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: Goldstone Ch 5-6

[cahn]

More seriously, it's not her main subject, and only losely connected, so her taking Voltaire's summary on faith is way more okay than the kitchen psychology applied to the MT/FS marriage which is far more central to her story. I.e. I mind that FS's letter on marriage to Leopold indicating his own attitude to marriage and what he thought a husband should be didn't make the cut (so far), while I'm just amused at the rendition of the grand Fritz/Voltaire fallout (and that she seems to think this was it for their relationship).

YES THIS. I have to admit that with the Fritz/Voltaire thing I mostly think it's hilarious that Voltaire has managed to troll this hard across time and space :D But UGH I am really annoyed that Goldstone is writing about MT and can't manage to give her the credit of actually being a powerful woman and not someone who is always sucking up to her husband about something that, if he'd actually been sulking about it his whole life, would have made him a total brat (which he wasn't! and that awesome letter that you bring up!). The actual facts are way more interesting than the kitchen psychology!

Something else: all this insistence that MT knew Fritz would come again for her sooner or later, so she came for him first (by building a trap): is again as biased as the pro Prussian versions where Fritz was all innocence, wanting to live out the rest of his life in blissful peace, when the evil woman provokes him into war. And possibly even less realistic.

Ah! I'm glad you weighed in here -- I got a little confused by what to believe in this part. Also, lol your dad! <3 But seriously -- I got lost here too, maybe I was reading too fast but I got the impression from Goldstone that MT didn't break the treaty she signed with Fritz because Fritz attacked her side first? But that's not true?

Re: Goldstone Ch 5-6

[selenak]

No, you're right, but it has to be admitted there is such a thing as keeping the letter and the spirit of the law. MT had no intention of sticking to the Silesia 1 concessions, and as for the Silesia 2 treaty, Goldstone herself lays out how MT was goading Fritz into attacking first. (Without which she couldn't have called on her new allies.) So she literally did strick to the treaties, while preparing everything to break their spirit.

The big difference of Goldstone's claim is that she had to do this because Fritz otherwise would have attacked her anyway. And that's, imo, pretty unlikely, not because of the goodness of his nature but because he had his eyes on non-Austrian territory, like I said. Why not say MT did it because she wanted Silesia back (and Fritz defeated, preferably as powerless as possible) without the "preemptive protection" claim? Too unsympathetic for an US audience?