cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

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frederick the great

Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

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That is unfortunately very true. The author is the driest. Somewhere, I suspect Voltaire is smirking that OF COURSE Maupertuis' life is told in a much more boring fashion than his, but then I remind him of that awful boring novella. :)

Voltaire: Yes, but that was because the novella was not accurately portraying me! MY bio was much more interesting! *smirks some more*

True facts! Orieux is still on my list for future French practice.

I got to the "Eugene is gay" part and it delivered! I mean not with citations, there are no footnotes, only in-text references to memoirs and letters (but not where to find them), but it delivered on the gossip!

Google translated because I'm at work, but I did read it in French this morning. ;)

The friends have indeed founded a society with the aim of regularly celebrating orgies. One meets there favorites of Monsieur, brother of the King: the knight of Lorraine, the count of Guiche or the duke of Nevers. We also meet Eugène there, of whom Ezéchiel Spanheim, soon to be representative of Brandenburg in Paris, said bluntly: "It is certain that there is no greater sodomite in France than him and it would be a bad start for a young prince to begin his life with the most horrible debauchery in the world.”

Monsieur is of course gay Philippe, this Ezechiel quote is the one that we saw before. But it gets better!

The young androgynous François-Timoléon de Choisy recounts his "exploits" in his insolent Memoirs. Choisy does not hide his feminine nature. He bought a house, where "Madame" receives ladies and many gentlemen to whom she gives the opportunity to ascertain her sex. She has her self called herself by them the Comtesse de Barres. But at court he is a very neat abbot. However, Monsieur, the King's brother, shares part of his time with him because he likes cross-dressing and even more: "I was dressed as a girl every time the little Monsieur came to the house, and he came there at least two or three times a week. I had pierced ears, diamonds, beauty patches, and all the other little affectations to which one becomes very easily accustomed, and which is very difficult to get rid of. Monsieur, who also loved all that, always gave me a hundred marks of affection. In his Memoirs, the Marquis d'Argenson, future Lieutenant General of Police, to whom Choisy related his worst follies, wrote:

"The Abbé de Choisy kept as long as he could this impertinent habit of dressing as a woman, and we know all the follies he committed in this guise. “In his childhood,” said Sainte-Beuve finally, “his mother made him wear corsets which tightened him to the extreme and thus brought up a fat and chubby chest, so that, when he grew up, he had as much cleavage as a fifteen year old girl."

These follies, Choisy shares with Eugène, who has the opportunity to transform his deformed body into a more attractive silhouette thanks to the frilly outfits he likes to wear. At this same period, he already took a liking to tobacco, gambling and hunting, which he would love all his life. For the rest, the only times he would leave Vienna later, except to go to war, would be only to hunt down stags or wild boars. Even the court of France, which cannot boast of severity in this area, is indignant in the name of morality. The young princes take their friendships too far. The approximately 90,000 indiscreet letters left by Princess Palatine are not the only accounts we have. There is also a court document that relates the same incident. The princess, ugly, frustrated in her marriage to Philippe d'Orléans, ill-suited to the court of France, nostalgic for her German origins, compensates for her discomfort with an often outrageous prolixity. She speaks of the young Prince Eugene in these terms:

“When he was still very young, he was already called Madame Simone and Madame Lansiene (the old one) because, it was said, he often played the lady for young people."

But when the men say the same things about the same guy, they're not ugly and compensating? Sigh.

The small meetings in which one regularly finds the Choisys or the “Madames Simone” become a sensational affair when Louis XIV forces his fifteen-year-old son, the Count of Vermandois, to make revelations. He formed among his relatives a homosexual circle that almost all the young princes of the blood and their close friends are part of. Cardinal de Bouillon, brother-in-law of the poetess Marianne Mancini, the youngest of Eugène's aunts, is not absent. But the King cannot exterminate all the offspring of the high nobility. He must content himself with threats. He doesn't have time to think very seriously about purifying the mores of his court because he himself is too busy being dissolute.

