cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 22 (or: Yuletide 2020 edition)

ETA: Whoops, I missed my cue -- this might as well be the next discussion post, I guess! :)

This is about the fic I didn't author (I have another reveals post for the fics I did author).

So my goal this Yuletide was NOT to write any historical fandom (because hard!) and just enjoy the excellent stuff that other people wrote. And... that sort of happened? I didn't end up authoring anything history-intensive? Buuuuut I ended up spending a lot more time than I did on any of my own fics working with

mildred_of_midgard on her fic, which she was worried about being able to pull off because she had had this completely insane idea to write a long casefic about Frederick the Great that every time I turned around had another twist put in :P :) She supplied me with what we called a "rough opal in matrix" bus pass casefic, and I cut away the matrix that remained and in some cases carved the opal -- that is to say, writing additional text for some of the scenes, what we liked to call "putting in feels," and in at least two cases entirely rewriting and/or restructuring the scene she'd written. She didn't always keep what I wrote (which we'd agreed upon in the beginning), but when she did (which was most of the time :) ) she then went in and rewrote/restructured what I put in to wordsmith (some of the words I gave her were really rough) and match her style, adding even more scenes -- that is, polishing it up and adding some gold and diamonds -- and voila, a beautiful pendant, I mean, story :)

I'm really proud of it and also it was really fun and also what I could handle this year, especially because mildred did all the parts I thought were hard and also wrote all the parts involving actual history or subtle AU before I was brought in so I didn't actually have to know historical stuff (though I guess I will never forget the battle of Leuthen now), and took full responsibility for how the whole thing turned out, so all I had to do was be like "Here, I'll write some rough feels for you for this scene!" The funny part was that I would often then write a paragraph justifying why I *had* to write the scene the way I did, and more likely than not mildred would be like, "yeah, I was sure you would do that, of course it should be written like that." (The most glaring example of this was where I inserted the Letter of Doom at the climax. I was worried there was some reason she didn't want it there, but she said, no, she just didn't have time to put it in herself and was just trusting me to do that :) ) She started jokingly calling me her "other self," to which I replied that it was with 1000% less angst and frustration -- as Frederick the Great's brother was his "other self" (which actually comes up in the fic) that he could trust to do all kinds of competent things, but they had a relationship that was, um, fraught? radioactive? Whereas this was just fun :)

Mildred did so much more than I did (we estimated a 90%/10% word ratio, not even counting the part where she wordsmithed a lot of my text) that I felt very uncomfortable being listed as a co-author, but hey, ~3000 words is a respectable Yuletide fic length :)

Yet They Grind Exceedingly Small (30384 words) by mildred_of_midgard
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Anna Amalie von Preußen & Wilhelmine von Preußen, Anna Amalie von Preußen & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen, Wilhelmine von Preußen & Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia
Characters: Anna Amalie von Preußen (1723-1787), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758), Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802), Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1732-1780), Wilhelmine von Hesse-Kassel (1726-1808), August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Alcmene 1 | Frederick the Great's Italian Greyhound, Voltaire (Writer), Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Family, Suicide, Alternate Universe - Dark, Siblings, Canon-Typical Violence, Mystery, Tide of History Challenge
Summary:

January 1758. Prince William is dead, some say of a broken heart. Frederick wants to absolve himself of blame for William's death. Henry schemes to end the Third Silesian War on his terms. Amalie and Wilhelmine team up to find out what really happened to their brother. Alcmene just wants to be told she's a good dog.

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Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

selenak

BayreuthFriederich: I was exaggarating a bit based on the "meh, can't hold a candle to Mr. Brunswick" comment to Mantteuffel. Also, bear in mind that the odious Schwedt brother-in-law wasn't yet a brother-in-law when Fritz made said comment in the mid 1730s, and he didn't know yet that the Ansbach guy was such a louse, either.

From:

selenak

So, yes, definitely talking about FWII here, as everybody's coming to visit for his engagement ceremony.

Aka the one where EC didn't know until shortly before it happened whether or not she was invited, and Lehndorff was distracted by trying to find out whether or not Fritz wanted/allowed her there at the reception which young James Boswell visited.

it's kind of telling that "cold" is really not how you'd describe his love life otherwise, but certainly Fritz' relationship with him.

No kidding. Especially since is is also not too long after Fritz fired his governor, Borck, for presenting war as less than glorious in that conversation both Mitchell and Lehndorff mention (both shocked by Fritz' reaction).

