friend drawn to him only by affection, who, since he’s not a Prussian citizen, isn’t in danger of being killed by the Prince’s father any time soon. But on the other, well, when Suhm is around, Friedrich spends a lot of time with him. An extraordinary amount of time, while Fredersdorf can only talk with him in haste doing his valet duties.

and

Friedrich sighed a little and put his head on Fouqué’s shoulder.

I had all kinds of complicated feelings about this, which I squashed down, as they were of course completely irrelevant to the situation. I was mostly happy that there was something positive in Prince Friedrich’s life, of course.

Imagine if I hadn't advocated for Fouqué and that still said Suhm. :D

The Mara Stradivari

[mildred_of_midgard]

While researching Mara for "Lovers lying two and two", and not being able to admit I was researching Mara, I ran across this article about his cello.

High points:

- Made in 1711.
- Johanna Mara its first known owner.
- Mara was accused by contemporaries of playing too fast.
- Also accused of beating his wife Schmeling when drunk.
- Apparently spilled some alcohol on the cello, which left streaks where the varnish was removed, still visible in 1902.
- Schmeling left him in 1799 (the year of Mara's visit to Heinrich).
- After she stopped paying his expenses, he was so short on money he had to sell his cello in 1802.
- He died 6 years later.
- The cello went down on a sinking ferry boat in Argentina in 1963, but it was miraculously retrieved in its case and reassembled from pieces.

You can see pictures of both the whole instrument and what it looked like in fragments in the article.

You can also listen to it here!

Oh, that reminds me! cahn is the best music beta. We had this exchange:

mildred_of_midgard:

Oh, and if you do happen to have any ideas for one or two sentences about how to make cello playing sexy, I'm all ears. :D

cahn

LOLOLOLOL so first I was like "ooh easy cello playing is sexy" and then I was like "WAIT I'm thinking about Romantic cello music, what did Classical period cello sound like" and then I had to listen to a bunch of recordings to figure out what would be appropriate for a period sound, lol. You historically accurate people are rubbing off on me! Is Mara playing a solo (e.g. Bach cello suites) or as part of an ensemble?

Someting like this, maybe?

Mara bent over his cello, his long fingers coaxing deep sounds from the instrument. Heinrich felt the pressure of each bow stroke as if it were against his skin.

Sorry that I had not figured out that you could listen to his very instrument when I asked that question! But now here's a musical RMSE treat. :D

Btw, I only tweaked her suggested passage in the fic--she is responsible for its existence!

Re: The Mara Stradivari

[cahn]

Wow, that's beautiful! Poltera, and his cello, are amazing. (Also the Bach cello suites! :D )

Poltera actually plays in a modern way, which tends to use rather more vibrato (mildred, in case you don't know, vibrato is when he's, well, rapidly vibrating his finger back and forth, which makes a "sweeter" kind of sound), and also I believe the composition of the strings back then was different (gut core then vs. metal core now) and made a less "round," resonant sound (sorry, I am terrible at describing sounds, I don't know how to say it better than that). But anyway, that is a gorgeous cello.

Oh! Here is someone playing the same Bach suite movement Baroque style, with (I believe) gut strings. You can hear/see that although she does use vibrato, she uses less of it and more as ornamentation for specific notes at ends of phrases than the modern tendency to use it much more commonly as Poltera does. (Also the tuning is a little different!) Because I am a modern listener, I find his version more viscerally moving, but I also think hers is extremely impressive (probably more so; vibrato can cover small playing inconsistencies, so without it you really have to be Right On) and love it just as much. In any case it's no wonder Heinrich fell for that, I would too!

Oh, selenak, when I said cello playing was sexy I was of course thinking of a certain cello solo in Don Carlo that every time makes me go from "Philip is the worst!" to "...but I feel so much for him!!" I am a sucker for Romantic cello solos!