*snort*

On the other hand, the Princess of Savoy-Carignan, Eugene's grandmother, outraged by his behavior, did not hesitate to kick her grandson out. Fortunately, the prince has too many friends in the capital to have trouble finding accommodation. Louvois writes to Condé that a certain Baigneur is giving him hospitality.

Edited 2023-01-19 23:00 (UTC)

Congratulations to the Royal Detective! Looks like "Liselotte was the only one to call Eugene gay" is another case of "Voltaire was the only one to ever call Fritz gay" no-homo'ing, verily. Though that biographer also sounds like a sexist ass. Reminds me of all the "Wilhelmine was clearly a hysterical woman and so can't be trusted" (which is different from "Wilhelmine is writing with temporal distance and of course has her own issues to channel, just like all the male memoirists). I'm currently listening to the part of the Byzantium podcast that deals with Alexios Kommenos and the first Crusade, and a primary source for Alexios is of course his daughter Anna Kommena, who has some claim to being the first female historian/chronicler ever (whom we know of and whose work still exists); according to the podcaster, Robin, both Edward Gibbon and a lot of other male historians until more recently also were all "Anna is an emotional female writing as an old woman, thus can't be trusted", whereas they had no problem trusting bishops who wrote from a thousand miles away and without Anna's claim to have witnessed some of the events she describes, and knowing a lot of players personally. (This is podcaster, Robin, has been consistently good about pointing out sources are of course ALL biased and having agenda, Anna of course included. Which doesn't take away from their value.)

the knight of Lorraine

LOL Google translate. The Chevalier de Lorraine, whose first name was "Philippe" which thus is not useable for either fanfiction or histories, least favourite person of both Philippe d'Orleans' wives, suddenly sounds like a fairy tale character.

the count of Guiche

Hang on, shouldn't he be already out of the picture if the Chevalier is around? I seem to recall de Guiche was the boyfriend who infuriated Philippe by also flirting with Minette, which means he can't overlap with the Liselotte years.

Ezéchiel Spanheim, soon to be representative of Brandenburg in Paris,

Was he working for the Great Elector or for F1?

The princess, ugly, frustrated in her marriage to Philippe d'Orléans, ill-suited to the court of France, nostalgic for her German origins, compensates for her discomfort with an often outrageous prolixity

As you say, what are the other sources compensating for, then? BTW, Liselotte repeatedly described herself as ugly as frankly as she describes most things in her letters ("my bearcat monkey face"), and since Eugene wasn't a favourite of her husbands, I still find it a mystersy as to why this should bias her remarks about him. (I mean, it doesn't mean she knows all about Eugene's intimate life, either, just that she reports the gossip as she's heard it, whether or not it's true.) Otoh, do you know whom she had very strong (hostile) feelings about? Louvois. As in:

I believe that M. de Louvois burns in hell because of the Palatinate; he was terribly cruel, no one can deny this...

(In a letter of 28 January 1708 to her aunt Sophie.

cahn, as Louis' secretary of war, Louvois of course has a great deal of responsibility for the scouring of the shire, err, the Palatinate, Liselotte's home which Louis shamelessly claimed in her name. The ultimate responsibility is with Louis, but blaming the King who can lock you up in a nunnery is always dicy. That Liselotte thought the devastation of her home by French armies to be horrible is another reason why the English wiki argument from their Eugene entry - that Liselotte "badmouthed" him by describing him as gay due to feeling offended by his victories over French armies - never rang very plausible to me.

