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:

cahn

Ha, that's fine! At the glacial pace I'm going, I'll still be around by the time you want to provide commentary! In the meantime I'll just ask questions as they come up :)

From:

cahn

Eeeeee, that sounds amazing! <3

(My first Broadway musical, at around the same age, when we were visiting my uncle who had just moved to NJ, was Les Miserables, which -- I suppose saying it changed my life might be hyperbole, but it definitely had a really really strong effect on me.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I love the idea re: Algarotti. Does it work out date-wise? (I.e. from when exactly is this letter?)

Well, Algarotti's STD letter is late 1740 (December, iirc), and Fritz's letters to Gröben are from 1734, so Fritz's hypothetical sexual relationship with Gröben would definitely precede the one with Algarotti. That said,

felis tells us that Gröben was transferred out of Fritz's regiment in 1738, so there would have to be a lapse of at least a year (the first encounter between Fritz and Algarotti being 1739).

That said, STDs do often go from symptomatic to asymptomatic to symptomatic, and there were no antibiotics back then to actually *fix* the problem, so the following is possible:

1733-1738: Fritz acquired an STD. Got treated (at the suggestion of the Schwedt brothers?).
1739: Fritz was asymptomatic in 1739 and attributed that to the success of some treatment. Had sex with Algarotti.
Late 1740: Algarotti and Fritz both become symptomatic.
1741: Fritz receives treatment in the field, as Münchow claimed in the 1790s that his brother had told him.

Of course, in 1741, we also have Georgii, so the plot thickens...

The *only* part of this for which we have hard evidence is Fritz writing to Algarotti sympathetically about A having an STD. To my mind that's completely different from Marwitz's STD ~~(which he got from Fritz, royal super-spreader? :P)~~, which was said mockingly and to a third party, under circumstances where Fritz had a lot of incentive to lie or spread unsubstantiated rumors. I thus give it good odds that Algarotti of "six degrees" fame really did have an STD. (Joking aside, if there was a super-spreader, it might well have been him. And if Fritz did have an STD in the field in the 1740s, right after Algarotti turns up symptomatic in late 1740, he might still have gotten it from Algarotti.)

I have to say, "The King was a good deal piqued by this indiscretion; for if the marechal knew that it was the King of Prussia, he ought not to have received his visit, but to have prevented him with the marks of utmost repect" is as Fritzian an alternate story for "Broglie locked me up!" that I can imagine. :)

Yup. Fritz rewriting the history of that event from day 1. Later, AW would be omitted when it was convenient for Fritz to remember it that way.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Commissioning old pictures is cool too! I have a grand total of 6 (?) pictures from one visit, so more are always welcome. :)

From:

cahn

does not go through all the complicated plotting and actually tells Carlos what's going on, but otoh utterly bungles the interlude with impressing Philipp in the first place

Hee, yeah, on the other hand he might still not have asked for a reward, and Philip doesn't seem to necessarily have a thing for tall guys, so Katte might have a chance? :)

but alas, he's forgotten to tell Fritz this was the plan

OF COURSE HE DID

Fritz, finding out Rodrigo ratted him out about the debts, heartbrokenly confides in a Potsdam Giant. (Look, it's hard to find an equivalent to Eboli!)

HAHAHAHAHA okay this totally made me laugh, that is an inspired Eboli substitution!

Hmmmph, yeah, from all indications I think I'd have to assume that DVD looks regionally locked. But at least they have one? I don't think they did when I was looking two years ago... maybe in another two years something will come up?

From:

cahn

He recommended that the best effects could be had by reciting the Henriade to it and watching it at the same time.

Wow! Oh Voltaire.

From:

cahn

Heh. KPM surely would be a subsidiary that Fritz took over? :)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

That could work! Another one of his dodgy acquisitions. ;)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh Fritz, I say. But yes, two peas in a pod. <3

ETA: Especially since Voltaire wants his revenge. I wonder if he recited Fritzian poetry (complete with laundry-cleaning, I mean literary criticism) aloud to the Fritzian bust.

Edited Date: 2021-01-09 06:26 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

I finally broke down and bought a Candide with proper footnotes so that I could read something by Voltaire now that I'm, like, reading his biography and helping to write fic about him and such :P I'd tried my completely-footnote-less copy last year at around this time, and gave up because although I was enjoying it, I could see that I was missing quite a lot.