Also, I think music is the only fandom-related subject that I can actually talk about with more authority than you two, so I am feeling the pressure to be accurate when I can! :)

Servants - part 1

[mildred_of_midgard]

As part of the research for "How I Survived My First Christmas with the Hohenzollerns", cahn and I split the costs for a book called Domestic Enemies: Servants and Their Masters in Old Regime France, and I read and summarized parts of it for her!

There were way more parts that I thought were interesting, but due to limited computer time, I will copy-paste what I emailed her for now, and will at some point get around to summarizing or at least copy-pasting the best parts from the rest of the book. But for now, here's the email I sent (in two parts because comment length restrictions).

You will notice that I'm addressing very specific historical beta questions she had. Please weigh in on any opinions, additional evidence, or counterevidence you may have. In many cases, I'm blatantly speculating and even throwing my hands up, because of the perennial "FW is sui generis" problem.

---

Caveat that this is France, but I'll try to make allowances for both Prussia and FW when answering your specific questions.

Oh, the author is a history professor, and it's full of notes and charts and graphs and data and stuff, and reliance on primary sources. I don't promise it's all correct or representative, or that I would agree with her interpretations of everything if I went through the data myself, but it's a promising start. (Totally worth our combined $10!)

Dragooning Fredersdorf: Yes!
"From gentlemanly secretary to lowly servante: this then was the servant hierarchy in seventeenth- and early eighteenth -century households. But we should not take either the status distinctions or the division of labor it implied too seriously. For Old Regime French households were not like English country houses of the nineteenth century, where each servant's task was strictly delimited (at Hatfield House servants' duties were spelled out in printed regulations), and the lady's maid would have felt insulted had she been asked to clean the parlor. Instead, memoirs show that even specialized servants often stepped outside their usual roles. Valets de chambre cooked for their employers when the need arose; cooks were summoned from the kitchen to run errands when no one else was available; a mere lackey who caught his master's fancy might be asked to play the role of valet de chambre and read to his employer or amuse his guests."

I feel comfortable translating this to FW's household.

Where does Fredersdorf sleep? Depends.
Either in a small room adjoining Fritz's so as to be on call 24/7, or in the servants' quarters. If in the servants' quarters, in France it would be a dormitory separated by gender, and the room would probably be filled with just beds. Servants might have beds of their own or might have to share a bed with other servants. FW is no doubt trying to save money, so servants probably have to share beds. But the author points out that a bed of one's own would be a luxury to someone from a peasant background anyway (which I already knew).

Fritz was allowed to have the servant who shaved him sleep with him even in Küstrin, except for the very strictest part of his confinement, so I assume FW would let Fredersdorf sleep with/near him at court. But if you want Fredersdorf with the other servants, you could have someone else sleeping with Fritz and Fredersdorf not having gotten that promotion yet (it's only been a year).

Where does Fredersdorf eat? Kitchen.
In a French nobleman's establishment, in a very specific kitchen. In FW's world, I kind of doubt he's paying for a separate room that has to be especially heated, just to produce desserts, so probably just the only kitchen.

But since I found the bit about multiple kitchens fascinating, here's what French nobles got up to:

"Most noble hôtels had at least two kitchens, the kitchen proper, where the maître d'hôtel and the cuisinier, assisted by numerous aides and garçons de cuisine, reigned supreme, and the office, domain of the officier who had charge of the household's bread, wine, silver, and linen and created its preserves, candies, liqueurs,and desserts. The office was necessary because the preparation of desserts and reserves involved sugar, which absorbs moisture readily from the air and is then useless in many recipes. Such preparations therefore had to be done away from the moist and steamy air ofthe main kitchen. The main feature of the office was an étuve, a storage space for sugar, candy, and the like, heated with a charcoal brazier to insure a constant flow of warm dry air. Because of its pleasant atmosphere, the office was the place where the households' servants ate their meals and spent their free time."

