Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30

[cahn]

In which, despite the title, I would like to be told about the English Revolution, which is yet another casualty of my extremely poor history education :P :)

Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:

The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.

Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.

The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P

Comments

Catherine the Great: Misc

[mildred_of_midgard]

Catherine when someone she loves dies: locks herself in her room and cries for days and won't eat.

Catherine when her disliked daughter-in-law dies and her son is locking himself in his room and crying and won't eat (and is refusing to believe she's dead): "Well, since it has been proven that she could not give birth to a living child, we must not think about her any more."

Remind you of anything? Like Fritz, Mister "Wilhelmine is dead? All Europe must grieve with me!" "Émilie is dead? Voltaire's grief is so over the top he's bound to be protesting too much!"?

cahn: this is the daughter-in-law, Natalya, who dies gruesomely in childbed after 5 (?) days of agony. Neither she nor the child survive.

The autopsy found that she had a deformity, iirc a bone growth that blocked her birth canal enough to prevent a child from passing through, that meant she would never be able to give birth. In Russia, where monarchs conveniently died of "hemorrhoids" 9 days after being overthrown, this autopsy was widely disbelieved and Catherine was suspected of offing her unfavorite daughter-in-law so she could replace her with a better one.

I don't actually buy that, but the coldness *is* noticeable. This is the same Natalya who dies, btw, when Heinrich is visiting for the second time, and he and Catherine are all, "Wow, sorry she's dead, can we interest you in a bride with close ties to Prussia?"

"We have the same coldness" could apply to Fritz, Heinrich, and Catherine.

On a lighter note, when Vienna Joe was visiting, he liked to travel simply and stay in inns, so Catherine had a palace annex converted into an "inn" for his visit, and her German gardener had to play the innskeeper so he could speak to Joseph and give him the "authentic" German inn experience.

You do you, I guess. :P

Finally, this description of a Russian military officer (Peter Panin, younger brother of the foreign minister) that Catherine dislikes struck me as unintentionally hilarious:

He had often declared that Russia should be ruled by a man; his preference was Grand Duke Paul. Catherine also worried about his reputation as a military martinet and about his unconventional personal behavior: he sometimes appeared in his headquarters wearing a gray satin nightgown and a large French nightcap with pink ribbons.

It's one thing to know that masculinity was encoded differently in the 18th century, it's another thing to read *that* sentence. Good lord.

Re: Catherine the Great: Misc

[selenak]

I've always thought it a neat irony that Catherine resembled (P)Russian Pete's idol way more than he did in several of her flaws and virtues, and he never got to notice... Then again, I generally think it's fortunate Peter never met his idol. Mind you, of course Fritz could be charming if he wanted to, and he had every reason in the world to keep Peter sweet, so maybe it would have gone well, but with such sky high expectations and Fritz' temper and general tendency to sarcasm, well...

re: the first daughter-in-law: cahn, reminder, Natalya wasn't her given name. Much like Sophie became Catherine, Paul's first wife started out as Wilhelmne (what else) of Hesse-Darmstadt, the sister, btw, of future FW2's second wife Luise of Hesse-Darmstadt. Just to make life more complete, this Wilhelmine's second name was Luise, too. Clearly, Natalya is an improvement for identification purposes! But the fact she was FW2's sister-in-law had the consequence that Heinrich got given her papers etc. once she had died to take back with him to Germany, and this, as I mentioned to you both elsewhere, had the consquence that Heinrich did what you shouldn't, read her letters, and promptly, as in a moral fable, discovered why you shouldn't do that, since FW2's second wife - who strongly sympathized with Aunt Mina - had written to sister Ex-Wilhemine Natalya what a creep Heinrich was. (This is from Lehndorff's diaries, since Heinrich told him the tale once he got back.)

LOL on ViennaJoe and the inn.

Re: Catherine the Great: Misc

[mildred_of_midgard]

once she had died to take back with him to Germany, and this, as I mentioned to you both elsewhere, had the consquence that Heinrich did what you shouldn't, read her letters

Oh, that reminds me! I meant to mention that part of Catherine's coldness was that when Paul was refusing to remarry immediately, she dug up Natalya's letters to her lover and presented them to Paul. "See? She was cheating on you with your best friend. Now will you get over her and remarry already?"

Which was apparently not great for his emotional state (ya think?), but he did agree to remarry on the spot.

Catherine to Grimm: "The dead being the dead, we must think of the living." (Like we do all the time, except when the dead are *my* dead. Then we grieve them extensively.)

Re: Catherine the Great: Misc

[selenak]

Did Catherine also write terrible no good condolence letters?

cahn, wiki tells me that Natalya's lover was the same Prince Rasumowski who later became a big patron of Beethoven, who dedicated the Rasumowski-quartets op. 59 Nr. 1, Nr. 2 and Nr. 3, as well as the 5. Symphony c-minor op. 67 and the 6. symphony F-major op. 68. to him. In the wake of Natalya's death, he was first made ambassador to Naples and later to Vienna, where he settled down for good (and supported Beethoven).