I chose this one under the vague idea that "critical edition" was what I wanted, and also I read the sample and thought the footnotes were probably decent enough, whereas most other editions I tried in the five minutes I looked around had no footnotes. I don't know that I'm totally content with the notes now that I have them (they are sort of short) but they're actually not too bad for my uses, as I need them to explicate things I didn't know I was missing, and once I know I'm missing them I can go look them up or ask in salon :) It's the stuff I don't know I'm missing that bothers me...

I've read the first half so far and it turns out the first several chapters are relevant to our fandom :)

Chapter 2 - in which Candide gets recruited into the army of the Bulgars - "Voltaire chose this name to represent the Prussian troops of Frederick the Great because he wanted to make an insinuation of pedastry against both the soldiers and their master. Cf. French bougre, English "bugger."

LOLOLOLOL. This is the kind of thing I'm here for, footnotes! Also as always I think it is hilarious that Voltaire is so stuck on Fritz that he has to make fun of Fritz being gay, lol.

"Two men in blue took note of [Candide]... 'Aren't you five feet five inches tall?'" And the footnote attached to that: "Frederick had a passion for sorting out his soldiers by size; several of his regiments would accept only six-footers."

...surely... they are mixing up Fritz and FW?? But still, this is 5000% funnier now that I know the Fritz/FW connection (tall guys, while sad for the tall guys, is always going to be hilarious to me)

The impressing of Candide into the army of the Bulgars by two guys who accost him in a tavern reminds me a lot of Ulrich Bräker's memoirs that

selenak summarized for us a long time ago. I was going to ask if it was plausible that Voltaire had read his memoirs, but once I finally figured out the name of the guy and was thence able to look him up in rheinsberg, I saw that they were published much later than Candide. Well, I imagine he was just one of many.

Chapter 2/3: "The King of the Bulgars went to war with the King of the Abares." The footnote says here that this is a reference to the Seven Years' War and that "Allegorically, the Abares are the French, who opposed the Prussians in the conflict known to hindsight history as the Seven Years' War."

Me: The French?? Against the Prussians??
Footnote: Look, the Seven Years' War is complicated, okay? We are a footnote, we're not going to get all of this across in our allotted couple of lines. Check out the Battle of Minden, that's what he's referring to, it took place in Westphalia which is where Voltaire has set this bit.
Wikipedia: Yeah, your buddy Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated a French army there.
Me: He's not my buddy, I just thought it was funny that mildred thought of him before Ferdinand... never mind. Fine.

"...the two kings in their respective camps celebrated the victory by having Te Deums sung" -- Also appreciated the note about how this was sung to celebrate victory! By both kings, natch. Don't know if this was intentional, but it sure did remind me of Fritz for obvious reasons.

That's it for Fritz-related hilariousness in the first half (and, idk, maybe for the whole thing, I'll check in once I'm finished), but a couple of random other comments:

After we leave Westphalia and the Bulgars, in Chapter 11, the Old Lady says: "I am in fact the daughter of Pope Urban the Tenth and the Princess of Palestrina." The footnote observes that Voltaire left a note behind on this passage, first published in 1829: "Note the extreme discretion of the author: hitherto there has never been a pope named Urban X; he avoided attributing a bastard to a named Pope. What circumspection! What an exquisite conscience!" I don't know which I think is funnier, the "exquisite conscience!" or the fact that Voltaire is saying all this about himself in third person.

Chapter 16: "How can you expect me to eat ham when I have killed the son of my lord the Baron, and am now condemned never to see the lovely Cunegonde for the rest of my life? Why should I drag out my miserable days, since I must exist far from her in the depths of despair and remorse? And what will the Journal de Trevoux say of all this?" I would have thought this was funny by itself, but the footnote says this is a journal published by the Jesuit order, founded in 1701 and consistently hostile to Voltaire. HEE.

From:

cahn

LOL! I mistyped (probably because I was thinking about Candide, lol) :) But yes, they are both something :)

HAHAHAHA to him reciting plus criticism to Fritzian bust, this is my headcanon now.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

This is greeeat, thank you! When I get around to French, some of Voltaire's nonfiction works (like the Treatise on Tolerance) are on my list, but not Candide, so I'm glad you're covering it for us!

"Voltaire chose this name to represent the Prussian troops of Frederick the Great because he wanted to make an insinuation of pedastry against both the soldiers and their master. Cf. French bougre, English "bugger."

This I actually knew!

