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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![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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:
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.
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
Okay, so. This one isn't quite as clear as it seems in English I think. I left the google translation as it was, because it was one possible version, but the original French goes as follows: Avec cela, j'ai une juste cause d'affliction, qui m'est sensible jusqu'au fond du cœur; elle ne vient point d'ici, mais d'autre part; - the "not from the heart" is one possible interpretation of the "d'ici" phrase I'd say, but you don't have to read it that way, because "ici" can mean a lot of things and it's unclear if it's actually related to "coeur". He could even be talking geography and saying his affliction doesn't come from Berlin but from somewhere else! Which would fit your theory.
Okay, so, based on my reading of Fritz's correspondence, where this theme crops up over and over again, I'm 99% sure he's referring to Stoicism here.
Ohhhh. Nice. I definitely read his "moralize" in the second letter that way, but because he also has the heroism part in the first letter - which I took to mean just that, stoically withstanding things - I took the "morality" part more literally in that case, precisely because he's being so cryptic and seems worried that Camas might disapprove - and "worried for a sick friend" seems like something that Camas wouldn't object to or even fail to understand and sympathize with, unless the source of the illness is the problem - or the identity of the friend, as per your theory. Hmmm.
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
And yes, the "either morality or heroism" gave me pause for the reason you mention, but I *think* I would still take it as referring to Stoicism rather than conventional morality, just because it's such a common trope in Fritz's letters. And redundancy in the form of parallel clauses is a stylistic device in both the Bible and Roman literature (Cicero is *all over* it), and all their imitators since. Your interpretation isn't impossible, though!
This is definitely a crux.
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
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, so I'm still betting on Gröben and a combination of STD and gambling debts. Not least because I don't think Fredersdorf's health problems had kicked in yet, though I could be wrong about this. Of course we don't have letters between him and Fritz from that era. 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 as: The Prince's first valet, Herr Fredersdorf, is a tall, beautiful man, who has wit and intelligence. He's polite, attentive, skillful, smooth, likes his possessions but still likes splendour. I believe he'll play a large role one day. And if Bielfeld had noticed, Camas probably had as well.
Now with Wilhelmine, both a sick Fredersdorf and an STD and gambling debts ridden Gröben would be reasons to be cryptic - whereas simply accumulating more and more debts would not be - so that's not a tell in either direction.
Lastly: there's the way STD keeps coming up, both as a rumor about Fritz in his younger days (so established and wide spread that a visiting tourist like Boswell hears about it in 1764), and by Fritz himself when wanting do make a dig at others. In one of those poems mocking the rest of Europe which Voltaire wasn't supposed to take along, he's accusing Louis XV. to have it, for example; but more interestingly, there's the way he uses it in the Marwitz letters to Heinrich, completely out of the blue. I mean, he goes from mocking Heinrich and Marwitz for pining to saying "oh, and btw, that guy is a total slut with STD!" Given the way Fritz used Heinrich to play out his own life again with reversed roles, this makes me suspect he had at some point crushed on someone who turned out to have STD. (Could have been Algarotti, of course, except that his reaction to Algarotti having STD is so very blasé.)
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
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.
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
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.
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
Since I don't remember where I got that from, if you do, then that's probably the one I'm thinking of!
However, I'm still too stuck on the "not from the heart, but from another part" phrasing
But didn't we decide that was only one possible interpretation of "d'ici"? I'm still trying to consult with more fluent French speakers on the matter (waiting to hear back).
And I'm definitely not asserting that Fredersdorf was sick! As you say, we have no evidence and I'm making this up out of wholecloth. I'm only playing devil's advocate to patch up the holes you're poking. ;)
Hurt/comfort fic sounds great, regardless. :)
1736 events of possible relevance/background to hypothetical fics:
January: Fritz has colic and a mystery affliction.
February 12: MT/FS marriage.
Early March: Pesne paints Fritz, gets the mouth right by telling him to think of Wilhelmine. Fritz, Suhm, and La Chetardie all studying philosophy together.
March 22: Fritz sends salmon to FS.
May 2: "There stands one who will avenge me." (Re not being informed of the MT/FS marriage, as the latest in a string of grievances.)
May 6: Babysitting at Ruppin.
August: Move to Rheinsberg.
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
Okay! A native speaker friend of a friend has weighed in, and her interpretation is that Fritz is saying that, although he feels the pain from the bottom of his heart, it's not his heart *qua biological organ* that's causing the pain, but his mind that's causing his (metaphorical) heart emotional distress.
Which is absolutely consistent with the rest of the letter and makes perfect sense to me. And which does not help us distinguish between Groeben and Fredersdorf. ;)
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
Re: Fritz Mystery Affliction January 1736
I'd been wondering about the lack of Fredersdorf in Fritz' letters and this is a really fascinating explanation.