The small meetings in which one regularly finds the Choisys or the “Madames Simone” become a sensational affair when Louis XIV forces his fifteen-year-old son, the Count of Vermandois, to make revelations. He formed among his relatives a homosexual circle that almost all the young princes of the blood and their close friends are part of

That's one way of putting it. With the caveat that wiki is not necessarily reliable, here's the same story on Liselotte's wiki entry:

Simultaneously, Liselotte was drawn into a larger court scandal through her wardship of Comte of Vermandois, whose mother had left court to become a nun. The young comte had become embroiled in a secret homosexual 'brotherhood' of French nobles and courtiers, which required members to "swear an oath to renounce all women." Several incidents were reported in which women were sadistically tortured, and it also was reported that a poor waffle seller was raped, castrated and killed by courtiers.*Though the Duke of Orléans didn't belong to this brotherhood himself, many of his favorites did. In June 1682, it became known that the 'brotherhood' included the Prince of la Roche-sur-Yon and the young Comte of Vermandois, among other notable figures at court. Louis XIV punished his own son severely and sent him to war, where he died shortly afterwards at the age of 16. Liselotte later recalled: "The Comte de Vermandois was very good-natured. The poor person loved me as if I were his birth mother...He told me his whole story. He had been horribly seduced." One of his 'seducers' is said to have been the Chevalier de Lorraine—her husband's lover and her avowed enemy.

*This gruesome story is used in Anne Golon's Angelique novel, though in there Monsieur does participate. These were the first homosexual characters I encountered in fiction at age 9 or so, and I don't think I encountered any sympathetically written gay characters - in historical or centemporary fiction - until when I was 13 and read The Mists of Avalon (and then the Darkover novels). (Insert obvious comment about MZB's later discovered rl terribleness here, but those books were quite eye opening to young me back then.)

Anyway, raping, castrating and killing a guy and torturing women is quite different from organizing consensual m/m orgies, so I hope that it either didn't happen this way or that young Eugene did not participate.

Incidentally, Mildred, if you can get a digital copy of Voltaire's "Age of Louis XIV" in either English or German for me, I would be very grateful, and since this is supposed to be one of his big oeuvres, I would also do a write up for you.

Full response to come, when I'm not at work, but in the meantime, here's Louis XIV, 1901 English translation. That was the most modern uncopyrighted translation I could quickly find--there were 18th century translations, but I figured this would have better print quality and easier-to-read English. If you want an older one, though, say the word!

If it turns out it's abridged or only the first volume of a series or there are other issues with this copy, just let me know.

We would greatly appreciate a write-up! And speaking of which, your recent Montesquieu post in Rheinsberg reminded me: do you have any plans to read Pöllnitz now that we have a great deal more background knowledge? I know you've browsed before, but I think last time it came up, you didn't have time to do more than dip in.

If not, no worries, just thought I'd ask! (You have us spoiled.)

Thank you! However, a quick look tells me this must be volume 2 or even 3, as it starts with a late chapter and 1701 - and I dare say Voltaire must have written about young Louis as well as old Louis? (If you can‘t get earlier volumes, that‘s okay, since right the first page mentions Eugene, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to have a look right now. ;)

Pöllnitz: we‘ll see, though it can‘t hurt to link me directly again.

Had a feeling that might be the case. I wish Google had made that more obvious.

Volume 1, if I'm not mistaken.

Pöllnitz: Vol 1, Vol 2.

Still done hurriedly, so let me know if there are problems!

Biggest outstanding question: Where was Peter buried?

cahn FOUND it!!! \o/ Details this weekend.

Does anyone else want to be on the email chain where I send mildred my findings about the Keiths? I've been emailing them instead of posting them here because they come with scans and citations, which might be a bit much for salon. Or, I can just keep sending them to mildred and she can collate them and post here :)

Spoiler: someone(s) indexed a WHOLE LOT of stuff in OCTOBER 2021, omg, just months after we were looking before! So now there is a burial record for Peter, among other goodies :D What a time to be alive! If this had been twenty years ago it would have been MICROFICHE. Probably microfiche only existing in Germany!

The friends have indeed founded a society with the aim of regularly celebrating orgies.

OMG it does seem to have delivered! There were so many points where I was !!!!! and WTF in those paragraphs, I would be quoting practically the whole thing. This is amazing. No, okay, I have to say

These follies, Choisy shares with Eugène, who has the opportunity to transform his deformed body into a more attractive silhouette thanks to the frilly outfits he likes to wear.