Another reminder for cahn: Grimm is the Melchior (von) Grimm, among many other things Catherine's agent and correspondent for artistic things in Paris. (For example, he's the one who bought Voltaire's library for her.) He was also Heinrich's go to guy when Heinrich finally visited Paris for the first time. Both circumstances came to be because Grimm (born in Ratisbon as the son of a Lutheran pastor, studies in Leipzig where he is one of old Manteuffel's protegés and holds the 50 years anniversary of graduation laudatory speech on him, leaves Germany for Paris in 1747 as a nobleman's sidekick) was the editor and headwriter of the Correspondance Litteraire, THE most exclusive literary magazine of Europe at the time. Not sold in France itself (hence Grimm was available to avoid censorship), and distributed to mostly German royals (with some ex Germans like Catherine thrown in) who had to promise not to make copies. Heinrich, AW and Ferdinand were among the early subscribers. Fritz got it for free for some years in the hopes he'd subscribe, but he corresponded privately with Grimm instead and so eventually there was no more Correspondance Litteraire for him. This is the same magazine Mildred called "Diderot's magazine" in her write up of Diderot's biography, which confused me a bit because when I read up on Grimm (which I had to for another project), he was called the editor and chief writer throughout. Diderot, it's true, was one of the journalists writing for it, as did Grimm's life partner Louise D'Epinay. But Diderot wasn't the editor, Then I figured the Diderot biographer probably did that thing where the more famous guy is made the central figure.

Anyway: Musically speaking, Grimm is the guy whose detailed description of the concert the Mozarts (Wolfgang and Nannerl as children, plus Leopold) gave on their first big European tour for the Correspondance Litteraire gets quoted in every Mozart biography. He befriended the Mozarts then, so when Wolfgang as a young man was sent to Paris by Leopold, naturally the expectation was that Grimm would help with the promotion again. But adult Wolfgang and Grimm irritated each other immensely, though Grimm hosted him for a while after the death of his mother, which was also at the same time that Joseph Boulougne, aka the Chevalier de St. George, legendary mixed race composer and duelist was staying in the same house as well, and it's one of those tantalizing things where we know they must have met and talked but no one ever recorded what happened. (Including Grimm who just found adult Mozart exhausting and wished he'd have less talent and more manners.)

Re: Catherine the Great: Misc

[mildred_of_midgard]

Did Catherine also write terrible no good condolence letters?

Perhaps! Can't tell from this episode, because she and her son were in the same place, and those quotes are from letters to her friends.

Re: Catherine the Great: Misc

[cahn]

and it's one of those tantalizing things where we know they must have met and talked but no one ever recorded what happened.

Why wasn't everyone thinking of what gossipy sensationalists would want to have recorded hundreds of years later, I say!

Re: Catherine the Great: Misc

[cahn]

Oh, that reminds me! I meant to mention that part of Catherine's coldness was that when Paul was refusing to remarry immediately, she dug up Natalya's letters to her lover and presented them to Paul. "See? She was cheating on you with your best friend. Now will you get over her and remarry already?"

Which was apparently not great for his emotional state (ya think?), but he did agree to remarry on the spot.

AAAAAAAAH CATHERINE

Re: Catherine the Great: Misc

[cahn]

and promptly, as in a moral fable, discovered why you shouldn't do that, since FW2's second wife - who strongly sympathized with Aunt Mina - had written to sister Ex-Wilhemine Natalya what a creep Heinrich was.

I had totally forgotten this! LOL Heinrich, sometimes being problematic gets what you deserve :D

Re: Catherine the Great: Misc

[cahn]

Catherine when her disliked daughter-in-law dies and her son is locking himself in his room and crying and won't eat (and is refusing to believe she's dead): "Well, since it has been proven that she could not give birth to a living child, we must not think about her any more."

Oh man, Catherine. (And yes, it did remind me of Fritz and Voltaire :P ) Omg, Natalya. I remembered Heinrich and Catherine talking about Paul's next wife but I didn't remember it was multiple days of childbirth. OWWWWWWWW. WOULD NOT LIVE THEN FOR ANYTHING.

On a lighter note, when Vienna Joe was visiting, he liked to travel simply and stay in inns, so Catherine had a palace annex converted into an "inn" for his visit, and her German gardener had to play the innskeeper so he could speak to Joseph and give him the "authentic" German inn experience.

LOLOLOL ViennaJoe!

It's one thing to know that masculinity was encoded differently in the 18th century, it's another thing to read *that* sentence. Good lord.

Woooow. Indeed!