Future FW2: definitely is not sorry for burying Fritz next to FW1.

From:

felis

that she's been lying to both the Queen and Countess Camas

OMG, I just realized that a preceding sentence from Fritz' letter, which I cut because I thought it was unrelated, was actually very related: Verily, my good maman, you are quite an expert, and I congratulate you on being so well versed in dropsy. She obviously told him that the woman had insisted that she wasn't pregnant at first, saying that she just had a spot of dropsy and that's why she was gaining weight, which the queen and Camas initially believed! And that's also why Camas thought Fritz would mock her a bit! Lehndorff, thank you for the context. Again. (See, Preuss, this is what happens when you exclude one side of the conversation.)

From:

felis

Right, of course. Chronology is a thing, I forgot how early that was.

From:

prinzsorgenfrei

Whoops, I did not see this one... Sure, you can do that ^^

From:

prinzsorgenfrei

Just a funny thing I found yesterday:

Cologne-based fragrance company Farina, known for their "Original Eau de Cologne", includes a a list of famous customers they've had in their over 300 years of business with their bottles of said original cologne, the fragrance of which has remained unchanged since 1709. Like any good Rhineland family, mine has a bottle of not only 4711 but also a bottle of Farina lying around somewhere, so I checked the list and found... quite a few people.

Like Fritz (who got some in 1745), Voltaire (also 1745), Maria Theresia (1740), and Napoléon (1804).

And, to my unending surprise, FW, who bought some in 1734.

So, uh... at least according to the records of Farina, both Fritz and FW smelled like "an Italian spring morning right after the rain, oranges, grapefruits, lemons, bergamot, cedrat, lime and the flowers and herbs of [Italy]" at some point. Somewhat bizarre, but an interesting tidbit. Wouldn't have connected either of them with the smell of oranges and bergamot tbh :'D

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I think that still works! Gotta know what day the invasion is scheduled for, after all. ;)

Also, Sweden's decline was during the first decades of the 18th century, i.e. immediately after they switched to a weird calendar in 1700. CLEARLY related. :P

From:

mildred_of_midgard

OOOH. I didn't know that you wanted to ship Fritz/Katte, nor that "Pulvis et Umbra" was the closest you came. Hmmmm!

What I'm hearing is that I should start a Fritz/Katte fic, and rope you into finishing it with me. :P

More seriously, the plan is to get my German up to speed, then read a bunch of Katte-related material, then see if I get inspired for a fic. So maybe this summer?

I've been quietly marveling that I've posted *so* *little* Fritz/Katte (and no living Katte!), but then I realize..."Pulvis et Umbra" was posted one month before my sleep went to pieces in 2019. Since then, I've only written (or at least posted) for exchanges, and nobody's requested Katte. But if I can hang onto my current momentum, hopefully I can start writing for myself at some point, and make use of my ability to read German. :D

I have pipe dreams of learning French, doing fic research in French, and then writing fic based on that research, because the fix-it fic is set in France, but...this all presupposes I maintain my momentum for that long. But we should be good for German, at least.

(Sometimes I honestly don't know whether I study history in order to write fic, or write fic in order to learn history. Now I've added language studies into the mix. Am I learning German so I can learn history? Am I learning German so I can research fic? Am I researching fic so I can acquire some knowledge of German? Am I studying history so I can acquire some knowledge of German? A little of all of the above, I think.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Remember how SD's mother, Sophia Dorothea of Celle [henceforth SDC], was locked up by G1 for consorting with her lover? I was reading this episode in Horowski, cross-checking in Wikipedia, and found the following:

When his affair with Sophia Dorothea threatened to become public, von Königsmarck handed their love letters to his brother-in-law, the Swedish Count Carl Gustav von Löwenhaupt. The latter's heirs later offered the correspondence to the House of Hanover for money but they demanded such a high price that the court rebuffed them and questioned the authenticity of the letters. The correspondence was published in the middle of the 19th century and the majority of the letters are now in the possession of Lund University in Sweden. A few of the letters ended up in the possession of Sophia Dorothea's grandson, King Frederick the Great of Prussia, after his sister, Swedish Queen consort Louisa Ulrika, allegedly stole them and sent them to him. Today the authenticity of the letters has been established beyond any doubt.

So apparently Heinrich gets letters written by Grandma Sophia Charlotte, and Fritz gets (stolen!) letters written by Grandma SDC!

