I tried to do more than 6. I stared very hard at the screen and went, "Work, brain! Work!" But my brain was too tired to work. :(
On the plus side, all week long, I kept to my goal of waking up ~8 am instead of ~noon, as I was doing until this week. On the minus side, I've done maybe 25 pages of German and 12 hours of work all week. #sleepdeprivation
Notes on the reading:
* Google dropped the first three quarters of a sentence, when AW is asking FW for permission to paint:
After all, painting was also his hobby and the only relaxation that he allowed himself other than hunting.
Rendered by Google as "the hunt indulged."
* Which leads me to: already in 1729 when this letter was written? I'd thought it was a late-in-life discovery, but admittedly I have never read a dedicated bio of FW. :P
* 15-yo Fritz has to cut the meat and serve it to his family: is this normal for a crown prince? cahn can tell you what you already gleaned from the servants write-up: when doing historical beta for her fic, I had very little idea what normal etiquette was like at FW's court, because you can't just go applying Versailles etiquette, Fritz like his father invented his own etiquette and discarded what he didn't like, and I have no idea who's cutting and serving at FW's table. So I made some best guesses for "How I Survived", tried to be conservative, and hoped it would pass muster.
* I want to say "lol" at AW having the emotional intelligence to answer a question with a question, but it very much shows that he was afraid to give the wrong answer, and ugh.
* Also. AW turning pale at the finger-chopping joke before going, "You would never do that!" This is not a child who grew up in a stress-free environment!
Also, I can imagine Fritz silently thinking, To you, maybe.
THOSE KIDS.
* Ziebura citing the Voltaire to Madame Denis letter about the orange peel to support the claim that Fritz used people: oops! *checks publication date* 2006. I guess she just missed the scholarship on that one.
Whether or not she's right that Fritz might have been latching onto AW emotionally in Wilhelmine's absence, I'm also much more willing to excuse 1730s Fritz cold-bloodedly trying to survive an abusive situation than I am 1740s and beyond Fritz roleplaying the abuser.
* Speaking of using AW to survive abusive situations: why does SD care more about a random soldier than her own kid? Does she hate FW's favorite kid because marital warfare? Why is she so invested in a Potsdam Giant? Is it related to the English marriage somehow?
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Re: AW readthrough
Date: 2020-08-29 01:36 am (UTC)I tried to do more than 6. I stared very hard at the screen and went, "Work, brain! Work!" But my brain was too tired to work. :(
On the plus side, all week long, I kept to my goal of waking up ~8 am instead of ~noon, as I was doing until this week. On the minus side, I've done maybe 25 pages of German and 12 hours of work all week. #sleepdeprivation
Notes on the reading:
* Google dropped the first three quarters of a sentence, when AW is asking FW for permission to paint:
After all, painting was also his hobby and the only relaxation that he allowed himself other than hunting.
Rendered by Google as "the hunt indulged."
* Which leads me to: already in 1729 when this letter was written? I'd thought it was a late-in-life discovery, but admittedly I have never read a dedicated bio of FW. :P
* 15-yo Fritz has to cut the meat and serve it to his family: is this normal for a crown prince?
* I want to say "lol" at AW having the emotional intelligence to answer a question with a question, but it very much shows that he was afraid to give the wrong answer, and ugh.
* Also. AW turning pale at the finger-chopping joke before going, "You would never do that!" This is not a child who grew up in a stress-free environment!
Also, I can imagine Fritz silently thinking, To you, maybe.
THOSE KIDS.
* Ziebura citing the Voltaire to Madame Denis letter about the orange peel to support the claim that Fritz used people: oops! *checks publication date* 2006. I guess she just missed the scholarship on that one.
Whether or not she's right that Fritz might have been latching onto AW emotionally in Wilhelmine's absence, I'm also much more willing to excuse 1730s Fritz cold-bloodedly trying to survive an abusive situation than I am 1740s and beyond Fritz roleplaying the abuser.
* Speaking of using AW to survive abusive situations: why does SD care more about a random soldier than her own kid? Does she hate FW's favorite kid because marital warfare? Why is she so invested in a Potsdam Giant? Is it related to the English marriage somehow?