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

Re: Fassmann's life of FW - up to 1730

[mildred_of_midgard]

Until that point, there isn't much about FW the person, it's just FW the model reform monarch. And good lord, pages upon pages of descriptions of SD's entrance in Berlin as a bride, or F1's wake and funeral procession. And so many royal declarations!

This is what I meant when I said given the length (for those who haven't looked, it's over a thousand pages long) and what I could see of the topics, you were going to do a lot of skimming/skipping!

young FW swallows his golden shoe clip because he hates waste and splendor that much as a kid already.

Oh, hahaha, not because he was a toddler throwing a temper tantrum and trying to get his way, which is the explanation I've always seen from less favorable-to-FW sources? :P

And there Fassmann first gives us the tourist attractions and FW's reaction to each of them as if he's writing a travelogue, which made me wonder whether he's actually going to skip over the entire incident.

OMG, we had the same reaction! I went looking for 1730, of course, and I found the trip and it just went on and on, and I also wondered if he was going to talk about the escape attempt at all! And then I found Katte's name, read that sentence, and gave up on the print and decided you could tell me the rest. <3

But look, these things happen between royals!

I mean, he's not wrong! But *some people* used that as an argument to go, "FW, you don't want to be like Philip II and Peter the Great!"

Okay, so FW then went to Wusterhausen and spend the rest of the year there...

Lol, yeah, I think somebody is trying to get a job back or at least keep his options open. (I am reminded of Pollnitz and his desire to keep his options open when talking about various princes in Europe. The Ruspanti? Pensioners of the Grand Duke!)

By contrast, his report on the bonkers Clement affair actually is pretty matter-of-factly and much as I've found it in other accounts.

Ooh, wonderful, this is one of the things I went looking for and didn't have the patience find and hoped you would find and tell us all about!

(with untrustworthy black eyes!) (also of small stature and fat! So it can't have been his looks, I guess...)

Oh, this matches the description you found in Weber a while back: "Here we get a physical description by the arresting officers who bring hin to Spandau - 'the black and brown fat gentleman in an Hungarian furcoat'." I guess he could still have been tall in that description, so good to know that his height was not what recommended him to FW!

So if that description is firsthand, from the people arresting Klement, then that backs up Fassmann's info as pretty solid.

if his account of FW breaking the "you're going to get married" news to Friederike Louise is in any way correct, the Hohenzollern called this sister of Fritz' "Louise".

Always nice as a fanfic writer to know what these people called each other!

Re: Fassmann's life of FW - up to 1730

[selenak]

Always nice as a fanfic writer to know what these people called each other!

One of the reasons why I was glad Morgenstern referred to Gundling as Paul von Gundling, thus telling us which of the two first names, Jakob Paul, he actually used.

re: skimming/skipping, I also skipped a lot of Great Northern War stuff, FW at Stralsund, that kind of thing, sorry. Incidentally, perhaps worthy of note that Fassmann consistently uses the latinate for Peter the Great - Petrus Magnus, in the correct declined case wherever he uses it, ditto Carolus for Charles of Sweden, whereas a few decades down the line a writer like Nikolai doesn't, he just uses the German version.

"Wallis" for "Wales", otoh, is used throughout the century, as in Prince of Wales. Btw, if in 1735 someone like Fassmann, who doesn't speak English and is no longer connected to someone in the Prussian government, still knows all about Team Hannover's dysfunctionality, it means these stories have hit the German scandal sheets, which is the kind of 18th century internationality for a royal father/son conflict which doesn't involve one party beheading the other party's lover that I hadn't imagined before salon.

I went looking for 1730, of course, and I found the trip and it just went on and on

This really reminded me of young AW's "My life so far" essay as referenced by Ziebura, listing as the big event of 1730 "Heinrich moved in with me". :) Seriously, cahn, right until Mannheim, this readers like a travelogue/tourist guide book!

I think somebody is trying to get a job back or at least keep his options open.

Let's not forget, Fassmann could also be betting on the fact that even if FW doesn't take him back, Fritz might after FW's death. Hence careful Crown Prince praise in the book, and lots of praise for SD, perfect mother and wife and Queen. After all, Fassmann was a member of the Academy as of 1731 (when Gundling died). (He just didn't become the boss as he expected to.) He might have counted on coming back after FW's death, and as he mentions a couple of times in the book, FW has just survived a very dangerous illness (again), i.e. concluding FW might not make it through another decade wasn't utterly far fetched.

So if that description is firsthand, from the people arresting Klement, then that backs up Fassmann's info as pretty solid.

True, as he wasn't able to consult any secret Saxon or Prussian archives. Also, he's even handed in that he describes Clement fooling three high officials in a row (Eugene, Flemming and FW), and where he guesses - that when Clement went from working for Racoczky to working for Eugene by bringing a lot of Racozky papers wsith him, he might have used a mixture of real and forged documents already to beeef his importance up and when getting away with it took it from there.

Basically Fassmann strikes me as the 18th century equivalent of a journalist willing to put in research effort but also without the narrative ability which, say, Nicolai has in his collection, and without much of the way of scruples if you recall the hatchet job he did on Gundling in another book. He must have had a considerable streak of cruelty himself.

Re: Fassmann's life of FW - up to 1730

[mildred_of_midgard]

This really reminded me of young AW's "My life so far" essay as referenced by Ziebura, listing as the big event of 1730 "Heinrich moved in with me". :)

Me too, I thought of the exact same thing! Salon: the hive mind. :)

Re: Fassmann's life of FW - up to 1730

[cahn]

This really reminded me of young AW's "My life so far" essay as referenced by Ziebura, listing as the big event of 1730 "Heinrich moved in with me". :)

Heh! I didn't think of it myself, but yeah :)

I think somebody is trying to get a job back or at least keep his options open.

Let's not forget, Fassmann could also be betting on the fact that even if FW doesn't take him back, Fritz might after FW's death

Oh, yeah, I can see how that would make him... tread very carefully around the whole Katte thing.