...I think I may have to revamp my internal picture of Eugene...

LOL Google translate. The Chevalier de Lorraine, whose first name was "Philippe" which thus is not useable for either fanfiction or histories, least favourite person of both Philippe d'Orleans' wives, suddenly sounds like a fairy tale character.

ahahaha thank you for pointing this out!
(Me: Oh, another person I haven't heard of, huh? ...OH.)

as Louis' secretary of war, Louvois of course has a great deal of responsibility for the scouring of the shire, err, the Palatinate, Liselotte's home which Louis shamelessly claimed in her name. The ultimate responsibility is with Louis, but blaming the King who can lock you up in a nunnery is always dicy.

Again, thank you! Yeah... I can't blame her for that. Also that I agree it doesn't make sehse for her to bias her remarks against Eugene??

These were the first homosexual characters I encountered in fiction at age 9 or so, and I don't think I encountered any sympathetically written gay characters - in historical or centemporary fiction - until when I was 13 and read The Mists of Avalon (and then the Darkover novels). (Insert obvious comment about MZB's later discovered rl terribleness here, but those books were quite eye opening to young me back then.)

Gosh, I read Angelique and I don't remember this, it must have gone straight over my head! I also don't remember them in Avalon, which I read at age 11 or 12... I think I really didn't understand what was going on until a couple of years later. I know that by the time I was 14 or 15 I had read A House Like a Lotus and Songmaster and recognized those as sympathetic gay characters.

if you can get a digital copy of Voltaire's "Age of Louis XIV" in either English or German for me, I would be very grateful, and since this is supposed to be one of his big oeuvres, I would also do a write up for you.

Yay, I am so excited!! :D

Oh wow. If you ever do read about him I'd love to hear what people/he himself think his motivations were!

:DD I can't think how I missed this on the 18th! :)

aha I am failing the pop quiz, although I did catch the axe, of course! And the EC marriage night doesn't seem quite right? Like, we know he wrote a letter to Wilhelmine, right? But do we know what else he was doing that night? (Or did he say in his letter to Wilhelmine?)

I also had never heard the thing about the transverse flute being especially bad because it was French? (If this isn't an error, I'd be glad to hear more about this.)

ETA: And of course "I die for you with joy in my heart!" I mean, you gotta admit it's a great line :P And didn't we decide that the most likely case was that Fritz wasn't forced to watch?

Edited (whoops, title was supposed to go with a different comment) 2023-01-21 06:04 (UTC)

Hah, that does sound rather confusing.

Also, I laughed, because my train of thought went like this:
Me: de Broglie! The wave-particle guy!
Me, sternly: No, no, self! Remember: WRONG CENTURY! Remember, this is his some-number-of-great-grandfather!
Mildred: psst, not the wave-particle guy!

(Unlike Philip "The Frog" V, since this is actually something where I knew a little more context a priori, I can indeed remind myself that non-twentieth-century de Broglies are unlikely to be mainstays of quantum physics. but it's always funny to get the reminder! Though I must admit it is not as funny as Philip "The Frog" V, whose salon soubriquet I'm only repeating because I can and it makes me smile every time :) )

Yes, please, I would love to hear about this! (Actually, I might want to read this, for that matter.) :D

(heh, if I were Euler... and a lot of other people... I wouldn't want to hang out at Fritz's court and be paid peanus either!)

~~and also was way smarter than either Maupertuis or any of the other French guys Fritz wanted~~

/is Euler partisan

Partially, yeah. (I am a BIG proponent of no homework for early elementary. But for middle-ish school I can see how it can be useful in the right hands.)

But also there's been a definite shift towards "teaching concepts" rather than "teaching skills," which works for early elementary and can sometimes work for older students, as well, but there's a middle ground where it's actually important to build the skills!