Does Fredersdorf talk to Pannewitz? Probably not, but for different reasons than I thought.
So as I said in one of my previous rambly emails, the 18th century is a transitional period for servants. They start out occupying the same physical space as their masters, maybe just hanging out in a different part of the room, eating lower at the table, but extremely visible. In this case, they interact a lot. By the 19th century, architecture is set up to keep them completely separate. In our period? It varies by decade and country.

In 17th century England, Pepys took it for granted that servants were included in their masters' games and conversations. In the late 18th century, an English visitor to Italy is shocked that the servants are behaving so improperly as to occasionally comment on what their master is saying to someone else.

In early 18th century France, lackeys are hanging out in antechambers, in the same physical space as the masters' guests, and are joining in their card games and talking to them. Are they trash talking their masters? Hopefully not often; the masters are in the next room. But are they talking about innocuous stuff, or at least having comments addressed to them? Evidently.

Late 18th century France, this is a no go.

Early 18th century Prussia? So the interesting thing here is not only that Prussia is a much less elaborate version of France. It's that FW behaves like a middle-class man (the fact that he picks out his ideal wife--EC--as someone Lehndorff says would be well suited as a burgher's wife is very telling), emphasis on privacy, intimacy, sexual fidelity, and responsible money management over public display. Fritz is an absolutely fascinating contradiction between the French style and his father's middle class style that drove contemporaries and posterity alike crazy, but in his personal life, he was known for an unusual craving for privacy compared to his contemporaries, even German ones. There's a reason Versailles has one gazillion rooms and Sanssouci had 12 people in residence, including staff, when Fritz wasn't entertaining important guests.

So you're going to simultaneously see Fritz and FW putting their lives less on public display in front of servants, and doing more things that servants would do, which will lead to both more and less mingling with servants.

Then there's SD, who's trying to be all French, all the way. So she might really want a lot of lackeys standing around looking good in her room, and they might then have a chance to mingle with the guests. But! The antechamber is for the people who haven't (yet) been admitted to the inner chamber, and they're desperately trying to get in. So I doubt Pannewitz, as a personal friend of the Queen, is often going to be left cooling her heels outside the inner circle. And if she is, if she does end up talking to Fredersdorf, it's going to be in a very public venue, so anything she says will reach the Queen.

This French arrangement is probably also when FW is not in residence, which is not the case for the Christmas visit. (Things apparently got much more French when he was away.)

So for slightly different and more decade-appropriate reasons, I'm going to go with: Pannewitz is not the person to dish out the gossip on the Hohenzollerns to Fredersdorf.

How does Fredersdorf spend his time with the other servants? Good question.
In France, he would spend it playing cards and gossiping. Including in the antechamber, where apparently, if you sat off to the side and read a book and didn't participate in the communal activities, you were snubbed forever by the other servants. Which, of course, tells you people did it (that so would have been me), but that they should take some heat for it.

In Prussia...well, SD was apparently allowed by FW to play cards as long as she pretended she was gambling for coffee beans, i.e. just playing for fun, and not gambling for high stakes. As soon as he left the room, of course, she went back to gambling like a proper royal/noblewoman of France.

Thanks to Lehndorff, we know a lot of card-playing happened among the nobility at EC's court, and she was FW-approved pious lady. So unless Selena knows something very specific about servants at FW's court in 1732 that I don't, the way for Fredersdorf to bond with the other servants is to play cards with them when he's not busy doing something else. Small problem: normal servant life in our period is typically long periods of boredom, standing around waiting on your master to need you, interspersed with briefer periods of actual activity. FW hates idleness and will beat you with his cane if he sees you being idle. How this translates to what his servants did on an hour-to-hour basis, who tf knows.

But assuming FW isn't in the room or the next room, which will be the case a lot of the time, Fredersdorf might find himself in a place where card games (licit or illicit) were taking place, needing to take part in order not to be snubbed, and wanting to gather some gossip, both for his own purposes and for Fritz's (what kind of mood is FW in, that sort of thing). Remember, servants are a useful source of gossip, and Fritz is always on the lookout for "tell me everything Dad is saying about me!" info from everyone he knows, from page Peter Keith in the 1720s to AW in the 1730s. So Fredersdorf might well be under orders to gossip with the other servants. Who can then tell him all *sorts* of things Fritz hasn't mentioned.