The source for this is Friedrich der Große: Gedanken und Erinnerungen. Werke, Briefe, Gespräche, Gedichte, Erlasse, Berichte und Anekdoten. Stabi link for when Stabi is a thing again. I'm willing to buy this for our library if it has good stuff that's new to us, but not sight unseen.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Back when F1 was still an elector and desperately campaigning to get recognized as king, he was relentlessly insisting that he deserved the same ceremonial treatment, privileges, precedence, etc. as a king. So his master of ceremonies had to do a lot of work making a case for why electors were the equals of kings and deserved just as much respect.

Once F1's campaign succeeded, his master of ceremonies' job went overnight to making the case for why kings were far superior to electors and deserved far more precedence. The part that made me laugh was when Horowki reported that he had to buy back as many copies as he could find of all the learned pamphlets he'd written over the last decade, and destroy them.

ETA: Oh, Horowski also says that the "in" vs. "of" was only for certain formal documents, and casually everyone said "King of Prussia," or used "King in Prussia" the same way they used "King in England," i.e. without a politically meaningful difference. And in some languages, no one used "in" at all.

He also repeats the claim I've seen in many places, that "of" wasn't formally recognized until the acquisition of West Prussia in 1772.

Which btw includes this bookmark I picked up in a gift shop, presumably the one at Sanssouci.

While digging that up, I ran across this postcard, which I'd forgotten I had, and which I acquired on the same trip:

Edited Date: 2021-01-23 03:41 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

Okay, I’ll check it out once it’s an option again. Meanwhile, I’m curious as to why Ulrike thought some of Grandma SDCs love letters would make a good gift for Fritz and went to the trouble of stealing them. ; ) I mean, sure, SDC was the first to try to run away with their lover only to end up imprisoned and with the lover murdered, but otoh, given SD did not visit her when she had the chance to as an adult and Queen of/in Prussia, and given according to Hervey G2 did not speak of his mother at all (with the caveat that Walpole clames G2 did hang her portrait up as soon as G1 was dead and would have brought her to England had she still been alive), I can’t imagine SDC’s grandchildren were told anything good about her. Hm.... is it too convoluted and devious to speculate that maybe Ulrike thought they’d make good blackmail material for Fritz on the Hannover cousins so he’d owe her?

(Not surprised the Hannovers wouldn’t pay the Swedes earlier, though; “these are fakes!” Is way cheaper and would have been imposssible to disprove for contemporaries.)

From:

selenak

Well now! I knew about Napoleon and am not surprised at Fritz, MT and Voltaire, but FW - as ever - is truly the outlier there. I mean, perfume being used by men as well as women was entirely normal in that century - like powder and make-up - , but FW would have been the one Rokoko guy whom I’d have assumed to be an outlier there, too, and not use it. K

Now if the year had been 1733, I would have assumed a possible reason, to wit, his one failed attempt at adultery after all, the pass he’d made at Fräulein von Pannewitz which got him punched. That might have inspired him to make some effort to come across as attractive to a younger woman. But 1734 is post punching and thus he’s back to being NO WHORES NO THEATRE etc.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

LOL, you made the same connection I did, except that I was going to speculate, tongue-in-cheek, that he's given up on getting laid by anyone but his wife and is now going to desperate lengths to get back in SD's bed by at least smelling like a proper baroque royal/nobleman!

Note also that Fritz is at war in 1745 (the year of Soor, battle famous for dognapped greyhounds and oversized shirts). If we ever turn up a month, that will be interesting. Winter quarters? The height of the campaigning season? The December peace?

Technically, FW (like Fritz) is also campaigning in 1734, but only for a few weeks, plus travel, so the existence of chronological overlap is less obvious.

ETA: As repetition for those who need it, summer 1734 was the siege of Philipsburg, the one where Fritz met Eugene of Savoy and Voltaire was present as an observer on the other side. It was part of the War of the Polish Succession, where August the Strong's son and Stanislaw Leszczyński are duking it out for who gets to be King of Poland.

Edited Date: 2021-01-23 10:23 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I wondered the exact same thing! That's why we need you to check out the book once you can. Hopefully it will have more context. Just a year or even decade would be great.

Also, "allegedly": I want to know who alleged and when.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

To get some dates in: “Katte – Ein Schauspiel in fünf Aufzügen“ was published in Leipzig in 1914 and premiered on stage in Dresden on November 6th of the same year.

cahn, do you know why November 6th, or do you need more repetition? :)

From:

selenak

I was going to speculate, tongue-in-cheek, that he's given up on getting laid by anyone but his wife and is now going to desperate lengths to get back in SD's bed by at least smelling like a proper baroque royal/nobleman!