...Lol, how have we not talked about this yet? Because I've been saying for years (although apparently not in DW spaces that you've seen or that I can find now -- I know I've said it on DW but possibly in other people's comment spaces) that if I could redesign the curriculum I would not require non-technically-oriented students to take advanced algebra/trig/etc. Nothing over, probably, Algebra I or so (and I'm not even totally sure about that). One could maaaaaybe argue for geometry under "liberal arts education," the same way that reading Shakespeare also isn't something that anyone needs, I suppose, but I'm skeptical about that as well. Obviously, I'd encourage kids to take more math when they had interest/ability, but what the current scheme produces is a lot of adults who hate and despise math, and I don't really see how this is a good thing?? AND everyone should take statistics and probability (with a focus on "evaluating claims" as you say, more about that in a bit), and I would further make a "reading critically" class mandatory -- some of the kinds of things we do in salon, honestly, where one reads a text/article/whatever, thinks about "did the author have an axe to grind when writing this? Do we know this either from context or from interrogating the text?" [HI VOLTAIRE] and what kind of biases are being brought to it, and how wording can contribute to bias even when factually correct, and how emphasizing/de-emphasizing information can contribute to bias. I think there may be some classes that do this, and I know one probably learns that in history in the college/grad-school level, but I never got anything like this -- and it's relevant ALL THE TIME when reading crap off the internet or news articles or whatever! (And Voltaire! ;) )

The one thing I would differ in may be terminology -- I would absolutely have problem sets! However, they would be problem sets of the "evaluating claims" type. (The following may be more middle-school than high-school kinds of problems, for reasons that should be obvious in a couple of paragraphs, but, you know, modify as needed for high school.) E.g., "Look at this graph, tell me what the author of the graph wants you to see, and whether they are using any tricks to try to get you to see that thing." [I have in mind things like, mucking about with the axes of the graph.] Or: Here's a claim about the average salary of a graduate in this field. Does this sound reasonable? How could an "average salary" number be manipulated? Or: I'm going to show you the studies that a company did. Based on the results of the studies that they reported, do you think that they've shown their product is successful or not? [How probable is it that they could have gotten that result by chance? A more technically-oriented class might directly compute the probability, but a nontechnical class might simply build their intuition about how often things occur by chance, which is not something that people generally have a good intuition about.] Or: A company is making these claims that they can do something spectacular. What kinds of questions/tests would you do to test whether they can actually do the thing? [Theranos! I am thinking of Theranos here!] Or: ~insert your favorite "correlation is not causation" test case here!~

I stand by my assertion that problem sets are really, really useful for building skills! But the skill I want to build here is NOT "can you calculate a standard deviation," it's "can you think critically about this claim/piece of data? Let's practice doing that." This is not a skill that kids are necessarily practicing!

(Honestly, if the majority of students got out of high school understanding that correlation is not causation, and that A implies B does NOT mean that B implies A, I would feel like this was a huge win!)

I actually did a "guest lecture" with E's 6th grade class where we talked about some of this stuff and I gave them (in-class) "problems" of this sort where they talked about them as a class, and they LOVED it. (I did a followup class about bias in articles, more of the "reading critically" thing above, which was mostly OK but didn't land nearly as well -- partially because I had to thread a fine line with not making the material inflammatory or controversial, but still interesting enough that I wanted to spend time thinking about it, which meant it probably wasn't so interesting to the sixth graders; partially because E's class is weighted towards technical types; and also partially because I don't have as much facility with it myself and haven't thought about it nearly as much, lol. I'll probably try this with the sixth graders again next year -- they're on a two-year curriculum cycle -- and see if I can hit the mark better the second time around.)

