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: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Ch 4
Date: 2021-09-25 06:15 am (UTC)Did, too. Read, I mean. The Time Travelling Valet is set during Silesia 1! but I know what you mean. Anyway, I'll leave factual nitpicking to Mildred on this round, at first read, chapter 4 didn't stun me the way earlier chapters did in this regard.
Two points: re: secret Habsburgness - in fairness, it's more like she totally immerses herself in her subject's pov(s). Because Nancy Goldstone was perfectly capable of casting the Habsburgs as the bad guys in the first half of her Winter Queen book, in particular Emperor Ferdinand II. (Mind you, it's hard to describe Ferdinand as the good guy in any account of the start of the Thirty Years War, but still.) There, you also get observations about Habsburg entitlement and how the other European powers rightly feared being steamrolled by them.
Also, for the hilarity, a reminder that a good deal of the old school German Fritz books yours truly had to read for Salon are just as biased in the other direction. Take Jessen, the editor of the "Fritz and MT in the eyes of their contemporaries" anthology, and his summarizing of the lead up to Silesia 1 and Silesia 1. For Jessen, Fritz is totally sincere in offering MT and FS friendship and protection! He sees himself as MT's champion in a cruel world when offering her his protection in exchange of justly-claimed-by-Prussia Silesia! When MT rejects this as the protection racket it was: „Friedrich war erschüttert über so viel Hass.“ („Friedrich was stunned by so much hatred.“) "Shattered" might be an even better translation, now that I think of it. His feelings were hurt! He only meant well, and she's being so unreasonable!
And you know, Old School Fritzian biographers (and my Dad, who was very indignant when coming across Valory's liar quote) re: doubledealing with the French when ditching them (twice) in the first two Silesian Wars, that wasn't double dealing, they brought it on themselves. Firstly, instead of sending their one superb commander Maurice de Saxe, they greedily had him have a go at the Austrian Netherlands and sent only incompentents to support Fritz to the Bohemian front, and secondly, they would have, too, if they could have. Also Fritz was greeted with much rejoicing by all the Protestant Silesians (
especially those who'd heard propaganda by Morgenstern), who were glad to be free of Catholic Habsburg tyranny, and the Catholic Silesians, too, knew how much better they were off with progressive Prussia than with backwards Austria.So it's not like our Ms Goldstone is unprecedented in terms of non-fiction books with much bias, is what I'm saying.
Btw, I'm sad she leaves out a by product of Fritz making that secret truce with the Austrians while pretending to laying siege on Neisse, because that caused an awkward sibling situation, as in:
Fritz at the start of this war: Clearly, being my brother-in-law means supporting me totally. When can I expect your husband's reinforcements, Wilhelmine?
Fast-forward to Wilhelmine while the secret truce business is going on: Bayreuth has now signed up with the Emperor (that's the Wittelsbach Emperor, MT's rival) and your cause, Fritz!
Fritz: Bad idea. Your husband shouldn't do it. Think again.
Wilhelmine: ?!?
Something else the pro Fritz old school biographers bring up and Goldstone loftily dismisses as blatant pretense on Fritz' part is that by allying himself with Team Wittelsbach, he was, de facto, fighting for the current HRE Emperor (once the guy had een elected and crowned, just as MT's forces took his home province of Bavaria) against an unruly subject (MT), and therefore in the right and being a loyal prince of the Empire. (Of course, the same old school Fritz biographers see it differently in the 7 Years War.) This was what Fritz himself claimed, and while he sure as hell didn't do anything he did for Karl Albrecht of Wittelsbach's sake, you can make that legal case, and it was effective propaganda in some circles at the time.
Off to another day of hiking, see you in the evening!
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Ch 4
Date: 2021-09-25 07:57 pm (UTC)And the Care and Feeding of Italian Greyhounds is set during Silesia 2! :P But yes, we know what you mean.
Anyway, I'll leave factual nitpicking to Mildred on this round, at first read, chapter 4 didn't stun me the way earlier chapters did in this regard.