Servants - part 2

[mildred_of_midgard]

The second half of the email to cahn during historical beta times:

---

Everything else I thought was cool in these first 60 pages. Typed as fast as I can, hence the telegraph speech. Please forgive mistakes.

Our Period
Originally (Middle Ages), servants "domestiques" included everyone in the household, including wives and children. Live-in servants were thus also considered members of the family.

Paternalist arrangements, where servants owed their loyalty and labor to their master, who took care of their material and spiritual needs and gave them money out of the goodness of his heart, for exceptional service or in his will. Wages were thus irregular. Even when a servant was hired for wages, the master would often let payment fall into arrears for many years. Servants didn't like this, obviously, but it went along with the paternalist mindset.

In our period, the early 18th century, servants among the upper classes in France were more status symbols than practical. Lackeys spent a lot of time standing around in livery looking good, protecting their master's status in a variety of ways, not actually doing physical labor. A male servant was a sign of status, so upper classes had male-servant-dominated households, bourgeoisie had female-dominated servants. In fact, bourgeoisie often avoided hiring men, to avoid seeming like they were getting above themselves.

According to a contemporary anecdote, one Parisian miser, who didn't want to pay a servant, purchased some livery and wore it himself while parading in front of the windows, in hopes his neighbors would think he had a lackey.

Lower down the hierarchy, of course, people hired servants because they needed the extra pair of hands: in the inn, on the farm, etc.

Most emphasis in the "how to be a good servant" was *not* on how to keep the place livable. Houses, including noble establishments, in France were notably filthy, messy places. French visitors to England and the Netherlands were astonished by how things were kept clean and comfortable.

In France, nobles emphasized public life over domesticity. Servants were extremely visible, since that was their point. Less manual labor. Little family closeness: arranged marriages, spouses distant, lots of affairs, children raised by servants.

Thus, in French upper class households, lackeys spent a lot of time in the antechamber while their masters were in the chamber proper entertaining guests. The lackeys' main function was to control who got access to the chamber. Obviously, the opportunities for bribery here were rampant. See also: Fredersdorf's main job for Fritz and the reason he was often so resented! See also: foreign ambassadors speculating about his bribery potential.

Servants also in charge of going to the market, buying things, getting a good price, and doing the accounts. In many cases, they take advantage of this to fill their own purses. Kickbacks from merchants, reporting that things cost more than they did, losing this week's money, juggling the books. Embezzlement, basically.

Some masters objected, some just saw it as a perk of the job or a necessary evil. Most had had to look the other way regardless of how they felt. After all, they can't go down to the market and haggle over the price of fish themselves, not if they want to keep their status! The whole point of being rich in this period is to display to everyone that you don't have to do things yourself.

One lovely anecdote about a young man who told his tutor that if the tutor would look the other way from his peccadilloes, he'd give the tutor complete control over the household money, and then the tutor would be set for life. Implication: tutor will line his own pockets. Quid pro quo.

It was not unusual for a trusted servant to have complete control over his master's purse, and to dole out money to his master and tell him when it was getting low. In any case, doing the accounts and generally deciding how to manage money was part of a servant's job. See also: Fredersdorf becoming treasurer!

Things Change
Later on, transition to servants as employees, whose labor was a commodity for which they were entitled to pay. Increasing servants among bourgeois households. Increasing dominance of females among servants.

English emphasis on domesticity begins to spread. By the end of the 18th century, more emphasis on hiring servants to make the house more comfortable, marrying for love or at least having a closer relationship with your family after entering an arranged marriage. Bedrooms heated adequately for comfort for the first time!

