cahn

Which rather makes it sound as if he didn't predict it to anyone (at least not of the Braunschweig clan), though he may have thought it. And just can't resist saying "I told you so" anyway. Still, this is actually a decent letter, leaving the depressing conclusion that it's the EC factor that changes Fritz' emotional disposition from able to come up with a reasonably (for Fritz) good letter to defensive and awfully phrased. I'm reminded again that the one decent letter apropos AW's death Fritz managed was indirectly to Louise and directly to EC about Louise, i.e. someone who at this point he didn't feel he had to justify himself to (since he knew Louise hadn't loved AW and had no reason to miss him as a person, and EC had no AW feelings, either). Perhaps he thought Duke Karl hadn't been as keen on brother Albert as EC on the earlier occasion?

Oh, and since I've been rereading Catherine the Great's memoirs because reasons, it amused me that little Sophie thought the court at Braunschweig was much more splendid and cultivated than the court at Berlin during FW's era. This is delicious because of the way all the Hohenzollern, male and female alike, and following their lead the Prussian courtiers like Lehndorff, looked down on the Braunschweig sisters as provincial Cinderellas. (Sophie's parents were related to the Braunschweig clan as well, that's why she was often there as a child.)