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: Empress Ch 10-16

[mildred_of_midgard]

But I know mildred that you're getting behind, so if you want I'll pick it up again next weekend :P

Eh, you and Selena go ahead without me if you want. I'm 100% engrossed in Peter the Great, Charles XII, and German right now. I'll catch up at some point. Sorry about the readalong, but this weekend I'm too busy learinng to have time to be arguing. :P

I'm quite sure Massie is rife with unsourced anecdotes and refuted legends, and if I knew as much about Peter as I do about, say, Katte, I'd be indignant, but since I know so little, just giving me the bare outlines is super useful (just like the Winter Queen). Also, the characterization is much more three-dimensional! (Also, the 1980 date makes me forgive certain things.) I'm enjoying this more than any biography I've read in salon, I think, although it's unfair to Orieux and Zweig that so much of my experience was struggling through the German.

More when I have time, have slept better, and have learned more!

Re: Empress Ch 10-16

[cahn]

Cool, I'll go ahead -- it's going a lot faster, as you can see, now that we're at people I don't actually know very much about :P And yeah, for that it's useful for giving me an outline until I can read a better-sourced biography :)

Massie and FW

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hey, selenak, Massie mentions the Gundling abuse!

At these crude, masculine gatherings [of the tobacco parliament], the leaders of the Prussian state delighted in teasing and tormenting a pedantic court historian, whom they once actually set on fire.

"Pedantic historian" doesn't do Gundling justice, but considering that this is a biography of Peter the Great, and considering how biographers of FW and Fritz treat this episode, points to Massie for mentioning it and points for blaming the right person! (Massie is sympathetic to most of his characters, even when they're on opposite sides, but he's pretty critical of how FW treated the people around him. He blames porphyria.)

Oh, more FW, this made me laugh and will make cahn laugh too:

Peter especially appreciated his fellow sovereign’s interest in nature’s curios, and Russia supplied the Prussian King with fifty new giants every year. (Once, when Peter recalled some of the Russian giants lent to Frederick William and replaced them with men who were a trifle shorter, the King was so upset that he could not discuss business with the Russian ambassador; the wound in his heart, he said, was still too raw.)

And Massie says both Peter the Great and FW tried to breed giants! He repeats the story about FW marrying off his grenadiers, and says that Peter kept a 7'2" (2.18m) man and tried to breed him to a giant Finnish woman, but was disappointed when the marriage was childless. Massie also says that FW was disappointed that his tall breeding program often produced offspring of average height, which I nodded at, because every time I hear about his purported breeding program, I think "regression to the mean."

Peter passes through Berlin when F1 is still alive; then 5 months later, when FW has taken over, comments, "The Court here is not so grand as it was before." Outside confirmation that FW moved fast in changing things so that they were noticeable to an outsider. (I still laugh thinking of Gian Gastone asking Pollnitz to tell him what the Berlin court was like, since he had been there decades before under F1, and Pollnitz going, "...Well, it's pretty different now.")

Peter's reaction to his son's mysterious death after being tortured:

This unexpected, sudden death has caused us a great sadness. However, we have found solace in believing that Divine Providence has wished to deliver us from all anxiety and to calm our empire. Thus we have found ourselves obliged to render thanks to God and to comport ourselves with all Christian humility in this sad circumstance.

I was reminded of FW writing to Hans Heinrich that surely Hans Heinrich won't prefer mercy to FW's peace of mind.

Also! At Alexei's funeral, the preacher chooses which text? The obvious one: "O Absalom, my son, my son!" History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

I'm making good progress on learning the Great Northern War, and hope to be able to do a write-up in the next couple weeks! (I definitely picked the right order; the books I'm reading talk a *lot* about the War of the Spanish Succession, whereas in the WoSS books, you could get by just knowing that Charles XII existed, was at war in the northeast, and invaded Russia.)

Re: Massie and FW

[cahn]

Didn't we get the impression Gundling might have been kind of pedantic or at the very least not really quick on his feet, so FW was harder on him than on his successor, who sometimes amused him enough that he didn't get set on fire or bears set on him (so, like, I forget a lot of things you guys tell me, but NEVER FORGETTING THE BEARS)

when Peter recalled some of the Russian giants lent to Frederick William and replaced them with men who were a trifle shorter, the King was so upset that he could not discuss business with the Russian ambassador; the wound in his heart, he said, was still too raw.

OMG! That is sure something else.

Massie also says that FW was disappointed that his tall breeding program often produced offspring of average height, which I nodded at, because every time I hear about his purported breeding program, I think "regression to the mean."

Ha! That makes me think it might be true, as, yeah, you'd expect the regression to the mean thing.

Divine Providence has wished to deliver us from all anxiety and to calm our empire

OMG