"Two men in blue took note of [Candide]... 'Aren't you five feet five inches tall?'" And the footnote attached to that: "Frederick had a passion for sorting out his soldiers by size; several of his regiments would accept only six-footers."

...surely... they are mixing up Fritz and FW?? But still, this is 5000% funnier now that I know the Fritz/FW connection (tall guys, while sad for the tall guys, is always going to be hilarious to me)

They may be, partially? But height requirements were a thing in Fritz's army (this is what Heinrich got dinged for--admitting recruits who didn't meet the requirements), and different regiments definitely had different requirements (and I do recognize five-five as a cutoff...for the cavalry, I think?). The six-foot regiment I'm not sure of; the Potsdam Giants (whose cutoff was six feet) got distributed into other regiments immediately after Fritz became king, and he certainly didn't have a passion for collecting every single tall soldier in Europe. But he may have had some regiments (grenadiers?) who had that as their height requirement. The editor may be confusing this part with FW, but I would be very reluctant to say so; it strikes me as at least 75% likely it's Fritz.

ETA: Further research tells me the Potsdam Giants were an entire regiment under FW, and downgraded to a battalion (of grenadiers--I was right about that part!) under Fritz. So maybe "several regiments" only accepting six foot men was an exaggeration, but there being six-foot requirements for some bodies is possible? Will let you know if I find out more. (Though I'm not going full-out detective on this, as I'm prioritizing other things.)

Wikipedia: Yeah, your buddy Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated a French army there.
Me: He's not my buddy, I just thought it was funny that mildred thought of him before Ferdinand... never mind. Fine.

LOOK, if we're talking not purely about regents but about Heinrich replacements to get Prussia through the Seven Years' War, there's the guy who at least one scholar (remind me which one, Selena?) has claimed was a better general than Fritz or Heinrich, and then there's the guy who was "incapacitated by illness" the entire time, then proceeded to live another 55 years. :PPP

You had your reasons for not thinking I wrote a crack corporate AU, and I had my reasons for not thinking of Ferdinand as a viable alternative to Heinrich during the Seven Years' War, okay. :P

Edited Date: 2021-01-09 08:25 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

Ferdinand of Brunswick as the superior general historian: I think it was Jürgen Luh. BTW, Boswell meets him when visiting Braunschweig (which he did before visiting Berlin and Potsdam) and was suitably awed, since among Brits FoB's reputation directly after the war was very high, not least since he'd taken over from Butcher Cumberland and had made a far better job of it, specifically in the battle of Minden.

Te Deum: I seem to recall Fritz mentions this in a couple of his letters as well. He notably ordered one after Mollwitz, complete with letting the field preacher afterwards preach on the subject of St. Paul's "Let women be silent". And of course during the 7 Years War he'd used the "defender of free Protestants everywhere" propaganda to the hilt, which came with attending services and Te Deums after battles.

LOL on the Journal de Trevaux. re: footnotes - pretending to be just the editor for an unknown author was a literary device very popular in the 18th century, though usually in epistolary novels. Goethe did it in "Werther", for example, and Chloderos de Laclos in Les Liasons Dangereuses. It wasn't meant seriously. (EXcept in cases as when Voltaire used it when publishing pamphlets which could get him arrrested.) (And by MacPherson, the guy who wrote the Ossian poems.) Umberto Eco pays homage to the custom in The Name of the Rose which has an opening narration of him finding Adson von Melk's original manuscript.

From:

selenak

From Mildred's reply to the other post:

When Joseph II, while madly touring Europe, came to visit, Horowski reports this amazing anecdote (courtesy I *think* of British envoy William Hamilton, though I would need to check and I don't have time):

It is indeed Sir William Hamilton, eventual husband of Emma (who will become bff with Maria Carolina, remember), and son of probably Fritz of Wales' mistress (whom Lord Hervey sniffily accused of not even being that pretty). And that is indeed a hilarious tale. Given this was to my knowledge the same journey on which Joseph had already visited Paris, I wouldn't be surprised if he had a private list of "Who's my most idiotic brother-in-law?" in his head.

Louis - hasn't figured out penetrative sex after seven years of trying, despite being in love with his wife; otoh, can actually carry a conversation about other subjects, and his good hobby locksmitih

Ferdinand - not in love with his wife, but walking, talking embarrassment to everyone; groper of butts

Albert - husband of Maria Christina, aka Mom's ~~and my late wife's~~ favourite; not stupid, but big spender, keeps complaining about me using Dad's money for the state instead of letting him and Maria Christina have a big budget

Edited Date: 2021-01-13 05:31 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Ha! Since this was the trip on which he first met Fritz, I can see why his reaction was, "Oh thank god for someone I can have a conversation with!"