More emphasis on privacy and intimacy. Instead of an extremely public and ritualized calling system, where you entertain guests in your bed or while dressing, more informal calls, more hiding of affairs, more emphasis on marital fidelity. Standards for manual labor among servants much higher now. Servants have to work all day, because time is money. No more standing around looking good so everyone knows your master is rich. Servants supposed to be more invisible, now kept physically separated. The entire architecture changes so that servants can do as much as possible their jobs without running into their masters. There are now much more servants' quarters and there's a separate staircase "backstairs" for the servants to use. Much less likely to sleep in the same room or adjoining their master's/mistress's room.

Servant becomes a much less prestigious position. "Service" now defined as housework. Everyone who isn't doing housework is now scrambling to redefine themselves as a professional instead of a servant: tutors, secretaries, musicians, etc. Wives and children no longer classed with servants! (Still subordinate, obv., but different categories of subordination.) Even cooks try to get themselves reclassified as professionals, although their success is limited, especially as the trend shifts from male cooks to female. Cooking itself also becomes less elaborate and thus less of a highly skilled job, as food is less an opportunity for conspicuous consumption than a chance to spend time alone with your family and a few close friends.

Earlier in our period, where servants slept depended on household wealth, their own status, and their master's preferences. If there wasn't room for separate quarters, the servants slept in the same space as their master. Privacy wasn't a thing for most people during this time. If there was a separate wing or floor for servants' quarters, a body servant might still sleep in the room next to their master or mistress, in case they were at night or in the early morning. If there was a separate dormitory, it was mostly a room full of beds and little else. Separated by gender, of course. Servants might get their own bed, which would be a great luxury for someone from a peasant background, or they might have to share beds with each other. Very rare skilled servants in the upper classes sometimes got their own rooms and got to furnish them, sometimes quite nicely.

The switch to separate quarters and increasing physical separation between masters and servants had pros and cons for the servants. Cons: in the olden days, your living conditions were pretty much the same as the masters'. If you were cold, they were cold. Now, separate quarters and increasing emphasis on servants not as members of the family but as housework-performing machines (this term was actually used!), and increasing emphasis on domestic comfort for the middle classes, means the masters' quarters have running water, adequate eating, etc., and the servants' quarters often don't. On the other hand, there's one more barrier between the servants and sexual abuse from the master.

It's also more isolated in the servant's quarters, in your all-day labor-intensive regimented job. In the olden days, you'd spend a lot of time hanging out in public, and in antechambers, interacting with your masters, their guests, the public, and other people's servants. You had a lot of leisure time, which you'd spend at the tavern, at fairs, in the parks, seeing your girlfriend, w/e. Once you're basically not allowed to leave the house or entertain visitors except for half a day every other Sunday or whatever, and the masters don't want to see you except when they ring a bell (this is when servants' bells become a thing: when they're not within eye-catching or shouting distance), your entire social life is the other servants. Which means a small group of people trapped with each other, which means very intense passions, both love affairs and feuds.

Re: Servants - part 2

[selenak]

Thank you for typing all this down for the rest of us to read! I hadn't come across this book before, but will see whether my libraries have it, in the long term.

Some tiny observations: re: servant's quarters and the shift to make them separate - cahn may recall a big plot point right at the start of Figaro's Wedding, which is that Susanna does not want hers and Figaro's bedroom to be so close to their master and mistresse's rooms so Almaviva has it even easier if he wants to molest her.

If either of you ever gets around to watching Farewell My Queen with Lea Seydoux - that was really filmed at Versailles and is the first movie to show so much of the "backstage" rooms which tourists usually don't see - for the servants but also for the inbetween people, like the heroine, a reader to the Queen, who technically sleeps outside the palace (Versailles was notoriously overfilled) but gets around a lot in the small floors and tiny rooms behind the scenes.

