Huh. Maybe? But my first reaction was that that doesn't really seem like Fritz's style. Namely not doing something, and then pretending like he'd done it all along when badgered. Fritz isn't that conflict-avoidant: if he's refusing to do something on principle, he'll usually either die on that hill, or after enough wearing down, go, "Fine, I'll do it, are you happy now?" Maybe you'll find counterexamples (you and Selena did turn up examples of Fritz writing vaingloriously about himself in the third person circa 1745!), but I would need more evidence to believe this was in character.
Tacitly refusing a petition? Yes, I'm told this is what he did with Mendelssohn's' Academy membership, and it seems to have been standard royal practice, in that Stollberg-Rilinger tells me MT did the same thing with petitions she didn't want to grant.
Scapegoating? Absolutely, but usually on matters where Fritz felt strongly about something getting done the right way and couldn't admit to having been at fault for it going wrong (like blaming the flute because he very much cared about the quality of the music, and choosing to die on that hill for a week, then finally giving in).
Trying to get away with something in hopes no one notices and then lying through his teeth when caught? This strikes me as how he interacted with people who had power over him, i.e. FW, not with people he had power over.
I welcome counterevidence!
On the other hand, I have wondered before just how much got lost on his way to or from Fritz with his style of government.
I feel like that must have been pretty inevitable. I mean, are there bureaucracies in which that doesn't happen? And I don't feel a micromanaging monarch would eliminate that problem.
- made me smile. Probably a tale that became a bit bigger in the telling, but still, it's a great scene.
I was thinking more that he did indeed lose it, i.e. that he made a mistake/forgot, and didn't want to own up to that, not that he was strongly opposed and lied about it. But looking back at my comment, the politics line doesn't entirely fit with that interpretation, so I clearly didn't think it through. :P But yeah, I agree that if he felt strongly about not wanting to do it, he wouldn't have bothered to lie.
Ah, yeah, if that's what you meant, then "It got lost? I can't have lost it, someone else must have lost it!" would have been totally in character. Though it could just as easily have actually been someone else who lost it, we just don't know.
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Re: Moses Mendelsohn (aka Nicolai, Volume I, b)
Huh. Maybe? But my first reaction was that that doesn't really seem like Fritz's style. Namely not doing something, and then pretending like he'd done it all along when badgered. Fritz isn't that conflict-avoidant: if he's refusing to do something on principle, he'll usually either die on that hill, or after enough wearing down, go, "Fine, I'll do it, are you happy now?" Maybe you'll find counterexamples (you and Selena did turn up examples of Fritz writing vaingloriously about himself in the third person circa 1745!), but I would need more evidence to believe this was in character.
Tacitly refusing a petition? Yes, I'm told this is what he did with Mendelssohn's' Academy membership, and it seems to have been standard royal practice, in that Stollberg-Rilinger tells me MT did the same thing with petitions she didn't want to grant.
Scapegoating? Absolutely, but usually on matters where Fritz felt strongly about something getting done the right way and couldn't admit to having been at fault for it going wrong (like blaming the flute because he very much cared about the quality of the music, and choosing to die on that hill for a week, then finally giving in).
Trying to get away with something in hopes no one notices and then lying through his teeth when caught? This strikes me as how he interacted with people who had power over him, i.e. FW, not with people he had power over.
I welcome counterevidence!
On the other hand, I have wondered before just how much got lost on his way to or from Fritz with his style of government.
I feel like that must have been pretty inevitable. I mean, are there bureaucracies in which that doesn't happen? And I don't feel a micromanaging monarch would eliminate that problem.
- made me smile. Probably a tale that became a bit bigger in the telling, but still, it's a great scene.
Yeah. :)1
Re: Moses Mendelsohn (aka Nicolai, Volume I, b)
Re: Moses Mendelsohn (aka Nicolai, Volume I, b)