MT: For sixteen hours a day?
ViennaJoe: FOR SIXTEEN HOURS A DAY. :D :D :D

From:

cahn

I HAVE FINALLY WATCHED IT. Thank you so much

prinzsorgenfrei for this musical!! Honestly, basically all you have to do is make a musical about, well, anything, and I will have ALL THE FEELINGS about it and I'm so happy to have gotten the chance to watch and understand it thanks to your subtitles! :D Those were a labor of love indeed <3 (And sorry it took me so long to watch -- I've had issues watching anything for the past year (idk why, my bizarre response to 2020 apparently??), and have just gotten to the point where I can do so again.)

So I wrote most of this and then went back and found the discussion with

selenak's review (and have added in some replies to that conversation), and was rather charmed to see how much we agreed :) ) (Rheinsberg review is here and here is the original thread; selenak does a much better job of actually summarizing than I do, and this is more of a companion to her review :)

It was interesting coming to this as someone who now knows a little, versus if I'd watched it a year ago, and I was impressed by how historical it actually was! Maybe I just have super low expectations due to the way US entertainment generally treats historical subjects (Hamilton was a notable exception in mostly trying to follow the history and for the most part not over-romanticizing it) but... I loved that we got August the Strong and Grumpkow and Seckendorff and even a mention of Maupertuis :D and that it didn't shy away from what Old Fritz became, and how that contrasted with Young Fritz. (Which really might be American Broadway low expectations on my part? Like, if, oh, say, Frank Wildhorn or Andrew Lloyd Weber (who admittedly isn't American, but same deal) got hold of Fritz' story, I suspect there would be... a lot less of Old Fritz in it.)

I also thought it got a lot of the feel right; the one thing I kind of thought was weird -- besides the big het elephant in the room, getting to that -- was how Wilhelmine was played as basically relentlessly cheery, which was definitely not the impression I'd gotten of her from the memoirs. I mean, there's some libretto textual evidence that she's putting on the best face possible, and also her function in the musical as foil and central relationship with Fritz means it might work better for her to be cheerful -- but it was still a little ?? to me.

I'd purposely tried not to spoil myself by e.g. reading

selenak's review beforehand (although I did see enough that Grumpkow/SD was spoiled for me, whoops -- but perhaps for the best, lol), but I'd seen a couple of the clips on youtube that selenak had shown us before. And yet, even having seen the clips I was unprepared for the overwhelming het weirdness of Katte/Wilhelmine and the near-absence of Fritz/Katte or even Fritz & Katte. Like... Katte meets both of them, he's immediately assumed by all three of them to have paired off with Wilhelmine, and then that's... kind of it... until later on Fritz is like "you're my best friend I want to escape with you!!" and I was like "...he is? What happened? Was there a whole scene I missed?" (There was not a whole scene I missed.)

Fritz is definitely played as more into Katte than strictly platonic friendship, but there was absolutely no chemistry or attempted chemistry between them, either romantic or platonic, and not even any really good friendship moments. Some of this was Katte's actor, who seemed almost to be shying away from Young Fritz sometimes, but a lot of it was just the lack of any text. (Contrast Rodrigo and Carlo in Verdi; you could even cut the friendship duet bits of Dio che nell'alma infondere, and act it totally non-slashily, and Act II would still give you no doubt of the friendship between these two.) Which makes it not very resonant at all when Katte is executed, much less as the ghost who is talking to Old Fritz. Knowing the ~~ship~~ history (and thinking of it a bit as a dramatization of mildred's Pulvis et Umbra) I still enjoyed it, I guess. And yet the part of me that was watching it as a self-contained musical was like "...why is Katte here?" and I imagine if you didn't really know the history very well it would not make much sense at all!

(I must admit laughing a bit when they do the letter-play where Katte drops a letter which Grumbkow picks up and gives to FW, and FW is all "Katte has betrayed me!!" Schiller strikes again, I'm betting! :) Or perhaps it's convergent evolution -- after all, it's rather easier, and therefore dramatically sensible, to think of FW feeling personally betrayed by Katte, and letters are a canon-relevant way of getting that information across... but...)

