Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30
Sep. 8th, 2021 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnIn 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
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
Re: MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-14 10:01 am (UTC):) I'm just imaging: all his life he's heard the Imperials want nothing more than get their hands on the offspring of German Protestant nobility, convert them and rule through them, and there he is, practically volunteering himself, and yet what does he get? DO NOT WANT from Grumbkow and Seckendorff both.
did imprisoned Katte figure out that Fritz must have been lying, and how did he feel about that? If he did, it apparently didn't change his willingness to die with joy in his heart, but I wonder.
Honestly, I doubt he did. Yes, they interrogated him twice on this point, but he probably figured the interrogators wanted to trip him up by saying Fritz denied it. (To be fair, given FW ordered people to tell Fritz no one was asking after him and even his mother didn't want to hear about him anymore etc., it's not like such a tactic would have been out of the question.) And the interrogators were far more interested in how far the Brits had been involved anyway, interrogating him way longer about this. Not to mention that the more time passed, the more he saw he would die and thus had to keep it together, to which the idea that he was dying for his friend whom he'd tried his best to save and protect, not just from Dad but from scheming Catholics, was essential. So I don't think he realised. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. Otoh, I'm pretty sure that Fritz was keenly aware the whole time.
Otoh, a living Katte would have figured it out, and I'd love to read a conversation where both he and Fritz can voice their anger which the whole dying-for-you circumstances prevented and surpressed.
Re: MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-16 05:02 am (UTC)HEE.
Otoh, I'm pretty sure that Fritz was keenly aware the whole time.
Otoh, a living Katte would have figured it out, and I'd love to read a conversation where both he and Fritz can voice their anger which the whole dying-for-you circumstances prevented and surpressed.
Ouuuuuch. That is to say, I would read :P :) Break it differently indeed!
Re: MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-16 08:47 am (UTC)Now, if I wanted to break it differently, the whole "Fritz lied" part would be but one drop in an entirely different AU scenario, not one of them managing to escape in 1730, but of Katte surviving, being imprisoned as per the tribunal's sentence, and being freed at once in 1740 when Fritz succeeds FW. Joy! Except, well, not so much, in the long term. 10 years imprisonment is not easy if FW is the guy responsible for your conditions. (PrussianTrenck: Or Fritz! Read my memoirs!) Also, I suspect they wouldn't have found it much easier to bridge the new distance of a decade of vastly different experiences than Fritz and Peter did. That Fritz would still feel guilty and grateful and what not would not help, nor the chip on his shoulder to prove to everyone Dad had been wrong about him, he wouldn't be ruled by favourites. So I think Katte would get lots of presents and titles (like his Dad did in rl) and estate, and honorary membership in the Academy like Peter, but he would NOT join the army to go invade Silesia with Fritz. (BTW, I don't think Katte would have had any moral problems with invading Silesia per se. It's for the Silesians' own good, freeing them from Catholic tyranny! Also, go Fritz, have your rendezvous with fame!) And whether or not he'd want to go in the first place or be glad not having to go from being a prisoner to being a soldier with just a few months interlude, that would be yet another life changing experience they didn't share. Then, when Fritz is back, Katte gets treated to a really eerie sense of deja vu as Heinrich shapes up to be L'autre moi-meme and Fritz starts to play FW in that relationship. And that's not mentioning the emotional/romantic ties Fritz has created in the intervening decade. Most guys Fritz got close to one way or the other were a jealous bunch, after all.
=> They'd end up as estranged exes who had had an intense year together as young men but can't make it as their mature selves; Katte decides to move to England after all.
Re: MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-16 01:15 pm (UTC)THANK YOU! I was making noises of indignation and was going to come here to say exactly this, when I worked through the set of new comments and got to this one. :P
(Katte did know how awful Fritz' situation had been, for example.)
EXACTLY. :PP
They'd end up as estranged exes who had had an intense year together as young men but can't make it as their mature selves;
You're not wrong, historically speaking, but my headcanon for that AU is that's NOT HOW IT HAPPENED. :PPP
(I have broken my share of other fandoms. This is my fix-it fandom.)
Re: MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-16 03:56 pm (UTC)Yeah, I wrote that comment too fast -- I know that if you wrote it, it would be clearing the air so they could reconcile! (Like Peter and Fritz in your fic -- well, okay, it wasn't at all the same, not least because they didn't end up together really, but it inhabits the same "let's clear the air and fix thing between us" portion of my brain.)
If Selena wrote it, she'd break it :P :) (ETA: Well, not if she wrote it as a present for you! If she wrote it as a present for me she would (which she wouldn't, because I want broken Fritz/Katte much less than you don't want it, lol).
Re: MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-16 04:04 pm (UTC)