A viable theory! And maybe he did his Rhineland perfume shopping discreetly when marching to Philippsburg for the short time he was there? :)

Note also that Fritz is at war in 1745 (the year of Soor, battle famous for dognapped greyhounds and oversized shirts). If we ever turn up a month, that will be interesting. Winter quarters? The height of the campaigning season? The December peace?

Actually, for Fritz and MT my theory is that both their perfumes were gifts by people wishing to ingratiate themselves, because MT's is in 1740, i.e. when she got on the throne, and Fritz getting his in the year that makes it clear he's going to win Silesia 2 as well. Otoh, if Fritz did his own perfume shopping, then maybe he wants to smell nice for Fredersdorf when he finally comes home as Frederick The Great (tm)?

From:

selenak

casually everyone said "King of Prussia"

The French envoys certainly did in their "hot or not" reports. :) Then again, they also called him F3, because of the uncertainty of how to list FW.

Poor Master of the Ceremonies. Only not so much, since I'm sure that being an F1 official as opposed to an FW one meant he was paid very well (or ascertained he was via less legal means). But you can see Wilhelmine came by her insistence on which chair to sit in as a King's daughter honestly.

The Margraves of Brandenburg were such nouveau riches. ;)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Aka the birthday of Fritz (1712), nephew Gustav III of Sweden (1746), and philosopher Christian Wolff (1679)!

Happy birthday to the man who catalyzed our salon into existence, and who puts the "problematic" in "problematic fave." <333

Or in the words of Heinrich: If only our mother had had a stillbirth on January 24, 1712!

From:

selenak

Happy birthday, Fritz! To salute the occasion, here's the report of his birth as given by F1's master of the ceremonies (you know, presumably the same guy Mildred mentioned earlier). The Crown Princess is SD, H.M. - His Majesty - is F1. Note that the actual father, FW, still Crown Prince, is not mentioned:

Sunday morning after the sermon, as a sermon for a happy recovery of the Crown Princess had just been finished near the hour of birth, she gave birth between 11 and 12 o'clock of to her third prince , the current Prince ofPrussia and Orania . H.M . [ Frederick 1. ] had just sat down at his table in order to dine, but as shortly thereafter the happy news of the birth of a prince was announced by the royal physician, Hofrat Gundelsheim, H. M. was so much transported with joy about it that he let himself be carried to the Crown Princess at once and afterwards was not able to eat anything.

The bells were rung immediately and the canons on the walls were fired, so that in a moment the whole city and the court were put into unspeakable [joy ). H. M. declared that this prince, too, like the previous ones should receive the titles »Prince of Prussia and Orania » and decorated him at 2 o'clock in the afternoon with a completely new order of merit which he put on him, for which H. M. once again had himself be carried to H.R.H. the Crown Princess .
As H.M . came back from the princess' room and just wanted to sit down in his chair, I stepped towards him and offered my most humble congratulations, and because I recalled, among other things, that since this prince was chronologically the third born by the Crown Princess, we could hope that he, too, would be the one to stay alive, and should follow H. M.'s happy example of achieving government, as he, too, had lost his two older brothers and had become the third prince successively of the House Elector. This, H.M. received with such a great pleasure that he declared "I will also give him my name".

In order to suggest it to the Crown Princess, he returned to her chamber.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I'm not wedded to the "Fredersdorf is sick" hypothesis, but I'm going to play devil's advocate here.

I could believe both, except that I think Fritz could pass off being worried for Fredersdorf being sick to Camas as being a good feudal lord concerned for a faithful servant

Worried, yes. Making sure Fredersdorf is taken care of, sure. Having stress-related illness, that's as bad as colic, because of it? I suspect the reaction would be similar to this one letter I saw, probably in the Fairchilds servants book: a noble teenage boy, maybe about 14 years old, has just had his tutor/governor/whatever taken away. Several months later, he writes to his father, begging for his tutor back, because he can't be happy without him. The boy is clearly having stress-related illness and depression from the separation from the guy who'd been parenting him for the last several years. The father writes an uncomprehending letter back that the son's filial regard for his tutor does them both honor, but it's time to move on.

I suspect losing sleep over your valet falls into the same category. You were the one who said Fritz couldn't write to anyone about Fredersdorf's death even after the guy had publicly been first minister for 15 years and Lehndorff was calling him the Prussian Pompadour, because Fritz didn't have a vocabulary for how much Fredersdorf had meant to him! Fredersdorf also never seems to have come up in the Fritz/Wilhelmine letters, granted that the complete correspondence hasn't been published.