Lessing's drama Minna von Barnhelm, a ka the first German (contemporary) drama dealing with the fallout of the 7 Years War which I mentioned to you already premiered in 1767. It has two servant characters as part of the four leads - the titular Minna and Major Tellheim are the leading couple, and her lady's maid Franziska and his servant Just. Just's loyalty to Tellheim partly shows itself in his refusal to get paid (because Tellheim, through no fault of his own, is seriously in debt), and he speaks very bluntly to his master; Franziska is Minna's confidant. Both seem to live at close quarters with their master and mistress (well, Just and Tellheim can't afford anything else, but Mina could). Franziska does NOT end up with Just but with Major Werner, who used to be Tellheim's Sergeant in the war and helps bringing about the happy resolution; class wise, he's clearly above her, so that was possible (being presented as such, and not as scandalous, in a very successful comedy).

August 17

[mildred_of_midgard]

234 years ago today (since it's after midnight in Potsdam), at 2:20 am, Old Fritz died in his armchair, aged 74.

RIP, problematic fave. Have a heart-shaped potato on your grave, and a reincarnation AU where it all goes much better.

But August 17 marks not just an end, but also a beginning. On this day in 2019, cahn uttered these fateful words:

I wonder if we should invite selenak!

The following day, August 18, three-way conversations began, and all of our lives were changed for the better.

<3333 to you both!

Second most fateful words uttered in this fandom, as I never get tired of pointing out:

OK... tell me more about Lehndorff? So I know from your previous posts that he was EC's chamberlain and Heinrich's friend-with-benefits and had a diary... did he write about Heinrich in his diary??

:D

Clearly cahn knows a good thing when she sees it!

Re: August 17

[selenak]

cahn has the unerring instinct of a pathfinder in the wilderness, a gold seeker in Alaska, a Fritz in search of serious boyfriends! All hail to thee, most kind hostess!

And what a year this has been. To think that a year ago, I could have named just three (at most!) of Fritz' siblings without knowing much of their personalities beyond Wilhelmine (and that Heinrich was the other one with military gifts and gayness) and did not know Lehndorff existed. I knew Fredersdorf had existed, but not much more. Algarotti and Suhm? Never heard of them. (All hail Mildred, expert on Frederician boyfriends!) Voltaire, sure, heard of him, but those hilarious letters (fake and real)? Nope. Émilie I knew by name, but nothing more. And so forth.

...I learned so much through you two, and you are the most delightful of friends! <33333

Yuletide

[selenak]

Sooooo, September is Yuletide nomination time. I feel we should coordinate again.

First of all: this time, we should maybe nominated two historical RPF sections. The other one being "18th Century CE European Englightenment". Why? Because then we could nominate Émilie and ensure she won't show up only as an addendum to a Fritzian story, but in a star role. For Example: if we nominate Émilie, Voltaire, Richelieu, Algarotti, Maupertuis, De Lambert, Madame de Pompadour, and hell, why not, Madame Denis, we could ask for anything - happy days in Cirey, (card shark) drama at Versailles; crack AU where everyone joins Maupertuis on his Lapland expedition, sharp little character vignette where Émilie and Madame Denis do not talk about Voltaire at all and yet exchange very pointed remarks about each other, Émilie making a Newtonian breakthrough... you get the idea. If I do manage the biography sooner rather than later, we can also add Lady Mary, definitely an enlighted woman.

Secondly: Frederician RPF - here I, personally, would hope for the characters necessary for the three possible plots I have in mind: Rokoko Babysitting, Fredersdorf & Grigorij the handsome husar mystery, Fritz Gets Captured in the War AU. Added to which Katte because Mildred, and also if anyone does get seduced into joining us after all, chances are higher that they'd want to write Fritz/Katte than anything else.