Same. This is nitty-gritty enough and about a period I don't know in this much detail that I didn't catch anything other than the baby Joseph (which is forgivable). She gives the date of the Britain/Austria alliance as a few months later than Asprey does, which I took to mean that Asprey is giving the secret treaty date and she's giving the public alliance date, if Asprey can be trusted. And this I only know because I looked it up last night for our discussion. ;)
Anything else would be nitpicking that would involve heavy research on my part. If there are mistakes in this chapter, they're not egregious ones.
Two points: re: secret Habsburgness - in fairness, it's more like she totally immerses herself in her subject's pov(s).
Well, yes, having read the Winter Queen, I could see that this was a practice of hers. It's not like I literally think she's a secret Habsburg. :P I was trying to make it memorable for Cahn.
Also, for the hilarity, a reminder that a good deal of the old school German Fritz books yours truly had to read for Salon are just as biased in the other direction.
And old school English Fritz books are the same! I was digitizing my books recently and (re-)learned that when Fritz became king, EC retired to Monbijou, where Fritz visited her from time to time.
(Did Fritz ever go to Schönhausen? Or did she meet up with him in other places?)
So it's not like our Ms Goldstone is unprecedented in terms of non-fiction books with much bias, is what I'm saying.
No, certainly not! Or even this many factual errors.
Fritz: Bad idea. Your husband shouldn't do it. Think again.
Wilhelmine: ?!?
OH RIGHT THIS HAPPENED! Thank you for the reminder.
Oh, Fritz.
Something else the pro Fritz old school biographers bring up and Goldstone loftily dismisses as blatant pretense on Fritz' part
It's good that she can pick up on blatant pretenses when they're on the opposite side from her fave...
Off to another day of hiking, see you in the evening!
Have fun! Or, given how late it is there now, hope you had fun!
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Ch 4
Date: 2021-09-26 05:10 am (UTC)As far as I recall from Lehndorff, he didn't, but she and he were in a couple of other palaces like Charlottenburg or the Hohenzollern main Berlin city residence. (Or the countryside palaces if the rest of the family bothered to invite her, see discussion with AW about "my Zimperliese" and "your Zimperliese" coming along.) But given, say, the letter from Fredersdorf to Fritz announcing that the Queen had asked whether she could come and how much retinue she'd bring (way less than SD or Amalie), the one taking the intiative for shared company was EC.
Monbijou being SD's residence, btw, that's an especially ironic mistake to make on behalf of your old school English sources. SD with her not-fondness for her Braunschweig daughter-in-laws would have had something to say about that!
I did have fun. Also I was exhausted afterwards. The rarely online situation will continue for three more days.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Ch 4
Date: 2021-09-26 05:14 am (UTC)Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Ch 4
Date: 2021-09-26 06:17 pm (UTC)Yeah, Rödenbeck records one single instance of Fritz at Schönhausen, pre-Lehndorff, in July 1744, when Fritz apparently attended a party there. My speculation is that it was related to Ulrike's marriage and departure, which was around that time. Otherwise my impression was that they mostly met in Berlin.
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Ch 4
Date: 2021-09-26 08:13 pm (UTC)So yes, the author of that bio manages to pack in 2 factual mistakes and 2 flawed interpretations into a single sentence: Monbijou instead of Schönhausen, Fritz visiting her at her palace from time to time, the implication that EC initiated the separation, and the implication that Fritz initiated the get-togethers! That's why I was impressed by that sentence enough to still remember it a month later. ;) And why Goldstone is far from the only offender. (I think it's a combination of the letdown given the high expectations, and the 2021 publication date. I mean, I expect mythologizing from my 1960s and older books, but if we amateurs in salon can do better after just 2 years of casual research...!)
Re: Reading group: In the Shadow of the Empress - Ch 4
Date: 2021-09-27 05:10 am (UTC)Ha. Fair!
Btw, I'm sad she leaves out a by product of Fritz making that secret truce with the Austrians while pretending to laying siege on Neisse, because that caused an awkward sibling situation
Lololol! Oh Fritz.