I also only thought about this this morning, but I'd also put in a LOT more estimation as something that was taught in the middle school/high school level. I don't care a fig whether kids get out of school knowing that you use the quadratic formula to solve a quadratic equation (much less knowing the formula itself) (unless you're a technical person, in which case, sure, you should understand this stuff) but I want everyone to get out of high school with some facility for being able to figure out, so, if X happens to one in 1000 people, and the US has about 300 million people, that means X will happen to about 300,000 people in the US. Or the other way around! Know what numbers mean! Be able to do order of magnitude calculations and Fermi type problems, or at least come out with a sense of what you'd need to know in order to do them!

*highfives*

That's awesome!

And yet, even he failed to get Fritz' fountains at Sanssouci running, which might be one reason why Fritz wasn't too impressed. :P ;)

also had never heard the thing about the transverse flute being especially bad because it was French?

A quick google suggests that the transverse flute was not new, but the Baroque flute was, and that it was popular in France before it became popular in Germany (and our Quantz is mentioned as an innovator!)

Whether FW cared, I am not sure.

But do we know what else he was doing that night? (Or did he say in his letter to Wilhelmine?)

I haven't watched the video, so I'm not *entirely* sure what you're talking about, but Seckendorff did report there were rumors that he was seen walking around outside an hour after he supposedly took EC to bed, and MacDonogh just quotes that. Now, according to Selena, Seckendorff's actual words were along the lines of, "I was there and these rumors are nonsense," which is context that gets dropped, but...if that's what they said, then it's a forgivable mistake (for them, not for MacDonogh).

But if they said something else, let me know!

And didn't we decide that the most likely case was that Fritz wasn't forced to watch?

Well. WE did, but literally no one else has a ~~magical alchemy~~ combination of

selenak, the endlessly patient royal reader, and

mildred_of_midgard, the endlessly interested in this topic to drive a very deep research project into this obscure and counterintuitive fact. :P

The most prominent sources, both secondary and primary, all say he was forced to watch but fainted. This is what the Küstrin authorities wrote in their official report to FW! (For obvious reasons.) So I will forgive any makers of podcasts and YouTube channels for not having read Hoffbauer.

Though that biographer also sounds like a sexist ass.

He so is! The 2005 date and the Spanheim quote made me initially optimistic, but I'm getting a super conservative vibe from this author, and not just from this. Meh.

Lol at the knight of Lorraine! Google translate, always ready to entertain.

Hang on, shouldn't he be already out of the picture if the Chevalier is around?

Wikipedia indicates he was banished in 1662 and died in 1673, and of course Eugene was only born in 1663, so they definitely didn't overlap! The author seems to be collapsing Philippe's entire life story into a single period, thus adding errors of fact to his problematic opinions.

Was he working for the Great Elector or for F1?

Both, but Eugene leaves France in 1683, and the Great Elector lived until 1688, so at the time of this quote, he was working for the Elector.

Trivia: Per Wikipedia, "In 1702, he went on his final diplomatic mission, as the first Prussian ambassador to England. He died in London in 1710 and was buried in Westminster Abbey."

Anyway, raping, castrating and killing a guy and torturing women is quite different from organizing consensual m/m orgies, so I hope that it either didn't happen this way or that young Eugene did not participate.

I sincerely hope not!

These were the first homosexual characters I encountered in fiction at age 9 or so, and I don't think I encountered any sympathetically written gay characters - in historical or centemporary fiction - until when I was 13 and read The Mists of Avalon

I had a very sheltered (and prudish) youth, so the gayness in The Mists of Avalon went Whooosh! right over my head at age 14. At that age, I think I didn't even know what homosexuality was. I don't think I encountered sympathetic gay characters that registered on my radar until I was about 16/17. Harry Potter fanfic on FFN was not only my introduction to homosexuality, but responsible for most of my sexual education at all! :)

Yes, the video has the walking outside (in tears!) bit, and tops it with declaring he even contemplated killing himself before getting married, which, no. As for the letter to Wilhelmine,

cahn, I think you're thinking of the one he wrote to her after the engagement ceremony, not the marriage, which says basically "nice figure, boring personality, bad education, can't stand her, you're my number one girl forever, please send me a ribbon you've worn on your dreass for fourteen days at least".