So, characters needed for this round of Frederician RPF: Fritz himself, Fredersdorf, Grigorij, Heinrich, Seydlitz, MT, Joseph. Might come in handy: EC, Amalie, Mantteufel, Sophie as in future Catherine for the Rokoko babysitting, Isabella and the Chevalier D'Eon for the 7 Years War AU, Suhm for a flashback in the Handsome Husar Mystery (if Gigorij got his job pretending to be recced by Suhm just after Suhm died, and Fredersdorf unearths the truth). (And of course Voltaire in general, and for the AU in particular since he needs to come to Fritz' defense.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Re: Yuletide

[cahn]

Oh wow, it is getting to be that time, isn't it! :DD

I am up for nominating two historical RPFs!

Enlightenment: I will definitely request Emilie! Now that you mention that I would LOVE snarky Emilie & Madame Denis :D (Will probably only request Emilie for sure because there are soooo many cool stories that could be told about her (or where she's one of several important characters), don't want to hem my writer in :D )

In terms of Frederician characters, I think it's most important to nominate Fritz, Katte, Heinrich, Fredersdorf, Grigorij, Voltaire, and MT, because I think the others pretty much come along for the ride :) Welllll, I now have a vested interest in nominating Amalie, okay, and Sophie too :D (In terms of requesting... we will see... my thought is that I will probably request Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, and MT, and give the writer carte blanche to use any or all of them and anyone else in the tag set :D Or heeeey, I might live dangerously and put "any character"! Actually on second thought maybe I will do that :D )

AW readthrough

[mildred_of_midgard]

AW readthrough: I made it through the introduction and the first paragraph of the first chapter. (It's been a rough week, sleep-wise.)

The thing that jumped out at me was Ziebura saying the harsh judgment of historians on the reliability of Wilhelmine's memoirs cannot be maintained after reading the AW+Wilhelmine correspondence.

Now, I know you said that AW was her intercessor and intermediary during the fallout with Fritz, and that definitely doesn't make her relationship with Fritz look like all sunshine and roses, but her memoirs don't cover that period.

I also know you've reasoned that she was projecting her fallout with Fritz during the time of the memoir-writing back into the 1730s and early 1740s and tried telling herself she should have seen it coming, but said that the letters between her and Fritz don't bear that out. I also know she's unreliable on factual matters pertaining to events she wasn't present for, because she doesn't have access to the archives.

Personally, I've never been fully onboard with historians trying to say, "Well, FW was definitely abusive, but you have to tone down Wilhelmine's accusations." She's certainly going to skew the picture she presents (and justifiably so), but disbelieving victims because the abuse sounds too terrible to be true is not something I want to do by default.

So what aspect of the harsh judgment on reliability is Ziebura challenging here?

Re: AW readthrough

[selenak]

I took it to mean Fritz' behavior towards his siblings in general, and the critical depiction of Fritz as King (not of his decisions as monarch, of his behavior) in the memoirs. Don't forget, if you simply go by the Wilhelmine/Fritz correspondance and nothing else, then, their own big crisis aside, you've just sentences like when Wilhelmine's replies to his "let's commit suicide together" letter where in the cause of lifting his spirits she says among other things that all his family loves him and adores him, which, well, not so much. Also, after their reconciliation in the summer of 1746, Wilhelmine and Fritz go back to the old intense and affectionate tone, whereas her corresponding letters to AW show she felt scarred by the whole thing and it took her a while longer to go back to trusting Fritz completely again, which can be seen by the fact that when she finally talked about Marwitz (female) having that affair with the Margrave and basically blackmailing Wilhelmine on the terms of "if you don't make your brother give me my inheritance, I'm never leaving Bayreuth and will continue my affair with your husband", she confessed this to AW first and wanted his advice on whether or not to come clean to Fritz. (He did advise her to go ahead and tell Fritz, which turned out to be the correct thing to do.) This was after their reconciliation - in 1747 or 1748, even, I'm not sure which one - and that she asked her kid brother and was still insecure whether or not Fritz would help her or explode at her again is telling about the longer after effect.

