18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 38

[cahn]

Gonna go ahead and make this post even though Yuletide is coming...

But in the meantime, there has been some fic in the fandom posted!

Holding His Space (2503 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, 18th Century CE Frederician RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf/Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Characters: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Protectiveness, Domestic, Character Study
Summary:

Five times Fredersdorf has to stay behind - and one time Friedrich doesn't leave.

Using People (3392 words) by prinzsorgenfrei
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Hans Hermann von Katte
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Hans Hermann von Katte
Additional Tags: Fluff, Idiots in Love, reading plays aloud while gazing into each others eyes
Summary:

Friedrich had started to talk to him because he had thought of him as a bit of a ditz.
And now here he was. Here he was months later, bundled up in this very same man’s blankets with a cup of hot coffee in front of him, its scent mixing with that of Katte’s French perfume.
_
Fluffy One Shot about one traitorous Crown Prince and the sycophant he accidentally fell for.

Comments

Bad Gays

[luzula]

Hey, have you listened to the Bad Gays episode about Frederick the Great? I found it enjoyable and recognized much of it from salon, but don't know enough to say whether anyone on the podcast is wrong on the internet about any details, or not. : )

(It's a fun podcast, btw. I just listened to the John Maynard Keynes episode, which draws you in with salacious details like "he kept a sex diary where he chronicled fucking his way through the gay portion of the British upper classes, but then later in life he found heterosexual bliss in his marriage to a Russian ballerina who in her seventies liked to sunbathe nude in their garden", but then it's actually a long and interesting discussion about his economic theories and their cultural context.)

Re: Bad Gays

[felis]

Oh, hey! That one. :D It was rather entertaining indeed, but mostly because it was also very Wrong on the Internet and not just in the details. I have to admit, the Sanssouci = pink thing still throws me. HOW.

Re: Bad Gays

[luzula]

Ha ha, okay! Thanks for the link. Just shows that I am only peripherally familiar with this fandom, since I recognized the broad strokes but not the errors. : D

Re: Bad Gays

[selenak]

As an illustration of why the “pink Sanssouci” claim is so funny to us, see my pic spam of Sanssouci here:

https://rheinsberg.dreamwidth.org/23463.html

(Personally, though, it’s the “FW didn’t execute Fritz in 1730 because there were no brothers carrying on the bloodline” claim which gets me. I mean, littlest brother Ferdinand is used to getting ignored, but the older two are kind of important to the plot for anyone bothering to study Frederick’s life…)

Re: Bad Gays

[luzula]

Thanks for the picspam link! Yeah, that's not pink. But awww, the little dog graves…

Re: Bad Gays

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yeah, you listened to this one so we didn't have to! Truly a noble service to salon.

Re: Bad Gays

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wait. This might be giving them too much credit, but *Fritz* called the Neues Palais "Sanssouci", right? He stamped his library books "S" for that palace and "V" for what we call Sanssouci? I mean, I know he wrote "Sans, Souci" on the yellow palace, but the whole park was Sanssouci, and I swear I've seen him call the Neues Palais "Sanssouci" recently, and I had to remind myself which one he was talking about.

And Cahn did find that googling does turn up tickets and pictures for the Neues Palais when searching for Sanssouci, which refers to the whole complex.

Yeah, even Wikipedia calls it Sanssouci Neues Palais in the photo caption.

Okay, I see where they got this. Much like I see where MacDonogh got Robert Keith and historians for centuries got the idea Pfeiffer was found innocent in the Kiekemal affair. :P

...Still misleading! (It's also not that pink, seriously. And even if it *were* solid bright pink, is there any evidence that pink coded as gay in the 1700s? I think not! My understanding is that pink didn't become feminine until the mid 20th century.)

Re: Bad Gays

[felis]

You actually brought up the very same two points during the last discussion. :P Even if I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt (and I don't particularly, given that they somehow came away with the idea that Fritz was totally into powerful women), this is a verbatim quote I included last time: an enormous pink rococo palace on top of a giant staircase with fountains and great trellises and called it Sanssouci. It's either an enormous pink rococo palace OR it's on top of a giant staircase with great trellises, not both, so no. Especially because one of them claimed he had been there.

Re: Bad Gays

[mildred_of_midgard]

Clearly my memory for Sanssouci-related facts is better than my memory for things you or I have said. :P

Fair, yes, they are definitely conflating the two palaces--but I still see where they're getting it from.

Re: Bad Gays

[(Anonymous)]

And even if it *were* solid bright pink, is there any evidence that pink coded as gay in the 1700s? I think not! My understanding is that pink didn't become feminine until the mid 20th century.
I didn't understand the podcast as implying that pink = gay in the 18th century, they were just amused and making jokes about it. I mean, they were very clear that the modern gay identity did not exist in the 18th century.

Re: Bad Gays

[luzula]

Oops, that was me, sorry!

Re: Bad Gays

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ah, okay. This is what I get for learning about it secondhand. Putting it in the blurb was still intentionally misleading, though!