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: 2021-09-26 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...!)