18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 33

[cahn]

And, I mean, it doesn't have to be just 18th century characters, either!

(also, waiting for Yuletide!)

Comments

Re: Cornelia Naumann: Scherben des Glücks ("Shards of Happiness" - a novel about Wilhelmine)

[mildred_of_midgard]

Fritz advising Wilhelmine not to travel to Berlin for a deathbed goodbye from FW: this is actually in the novel, but as an aside, i.e. BayreuthFriedrich when Wilhelmine is still wavering whether or not to go brings it up and speculates Fritz might have wanted to prevent FW in a sentimental deathbed mode changing his last will at the last second and leaving Wilhelmine more stuff.

Huh. This is interesting. What do you think about his real-life motives? Resenting Wilhelmine still loving their father this much, not wanting W on site to lead to accusations of influencing him when he becomes king, not wanting the will changed, some combination of the above...?

and in terms of rl, I think it was venting rather than exorcism

Fair!

Ziebura says the entire correspondence with AW is still unspublished, which is a shame because it possibly could offer a different look - since AW was very much against this war when it started.

Yeah, that would be interesting.

I think if she had a regular sex life (with the Margrave or a male lover), chances are she would have gotten pregnant more than once. (Which she didn't. I don't recall any miscarriages after the birth of her daughter, either.)

Huh. No chance that something happened during that birth that made her infertile? I've always thought something along those lines might be happening, or it could be a random fluke. One set of my grandparents had one kid pronto, tried and tried and were told they couldn't have any more, then knocked out 3 more miraculously in their 40s. Fertility is weird, and I'm always reluctant to draw conclusions about sex lives from fertility.

Given that the Margrave needed the male heir, and given how quickly she got pregnant after the marriage (cahn, within about one 1 month), and given that they were on good terms, why wouldn't they keep having sex at least as often as they had it took to get her pregnant that first month, for at least the first few years? Fear of getting pregnant again?

see him refusing to play FW's drinking game

As I recall and what I'm seeing in the Christmas 1732 passage was that FW *did* make him play the drinking game, but Friedrich gave him some backtalk and didn't take the insults lying down.

The poor hereditary prince was at all these entertainments, and the king forced him to drink whether he would or not...."I could wish," said he aloud to Seckendorff, " that the king was not my father-in-law; I should soon show him that this ass of whom he speaks would make him hold a different sort of language, and that he is not a man to allow himself to be ill-used." At the same time he swallowed the contents of the bumper, which was almost as fatal to him as poison.

W (and Sonsine): Yay! Does this mean Dad is coming around?

OH NOES. Wow.

(The novel's Wilhelmine has no feelings, either positive or negative, about Peter and his Katte preceding relationship with Fritz. Though Peter is name checked as part of the escape attempt, but as happens more than once in Frederician fiction, he's merged with his brother Not!Robert the page.)

I can see why everyone simplifies the Keiths! Still, irl it's rather telling that Wilhelmine resents both of them, or at least reports doing so after the fact (i.e. when the escape attempt has failed and I'm sure part of her wants to blame them).

Re: Cornelia Naumann: Scherben des Glücks ("Shards of Happiness" - a novel about Wilhelmine)

[cahn]

I mean, I wasn't very keen on trying for another kid for a while after having the first, but that doesn't seem to really have been the thought process for most people, or at least husbands, in the 18th century :P