Random bit that totally made me laugh (given how much knowledge about Fritz there was on display, I feel that someone here was having fun):

Old Fritz: I got Voltaire to come see me! He read my poems! [Direct quote from prinzsorgenfrei's subtitles:] And that he came all the way to Potsdam shows how much he liked them!
Me: Oh Fritz. Oh Fritz.

I thought Fritz & Wilhelmine was quite well done, and though someone not in fandom wouldn't necessarily come out of the play shipping it (though there was definitely subtext there, which I thought was hilarious), I totally bought their close relationship in a way I didn't buy Fritz & Katte at all. The Wilhelmine scene where she argued with him about wanting Bayreuth to remain neutral was amazing. (And I thought that was a brilliant elision of history; lunch with MT, much as I adore that bit of history, wouldn't have worked nearly as well in a two-hour musical.) And now,

selenak, I understand what you meant about the curtsey at the end -- her relating to him as the King she has just submitted to, not her beloved brother, ouuuuch.

And at the very end of the musical, I kinda loved that Katte slipped away during the final trio, leaving Young Fritz and Wilhelmine alone together. Though speaking of incestuous subtext: not only does Katte disappear, no longer coming between the two of them if you know what I mean, but she is wearing a white dress in the finale which I realize is supposed to symbolize that she is dead, but for this American audience member it also LOOKS LIKE A WEDDING DRESS and they're standing up on a platform like two figures on a wedding cake! I'm just saying.

The music was for the most part...

selenak called it "workman level" in her review, and that's a good way of describing it; it did the job of making me invested (seriously, make anything into a musical and I will suddenly be emotionally involved in a way I wasn't before) but it wasn't at all memorable. The chorus numbers were for the most part particularly mediocre; often I really like the chorus numbers in musicals, but there was nothing in these that I found melodically or harmonically particularly catchy. The only song I could even take a stab at recalling the melody afterwards is "Sieben Jahr Krieg," which has that as its hypnotic refrain, and especially at the beginning of the song is rather devastatingly staged, with Old Fritz frowning stock-still at his desk in the middle while the chorus-stylized war is swirling around him. (Later in the song they start dancing around, which I think was supposed to evoke the frenzy of war but which I feel didn't work so well.) And I've forgotten that one too, a day later. Oh, and I did very much like the FW and Fritz duet ("Die Schande Preußens") about how Fritz is a disgrace to Prussia because he doesn't like war, etc. -- the neat thing was how FW and Fritz traded their melodic line back and forth, prefiguring the way Fritz takes on FW-like qualities later on. (Though I feel they lost a great opportunity for a callback when Fritz sings about how he's totally going to invade Silesia -- or maybe they didn't; although it's not the same melody as Die Schande Preußens, it's got enough harmonic commonality that on first watch-through I wondered if it was the same tune, which maybe was intentional and if so good job.)

Old Fritz (Chris Murray) is in my opinion by far the strongest singer in the cast; he's really good, with a resonant voice. So good that when it goes from his powerful solo (Ebenbild) to the finale where Young Fritz, Wilhelmine, and Katte have a trio, I had a moment of disorientation of "...why did the singing just get substantially more mediocre? Oh, because Old Fritz isn't singing anymore," which is probably not what you want your audience to be thinking at the grand finale. (I've now gone back and looked at the previous comments and saw

prinzsorgenfrei said Bieri (Young Fritz) wasn't having a good day, which yeah, I'd totally buy. But even if he were having a good day, Murray's voice is substantially darker and richer than the others' (in part I imagine just because he's older and his voice has settled), and I don't think that was considered in the transition to the trio.)

Of course, this was the other thing I was thinking near the end:

Everyone in the musical: Old Fritz, you're such a terrible person that you're all alone!
Me: What about Fredersdorf?? ...oh, well, I guess he's dead at that point. What about Heinrich?
Heinrich: Leave me out of this!

Edited Date: 2021-01-14 05:39 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

I see we're of a mind when it comes to this musical. <3

Like, if, oh, say, Frank Wildhorn or Andrew Lloyd Weber (who admittedly isn't American, but same deal) got hold of Fritz' story, I suspect there would be... a lot less of Old Fritz in it.)

I'd say none. Hence my assumption that "Fritz, the Disney version", would blame all the worst stuff on Grumbkow & Seckendorff as the minions of the Evil Austrian Emperor, and would end with now crowned Fritz righteously invading the Evil Austrian Empire and triumphing.