(I think it's also telling that very late in the memoirs when she's describing the visit by Fritz & Co. en route to Straßburg, she after stating her amazement how AW has grown up etc. since last she saw him says that just so there is no confusion, from this point on "my brother" means AW, and "the King" is Fritz (who previously was "my brother" throughout). You bet that sentence was written at the height of the quarrel.)

Now, Ziebura says "modified", not "changed utterly", and by the 1750s, Wilhelmine did feel comfortable in her standing with Fritz again and during AW's last year of life was the one trying to achieve reconciliation etc., and Ziebura does point this out (also that Wilhelmine was the only sister who actually dared to plead AW's case to Fritz). But in terms of the big Firstborns crisis, the AW-Wilhelmine letters certainly do modify the picture solely gained by the Fritz-Wilhelmine ones.

Europe map

[mildred_of_midgard]

This one's for cahn. Sometime while 100% of my computer time was being eaten up by fic writing and betaing, and I was falling increasingly behind on comments (I'm slowly chipping away), I ran across a map that was basically what I'd been wanting to show you for a year now. It's a bit better than the ones I've shown you before.

This is 1740, right before Fritz invades, and it's worth looking at the differences between then and now.



Taken from Wikipedia.

Note the font and color on Finland. It's not an independent country; it's part of Sweden. And not all the Finns were happy with that.

Two years later, in 1742, there was a brief attempt to make it into an independent kingdom. A bunch of Finns wanted independence, and Elizaveta of Russia, who was currently occupying it during her war with Sweden, was toying with the idea of setting up a buffer state between her and Sweden, as part of the resolution of that war.

So a meeting of the Finnish Diet elected future (P)Russian Pete, who at this point is still HolsteinPete, only 14 years old, as the future king of Finland. The meeting was led by the commander of the Russian forces occupying Finland: none other than the James Keith, Scottish Jacobite in exile in Russia, who later joins Fritz, becomes Field Marshal, and dies at Hochkirch. And is later fanboyed by Mitchell's editor Bisset.

This effort fizzles out, though.

Elizaveta decides she'd rather have Peter for her own heir.

Simultaneously as part of the negotiations between Sweden and Russia, the Swedes decide they want Peter as the heir to their king.

Elizabeth has the biggest guns, so she gets HolsteinPete, who becomes (P)Russian Pete.

She gives Finland back to the Swedes, no more prospect of independence for them. No real independence until after the Russian Revolution in 1917/1918.

It was an exciting couple of months for 14-yo HolsteinPete!

Also note Lorraine, which is kinda in limbo in 1740. Remember that after the War of the Polish Succession, Stanislaw II Leszczynski of Poland, father of Louis XV's wife Marie Leszczynska, had to give up Poland. He got Lorraine in return, which was given up by FS, MT's husband, in return for France's recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction and FS as future Holy Roman Emperor.

So in 1740, Lorraine has a ruling duke living there, Stanislaw (whom Voltaire and Émilie will hang out with), and an honorary duke living in Vienna, FS, now part of the house of Habsburg-Lorraine. But as part of the 1737 treaty, the idea was that Stanislaw, after he died, would pass on Lorraine to the kingdom of France, through his daughter Marie, since he had no sons. So France is kinda considering Lorraine its own already, though it won't officially annex it until 1766, when Stanislaw dies. So the red line designating the HRE in the 1740 map still includes Lorraine.

Note the little purple spot on the Dutch border. That's Cleves, owned by Prussia, where Wesel is located and where Peter Keith escaped to the Netherlands from. And from where Fritz was sent back to Brandenburg under very close guard with orders to avoid any Hanover-controlled territory (you can see how very precisely they had to thread a needle there) and to kill him if any rescue attempts were made en route.

Notice also Saxony, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia, where almost all the Silesian War action takes place.

Notice also why Fritz was so interested in getting Ottoman military support during the Seven Years' War. (He failed.)

Re: Europe map

[cahn]

Ahhhh, thank you!

Note the font and color on Finland.

Me: Uh, I can't even find where it says Finland! I don't see it in bold font -- oh.