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: Old Mark nobility

[selenak]

It's when they're thinking of settling down in France permanently (or at least until FW dies), and Wilhelmine the snob is set on making sure their rank as recognized by the French is as high as possible. And that's when Katte says something about how old the Kattes are, and how they've been around in Brandenburg far longer than the Hohenzollerns. And Rottembourg (himself from Brandenburg, remember), says, "That's German nobility. It doesn't count at Versailles."

LOL to all. Mind you, depending on how Wilhelmine feels about Mom at this point, she could point out that the Bourbons are Johnny-come-latelies compared to the Welfs, i.e. hers and Fritz' maternal family which did and still does have a claim to being the oldest still existing high nobility family of Europe. (What with them being documented from the Charlemagne days onwards.) (This is why Horowski in "Das Europa der Könige" says that the British nobility treating the Hannovers as below them and latecomers was hilarious from a snobbish pov, because none of the British nobility at this point predated the Norman conquest, and most were far more recent creations (for example, families hailing from Charles II's bastards).) Whereas the Georges 1 and 2 might have been obnoxious jerks much of the time, but they did have a well documented noble bloodline going back to the 9th century, so there.

Going back to Versailles, I love your punchline, though from what I recall, the Versailles snobs had no problem with, say, Liselotte's impeccable noble bloodline - they sneered about her German manners instead. Otoh I also remember Sophie's memoirs and the mention of how when she was at Versailles, the Queen offered her the wrong chair and Sophie after saying that if the Empress herself had offered her an arm chair, it wouldn't be beyond the Queen of France prefered standing, so "doesn't really count in the same way" was an attitude at least some folk at Versailles took. On the non existing third hand, the Duc de Croy during Joseph's visit mentions the protocol problem and how Joseph travelling as Count Falkenstein sort of solved it - since if he'd been received as the Emperor, he'd have outranked everyone else and even the King couldn't have sat down first -, which would imply acknowledgment of German nobility.

Re: Old Mark nobility

[mildred_of_midgard]

compared to the Welfs

I know, I was reading up on them recently! (When I was trying that Henry the Lion bio, which I still haven't finished.) I was amazed that they were so old that they were doing interesting things in the poorly attested periods of the Middle Ages when most families just get a passing "acquired some forestry rights on some piece of land" mention, making it really easy to write boring history.

German nobility: I need to find the passage, because I got this from somewhere. Horowski? Anyway, I don't know exactly what the difference is, but my impression was that while a German noble is very different from a German commoner, a German noble should not show up at Versailles and expect to be given the same treatment as their French noble equivalent.

The French royals very much cared about your foreign bloodlines, though; that's why young Elizaveta, quasi-illegitimate daughter of a Lithuanian peasant, was not considered eligible marriage material for the French royal family, no matter who her father was.