Wilhelmine played as relentlessly cheery: I hear you. Mind you, back in the day when the early Salon had reawakened my interest and I checked out A03 for Fritz fic, what little Wilhelmne there was in those stories (before Mildred started to write her into her stories for me, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!) was also relentlessly cheerful and uplifting and comforting. I remember complaining about this. Now the reason for this is obvious - the writers want a character to comfort Fritz and cheer him up, and the way Wilhelmine herself was also emotionally damaged and neurotic is evident only if you bother to read more of the source material than posted on Tumblr -, but I would like to point out that the 1980s tv two parter "Der Thronfolger" also has Wilhelmine doing the comforting of Fritz, but it doesn't have her relentlessly cheery. (It even includes a bit to indicate her relationship with her mother when SD critiques her posture and asks for "contenance" in her behavior). So even if you need Wilhelmine primarly as a supporting (in both senses of the word) character, you can show she's not a bundle of joy all the time.

To return to the musical, at first I assumed it might also be that the actress/singer was one note and couldn't do more, but her big argument scene with Fritz in act 2 blew that assumption out of the water because she is great there (and here the script allows for a whole scala of emotions).

Fritz is definitely played as more into Katte than strictly platonic friendship, but there was absolutely no chemistry or attempted chemistry between them, either romantic or platonic, and not even any really good friendship moments.

So much agreed, and never mind history, that's truly to the detriment of the story the musical itself is trying to tell. If Katte and Fritz aren't believable good friends (even without the slightest bit of subtext), then Katte's actions make no sense, and Fritz still being haunted by him years later in both senses of the word does not resonate in the way it needs to. Your comparison/contrast to Carlos and Rodrigo, even if you'd cut the friendship duet, is astute.

The Wilhelmine scene where she argued with him about wanting Bayreuth to remain neutral was amazing.

Wasn't it just? This was perhaps the greatest surprise to me when I watched the musical, because the bits that are on YouTube don't include it and give no indication of it, and it is so very good. (It also means vindicates the actress playing Wilhelmine as in, clearly the relentless cheeriness earlier was how she was directed to play it, she can and does offer more.) Of course, it also helps that Chris Murray is now playing Fritz and he, as we agree, is the superior singer (and actor). But seriously, much as the rest of the script is workmanlike as is the music, here it deserves credit for having found a way to fuse various complicated historical developments into a stage-friendly shorthand for a two hour musical which nonetheless is layered and really, really effective.

And now, selenak, I understand what you meant about the curtsey at the end -- her relating to him as the King she has just submitted to, not her beloved brother, ouuuuch.

Indeed. You can imagine how when reading "Grind" for the first time and arrived at Amalie deeply curtseying in front of Heinrich, I thought "ohhhhh, did someone watch the musical after all?"

the neat thing was how FW and Fritz traded their melodic line back and forth, prefiguring the way Fritz takes on FW-like qualities later on.

See, that's the kind of astute musical diagnosis none of us other salon members could provide.

Everyone in the musical: Old Fritz, you're such a terrible person that you're all alone!
Me: What about Fredersdorf?? ...oh, well, I guess he's dead at that point. What about Heinrich?
Heinrich: Leave me out of this!

LOL. I bet. (Now someone just needs to compose the music to my script of Lehndorff!The Musical.)

From:

prinzsorgenfrei

Yay, you saw it :DD I gotta give Kudos to bored 16-year-old me for spending ages trying to put the subtitles in the right spots and also for keeping the windows movie maker file, that made refining the translation way easier :'D

there was absolutely no chemistry or attempted chemistry between them, either romantic or platonic, and not even any really good friendship moments.

Yes!!! That's such a shame, like, at least let them be friends?? The only way we know they're friends is because Ghost-Katte tells us. "This was the day we met as well", it was indeed, Hans Hermann, the day you didn't look at him ONCE and were instead laser-focussed on his sister :'D (Give them a damn duet, maybe cut "Spiel mich", idk...)
Even Burte manages to make them seem closer and Fritz is hardly in that travesty of a play :'D

I imagine if you didn't really know the history very well it would not make much sense at all!

My friend got me the DVD back in 2016 and I remember watching it, being very confused, and thinking that maybe I got something wrong when reading basic stuff about the historical background (Because when did people ever lie in a stage play? :'D). I was rather distraught and thought that maybe my grandma had lied to me when she said "Yeah, so, that's Friedrich and that's his boyfriend". Not sure why I was ready to trust this thing over my history teacher grandma, but... I mean, at least my confusion got me to read Wilhelmine's memoir :'D

although it's not the same melody as Die Schande Preußens, it's got enough harmonic commonality that on first watch-through I wondered if it was the same tune, which maybe was intentional and if so good job.

