Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20

[cahn]

Yuletide signups so far:
3 requests for Frederician RPF, 2 offers
2 requests for Circle of Voltaire RPF, 3 offers !! :D :D

(I am so curious as to who the third person is!)

Comments

Re: Fritz/Voltaire

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, thanks for those diet references! I thought it might be about certain kinds of food, not just eating nothing for long stretches.

People around Fritz: we weren't overreacting!

Certainly in line with "I think one should be content with one meal per day" to Voltaire in 1776.

Certainly in line with how freaking *gaunt* his death mask was in 1786! Final illness notwithstanding.

... and now I'm curious about his hot chocolate recipe, given how he took his coffee.

Lol! Worcestershire sauce (which no, had not been invented yet) and ginger. :P

You know, considering he made his pages take a drink of his coffee (as an anti-poisoning measure) before he would accept it, let's hope he put the mustard and peppercorns in after that step. Otherwise, it would behoove him to consider that there might be other reasons beyond regicide why they might hesitate to drink it!

In other news, I posted some autumn pictures of the Sanssouci grounds in my journal earlier, if that's of interest - all from years ago, lots of autumn, less of Sanssouci (but not nothing at least ;))

Extremely of interest! I love not only Sanssouci but also nature pics. I was so sad when Pixdaus.com went away--I used to collect nature pics for my laptop background from it. My current laptop background is, of course, this pic.

Re: Fritz/Voltaire

[felis]

Certainly in line with how freaking *gaunt* his death mask was in 1786!

Re: diets and being hard on himself to do his job, see also this pithy line from another 1776 letter to Voltaire: Il n'est pas nécessaire que je vive, mais bien que j'agisse. That seemed like a very Fritz way of looking at things to me.

Worcestershire sauce (which no, had not been invented yet)

*cringe*

and ginger

Ohh, chocolate with ginger is quite nice, though! And thinking about it, the pepper would have been much more at home in chocolate instead of coffee as well...

Re: Fritz/Voltaire

[mildred_of_midgard]

Il n'est pas nécessaire que je vive, mais bien que j'agisse. That seemed like a very Fritz way of looking at things to me.

Yep. I'm reading Krockow and I literally just got to this line when the notification of your comment came in:

In almost half a century he didn't miss a single day of carrying out his official duties; the human right to vacation and recreation, which statesmen all over the world take for granted today, would have been incomprehensible to him.

The sentence immediately before this goes:

Like his father, he took care of everything and everything, down to the really trivial: the marriage license or rather the non-license for a Rittmeister [captain], the appointment or transfer of a pastor, the grant of money for the repair of a street or its refusal.

So that's why he has to be dead to be "sans souci."

Ohh, chocolate with ginger is quite nice, though!

I hesitated because I was thinking that, but then I decided the Worcestershire sauce would ruin the effect. Mind you, I'm not inclined to try. ;)

Open to alternate suggestions, though!

Fritzian recipes: a new type of crackfic.