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

Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3

[selenak]

BUT. Goldstone is the FIRST person I have seen claim that Katte was WITH Fritz on the midnight mad dash on horseback toward the border on August 5, 1730, and was shadowed with him and caught.

In non-fiction, same here, but the trashily entertaining tv series Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria makes Katte, Peter and Not!Robert Keith into one character and lets that person be with Fritz etc. Though I doubt Nancy Goldstone watched East German tv series from the 1980s.

And I recall SR going into some detail about how it was VERY politically important that she was elected as King, not Queen.

It was. I don't remember more than that, though, and am on holidays with the APs in Southern Tyrolia, so can't look up anything.

I was impressed with Goldstone for getting this right, but then deeply concerned by her statement that the only hereditary Habsburg domains MT inherited via the Pragmatic Sanction were Bohemia and Hungary. I mean, points for not saying that it made her Holy Roman Empress, which is a common mistake to make, but wasn't there this unimportant, obscure little principality called Austria that was also included? My impression was that the reason MT was called Queen of Hungary was that Queen was the highest-ranked title she possessed at that time, not that she wasn't also ruler of Austria.

All true - i.e. both what Goldstone gets right which a lot of books don't, and about Austria being the heart of her heriditary lands, the "Erblande" as they were called. She was Archduchess of Austria before she was anything else. (You couldn't be King of Austria. Archduke/Duchess was as high as it went in MT's time; before the Habsburgs got their hands on Austria, there were actual Dukes of Austria without the "Arch".) It's not as high a title as "Queen", obviously, but it was a defining one for any Habsburg.

Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3

[mildred_of_midgard]

In non-fiction, same here, but the trashily entertaining tv series Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria makes Katte, Peter and Not!Robert Keith into one character and lets that person be with Fritz etc.

Oh, sure, I was thinking this kind of conflation is totally understandable in fiction and happens! Shall we pretend we're reading a novel, for the sake of my blood pressure? ;) It would be a great novel!

You couldn't be King of Austria. Archduke/Duchess was as high as it went in MT's time; before the Habsburgs got their hands on Austria, there were actual Dukes of Austria without the "Arch".) It's not as high a title as "Queen", obviously, but it was a defining one for any Habsburg.

See, Massie getting Fritz's spouse wrong when writing a book about the Romanovs: totally forgivable, even if I make gentle fun. Goldstone not understanding that Maria Theresia is the Archduchess of Austria in a book about Maria Theresia is when I start questioning whether I should continue a book.

(I'm also imagining felis enjoying my sarcasm about the obscure principality of Austria that *might* be relevant to MT's power base in 1740. ;))

Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3

[cahn]

Goldstone not understanding that Maria Theresia is the Archduchess of Austria in a book about Maria Theresia is when I start questioning whether I should continue a book.

Wait, what? I am pretty sure Goldstone called her Archduchess in at least one place.

*blinks* I just did a search and Goldstone calls her Archduchess of Austria starting when she's born? Can that be right?

Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - second half of ch 3

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yes, that is correct. See, the Germans did titles a little differently (this is related to the fact that they weren't big into primogeniture but partible inheritance, which is related to why there are SO MANY German principalities).

So if you're ruling an archduchy, you're Archduke, and your kids are all Archdukes and Archduchesses from the moment they're born. The title is the same as the parents' title. Which is *not* what you're familiar with from, say, English titles.

This is how you can have like five brothers be dukes of Brunswick at the same time, and only one be the ruling duke (who would be called like Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, to indicate he's the duke of the principality and not just a member of the ducal family). Of course, the kids also get called princes and princesses, and I'm not sure the daughters always get the family title, since I usually see them referred to as "princess" if they're not Archduchess, and there are courtesy titles, and there's the whole "hereditary prince" thing which is like "my dad's Margrave but I'm gonna be Margrave after he dies"...Eh, Selena can flesh this out. :P

But yes, I can confirm the part about being an Archduchess from birth is correct. So it's not that Goldstone literally never refers to MT as Archduchess of Austria, it's that she doesn't seem to understand how that works in terms of inheritance. She seems to think it's like being a princess in England--you get the title because your parent is the ruler, but once they die, being a princess doesn't mean you inherited the country. I mean, I'm interpreting here, but that's the only sense I can make of her statement that Bohemia and Hungary were the only lands MT inherited, which was why she was called Queen of Hungary until FS's election (and afterwards by snarky evil men in Potsdam).