The callback they made in that scene was one to "Das preußische Prinzip", FW's solo from the very beginnning, so the general vibe of FW was definitely there :D They just sped it up a little I believe... Maybe they wanted to put the focus on FW's parenting "working out" in the end and less on "he likes war now"? Idk.

Heinrich: Leave me out of this!

Honestly, the things I'd give to see Heinrich in a musical... Maybe he can inherit one of the overly high and rather inaccurate women's wigs :'D Maybe a tapdance number...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I must admit laughing a bit when they do the letter-play where Katte drops a letter which Grumbkow picks up and gives to FW, and FW is all "Katte has betrayed me!!" Schiller strikes again, I'm betting! :)

No doubt! But it also follows canon rather closely: don't forget the letter that Fritz writes to Katte during the escape attempt, but forgets to address it to the Katte in Berlin, so it ends up with a different Katte, a cousin in a different part of Germany, who reads it, realizes what's going on, and warns his brother-in-law Rochow, who is Fritz's governor and is on the trip to keep an eye on Fritz. Rochow warns FW, and the misdirected letter ends up in FW's hands a couple days after the escape attempt, either directly from cousin Katte or via Rochow, I forget. Naturally the musical would substitute Grumbkow, because who aside from us in salon would know who Rochow is? ;)

As for betrayal, part of the rationale for the execution was that Katte was part of the Gens d'armes, i.e. FW's personal bodyguard regiment, so it was a betrayal on that level, even if they didn't have that kind of Philip/Rodrigo relationship.

I'm glad you got to see the musical! But this is all I have time to say for now. :)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Indeed. You can imagine how when reading "Grind" for the first time and arrived at Amalie deeply curtseying in front of Heinrich, I thought "ohhhhh, did someone watch the musical after all?"

Lol! No, physical gestures of loyalty just happen to be one of

cahn's favorite tropes (mine too, although I think we deploy them differently), she suggested/requested it, and I put it in for her!

what little Wilhelmne there was in those stories (before Mildred started to write her into her stories for me, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!) was also relentlessly cheerful and uplifting and comforting. I remember complaining about this.

That's why I started writing her into stories for you! Thank you in return for writing erastes!Suhm and Peter Keith (someday) into stories for me. :)

From:

prinzsorgenfrei

forgets to address it to the Katte in Berlin, so it ends up with a different Katte, a cousin in a different part of Germany, who reads it, realizes what's going on, and warns his brother-in-law Rochow

I am so sorry for randomly jumping in like this, but the letters cousin Katte (Rittmeister Hans Friedrich von Katte) wrote were printed in Kloosterhuis (and Hinrichs) and they are quite interesting! :D

He wrote to Daniel von Rochow first and told him to keep an eye on Fritz no matter what, then he wrote to Friedrich Wilhelm von Rochow to tell him the details of what he knew and that Lieutenant Katte of the Gens d'armes must have lost his mind completely and will end them all :'D

According to Hans Friedrich, Hans Hermann actually told Fritz to send letters through him and Fritz met up with HF at some point (and asked "Huh? Why is my Katte not with you?"). HF states further, that, when he told Fritz that Berlin-Katte had difficulties getting out of the city, Fritz reacted with "Damn. Okay, so, do you want to come with me then?", to which HF answered that he does not and that Fritz should really not run away in the first place. Fritz then proceeded to spam him with letters, but HF said that he had a fever and couldn't come. The letter to Daniel also said "please don't tell the Crown Prince that I told you, he would never forgive me".

HF's letter definitely sounds more like the whole thing was another idea that backfired on Fritz rather than just an accidental mix up (since HF apparently only wrote to the Rochows after a few letters from Berlin-Katte had already passed through his hands and Fritz had told him about the whole plan). Although I assume the first letter (i.e. the one saying "come meet me" before reacting to HF with "hey, you're not my Katte") could have been the wrongly addressed one?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

You know, now that you mention this, this is ringing a faint bell. Perhaps Selena told us about it when she summarized Kloosterhuis for us. Clearly this is another one of those examples where two conflicting pieces of information co-exist quite happily in my brain, until one day they meet like matter and antimatter and implode!

