18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 36

[cahn]

Starting a couple of comments earlier than usual to mention there are a couple of new salon fics! These probably both need canon knowledge.

felis ficlets on siblings!

Siblings (541 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Summary:

Three Fills for the 2022 Three Sentence Ficathon.

Chapter One: Protective Action / Babysitting at Rheinsberg (Frederick/Fredersdorf, William+Henry+Ferdinand)
Chapter Two: Here Be Lions (Wilhelmine)

Unsent Letters fic by me:

Letters for a Dead King (1981 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen (1726-1802)
Characters: Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Love/Hate, Talking To Dead People, Canonical Character Death, Dysfunctional Family
Summary:

Just because one's king and brother is dead doesn't mean one has to stop writing to him.

Comments

Re: Austrian Succession tidbits

[felis]

Well, to be fair, I only really had to track them down once, at least for the 1740s (minus 41 and 40, which still annoys me). ;)

Also, I belatedly realized why "Saxon Queen" felt wrong to write - because it is, Queen of Poland, not Saxony of course - although I don't know what the correct title would be here. Electress? It's not like she herself does any electing.
But yes, should be Maria Josepha. (Do we know anything about her relationship with MT?)

I suspect it was as happy a time for him as he ever had while in Fritz' shadow

Yeah. And as I mentioned recently, Fritz himself seems to have had quite a lot of praise for him during that time as well. Which reminds me of your guess that the trip to Aachen, which was also in 1742, might have been a "well done" reward.

Re: Austrian Succession tidbits

[mildred_of_midgard]

That reminds me, I ran into this Fritz quote in Anderson:

'So long as I breathe', he told Belleisle on 8 January, 'I will never allow a métairie [that is, a small farm] of Bohemia to be detached in favour of the King of Saxony [sic; the Elector Augustus was also king of Poland].'

I don't have a citation for it, it might be in the political correspondence, but apparently "King/Queen of Saxony" was a thing! This doesn't surprise me, as "King in Prussia" and "King of Prussia" were used interchangeably by contemporaries even in FW's time.

I was actually really pleased to see Fritz saying "King of Saxony" in Anderson, since that's the most natural phrasing for me too, and I had used it in fiction, and then realized it was technically incorrect, but since it was the most informative phrasing and anything else would require more explanation than the subject warranted for this fic...so yay for getting to just use it and be historically accurate at the same time. :D

ETA: Also, I do believe the official title for the elector's consort is "Electress"/"Électrice"/"Kurfürstin". It's what I see in my reading, what Wikipedia says, and what's in Trier.

Re: Austrian Succession tidbits

[selenak]

As Mildred said elsewhere, "Electress" or "Kurfürstin", but since she was also Queen of Poland, she definitely would have been referred to as Queen, this being the higher rank. To refer to her as "the Electress", while technically correct, would have come across as doing something like the Prussians calling MT "Queen of Hungary" all the time instead of "Empress-Queen" or "The Empress". I mean, no one called Queen Caroline "The Electress of Hannover" when talking about G2's wife, did they? Though she was also that.

(Sidenote: In the few years FW's grandmother Sophie was officially Queen Anne's successor, she was still referred to as Kurfürstin/Electress, but I remember some relations teasingly referring to her as "our Princess of Wales" (a title cousin Anne never granted her, but since it usually went with the official successor territory, it wasn't out of this world.)

should be Maria Josepha. (Do we know anything about her relationship with MT?

I don't think they had one (a personal one, that is), as such, since as far as I recall the age gap was so large (Maria Josepha: born 1699, MT born 1717) that they didn't crow up anywhere near each other and Josepha was already married abroad by the time MT was out of the nursery. Presumably they had an official exchange of birthday greeting letters and the like, but unlike Maria Josepha's daughter-in-law Antonia, who did become MT's close correspondent (and later that of Fritz), they weren't pen pals, either.

And as I mentioned recently, Fritz himself seems to have had quite a lot of praise for him during that time as well. Which reminds me of your guess that the trip to Aachen, which was also in 1742, might have been a "well done" reward.

For all that I make fun of Ulrike's "you're such a wonderful father to us, brother!" letters to Fritz, I think he really did try as good as he could for the youngest siblings in the beginning, not just via educational programs but also by giving rewards. It's just that his fatherly role model and the similarities between himself and Heinrich all but guaranteed the developing mess...