Not least because I don't think Fredersdorf's health problems had kicked in yet, though I could be wrong about this.

They don't need to have; it's the 18th century. Do we know when Fredersdorf had smallpox? Or any number of other infectious diseases?

And the thing is, by the later 1730s, Fritz definitely wasn't hiding that Fredersdorf wasn't an exchangeable servant to him; see Bielfeld's description of Fredersdorf

I would be very surprised if Fritz wasn't trying to keep it at least partly on the down low as long as FW was alive. Bielfeld lived at Rheinsberg, and I have definitely read, though I forget where now, that many or all of his letters were composed later in life. That's why when I reported him writing in 1740 that Fritz would someday be called great, I said I didn't know if that was written with the benefit of hindsight.

Okay, Carlyle definitely says the letters were not sent through the post office but were written after the fact. I don't know if a more reliable source says that or if modern scholarship has weighed in. But given what some of the people in our fandom have gotten up to, Bielfeld's letters could be anywhere from Catt-like self-insert fanfic, to Lady Mary redacting her letters for publication by removing repetition and creating a narrative. I just don't know.

But I wouldn't put somebody who authored and sold a book of his own letters in his own lifetime, in 1763 to boot, i.e. right after Fritz had won the Seven Years' War and this book was guaranteed to sell, up there with Preuss collating letters from the Prussian archives after Fritz's death, in terms of evidence that a given passage was written in the year the passage is claimed to have been written.

Even if the Fredersdorf passage is totally genuine, Bielfeld writing in October 1739 (almost the exact time the "rising sun" ceiling was painted), and staying at Rheinsberg and being a Freemason in the Rheinsberg lodge with both Fritz and Fredersdorf (assuming Bielfeld can be trusted on that), is far from the same as Camas corresponding long-distance with Fritz in January 1736, in terms of their respective insights into Fritz's relationship with Fredersdorf.

Now, it could be a friend's STD and/or (the friend's) gambling debts, certainly! Or something else we haven't thought of. But if you're right that Fritz couldn't talk about Fredersdorf's death even after a publicly known relationship that had lasted over 25 years, talking about Fredersdorf's illness after 5 years, when he must have been trying not to let FW catch on, must have been at least as difficult.

Edited Date: 2021-01-24 07:23 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

a noble teenage boy, maybe about 14 years old, has just had his tutor/governor/whatever taken away. Several months later, he writes to his father, begging for his tutor back, because he can't be happy without him.

Wasn't that in fact future FW4 to FW3, with the governor in question this guy? (Result: yet another dysfunctional authoritarian Hohenzollern on the throne later on. Yay!)

But if you're right that Fritz couldn't talk about Fredersdorf's death even after a publicly known relationship that had lasted over 25 years, talking about Fredersdorf's illness after 5 years, when he must have been trying not to let FW catch on, must have been at least as difficult.

This is undoubtedly true. I also readily concede the possibility/likelihood of Bielfeld doctoring, editing or writing his letters with the benefit of hindsight. However, I'm still too stuck on the "not from the heart, but from another part" phrasing - as surely worrying about Fredersdorf being threateningly ill would have been very much a matter of the heart to Fritz -, and on the fact we don't even know that Fredersdorf was ill to begin with to subscribe to this theory. Doesn't mean I wouldn't read a h/c fanfiction based on it! It would be a great premise for one.

From:

prinzsorgenfrei

I'm late to the party, but happy belated birthday to the one and only Philosopher King :P

I don't have a portrait or a comic this time. However, the skype call with my friends yesterday turned into Fredersdorf appreciation hours, so I made some sketches, one of which I'll put here because... idk, birthday family picture? :'D

images

I have drawn better faces before, but... the idea is rather cute, might make a full illustration like this eventually ^^

From:

mildred_of_midgard

OMG, you drew our favorite letter! And you drew one for us doglovers!

I am in heaven. :D <333

From:

selenak

*looks at all the sketches* OMG, you illustrated our favourite Fritz-to-Fredersdorf letter! Can't think of a better birthday present. (Well, you know, except for the part where he'd be mortified if he knew these letters survived, but never mind that.) The family picture is adorable.

Incidentally, given that both Fritz and Heinrich are January kids, I can only conclude that April, not May, did it for FW and SD....