Thank you very much for this write-up! I will continue assiduously working on my German so I can read Kloosterhuis myself. (Nearly 25 pages of Horowski yesterday just after dinner, which is very encouraging.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Also, can I just repeat for the umpteenth time that it breaks my heart to see Fritz trying and trying to get someone on board with the idea of him getting to safety? He takes (and took) a lot of heat for not being able to do the obvious thing called keeping a conspiracy secret, and instead trumpeting his plans to the world (of course he got caught), but aside from his natural "fight, not flight" instinct, this was clearly an oft repeated and oft ignored cry for help.

I'm not *blaming* (most of) the people who didn't want to get involved and saw coming a mile away that this was a really dangerous idea, but I totally see how Fritz ended up with trust issues. </3

From:

cahn

Ohhhh THAT was why that theme sounded so familiar! (And the reason why I couldn't place it was because I had totally forgotten FW had a solo! It took me a fair amount of bouncing around before I located it even after you told me about it, lol, I'd forgotten because it was so early.) Okay that's AWESOME and I am really happy that they did that and that you told me about it :D (It is pretty similar as far as I can tell (I didn't spend a long time on it), only Fritz's is a minor third up -- which makes that sit a lot higher in the voice, pretty high for a tenor! Kudos to him for fielding that well -- rather better than FW's actor in a less challenging key, in fact, which I suppose isn't symbolic of anything but I'm going to let that sit there anyway.)

Also, gotta amend the "no catchy tunes" thing -- now that I went back and listened again to the FW/Fritz tune it actually has gotten stuck in my head a bit, so I have to give them props for that too :)

(Because when did people ever lie in a stage play? :'D)

Heeee! (Also this probably dates me, but it reminds me of this Simpson's moment!) But yeah, the thing that's so weird is that I could forgive it not making sense historically (after all it's a musical), but it doesn't even make sense within the context of the musical itself!

Honestly, the things I'd give to see Heinrich in a musical... Maybe he can inherit one of the overly high and rather inaccurate women's wigs :'D Maybe a tapdance number...

I AM THERE FOR THIS :D And of course as selenak said there's her Lehndorff musical :D

But really I am gunning for him having his very own musical! (Maybe with Christian Borle playing Heinrich, now that he's made a bit of a career of playing not-conventionally-handsome leading men :D )

From:

cahn

Ha, yeah, I guess I'm atypical in this fandom for Wilhelmine's memoirs being one of the first texts I tackled (even before any secondary texts). (Meanwhile... I'm going to finish Voltaire's biography before I finish Fritz's, unless mildred tells me she wants to stop so we can do it together or something. Though I imagine Voltaire would think this perfectly right and proper :P :) ) And yes, the actress is really great in that argument scene with Fritz! She could totally have handled it :)

If Katte and Fritz aren't believable good friends (even without the slightest bit of subtext), then Katte's actions make no sense, and Fritz still being haunted by him years later in both senses of the word does not resonate in the way it needs to.

Yes this!!

Of course, it also helps that Chris Murray is now playing Fritz and he, as we agree, is the superior singer (and actor). But seriously, much as the rest of the script is workmanlike as is the music, here it deserves credit for having found a way to fuse various complicated historical developments into a stage-friendly shorthand for a two hour musical which nonetheless is layered and really, really effective.

YES. Like you, (a) I wondered whether acting against Murray helped her acting skills as well -- he was scary! -- though (b) I also thought they were both helped by the script here, which yes, I thought did a great job of this scene.

Indeed. You can imagine how when reading "Grind" for the first time and arrived at Amalie deeply curtseying in front of Heinrich, I thought "ohhhhh, did someone watch the musical after all?"

Haha, no, as mildred says, I just wanted it :) Physical gestures of loyalty: my jam. Physical gestures of complex loyalty relationships where the gesture itself gets across something about the complex nature of the loyalty and the relationship? I will go ANYWHERE for that, even to the extent of pestering the person for whom I'm betaing to put it in :D

(What I was actually thinking of is one of the last scenes in The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Pope (which won the Newbery Honor) -- I don't know if you've read it, but it's a YA-ish about a young lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I) who gets exiled to a rural manor and has adventures there with a version of the Fairy Folk that I loved so much that it's forever ruined me for most other depictions of it -- I love the book very much, though it's out of print at present.)

Edited Date: 2021-01-15 05:48 am (UTC)