Transverse flute: I don't think FW cared which kind of flute, one way or the other. He objected to Fritz playing an instrument as his main passion, full stop. (Though, note, not to one of his children playing an instrument per se - he was fine with the girls, from Wilhelmine downwards, doing so. And remember that FW essay that claimed FW even played the flute himself, based on Charlotte's letter to him, where she jests about missing his "piping" or something like that (where I questioned the essay writers translation of this into "playing the flute"?)

As for the mistakes, here are the main ones I found and promptly commented on in that vid's comment section:

1.) Axe instead of sword. 2.) (Now I'm copying my comments) "Frederick William had a massive hang up about French, but actually had French at his own first language as well, not unusually so for a German prince of his era, especially in Brandenburg, where there had been a huge influx of Huguenot immmigrants after Louis XIV had revoked the edict on Nantes in FW‘s grandfather‘s day. His own governess had been a French Huguenot woman, and he later made her Frederick‘s governess as well. Now why he then was surprised about Fritz prefering French is a mystery, or would be, if not for the consistent fact that FW believed his oldest should be exactly like him and couldn‘t understand why Fritz responded differently to similar things. 3.) Frederick William did not put Latin on the school schedule for Fritz. He himself had hated Latin, and thought his son would be grateful for not having to learn it. Instead, Duhan (the teacher you mean, another French Huguenot, btw) taught it for a while in secret until found out, which caused a great storm and the end of Latin lessons. Frederick the Great did always regret not speaking Latin. 4.) Frederick William did not shut down the Academy of Science. He severely cut down funding, and he expressed his contempt by making Jakob Paul Gundling its President, but he let it continue. (Gundling is an incredibly tragic figure. He had started out as a true scholar under FW‘s father Frederick I., and then FW treated him as a mixture of court fool and scientific advisor, with a lot of physical abuse, including setting bears on him, and a lot of offices on the other. Gundling took the office of President of the Academy seriously, btw, and kept the Academy going, with publications of essays, books, meetings etc, but it would only regain the funding and prestige it had once enjoyed once Frederick the Great took over. ) 5.) The quote you mean isn‘t „if I had disgraced my father like that, I‘d have killed myself“, but the arguably worse, „if my father had treated me this way, I‘d have killed myself“. 6.) It would have been worth mentioning that the military tribunal twice refused sentencing Katte to death, but FW overrode that judgment. 7.) „In exchange for staying Crown Prince“ - that‘s not true. One of the few leverages young Fritz had was that FW could not by himself change the order of succession, though he tried some pressure very early on, in September 1730 (the flight attempt happened in August, Katte got executed in November), whereupon his son, still confident nothing worse could happen, said he‘d only resign from his succession right if FW declared his mother to be a whore and himself to be illegitimate. Ironically, once he was woken up at 5 am in November and told Katte would get executed, he did offer to resign from the succession of that meant Katte would live, but by then it was too late. So Frederick remaining Crown Prince, or not, was never under debate afterwards. The agreement to marry Elisabeth Christine had been part of the submission his father demanded, true, but not „in exchange for staying Crown Prince“. Lastly, I do appreciate the detail of Elisabeth Christine being drawn as slightly taller, which she was, which was one of many things Frederick held against the poor woman (who did do everything she could to please him but was forever the symbol of his submission to his father in his mind).

Transverse flute: I don't think FW cared which kind of flute, one way or the other. He objected to Fritz playing an instrument as his main passion, full stop.

Agreed.

tops it with declaring he even contemplated killing himself before getting married, which, no

I don't believe for a minute he contemplated it, but he definitely threatened it in a letter to Grumbkow! Feb 19, 1732, Google translated from Trier:

Judge, my dear General, if I must have been greatly charmed by the description you give of the abominable object of my desires. For the love of God, let the King be undeceived on his subject, and let him remember that fools, for the most part, are the most stubborn. So a few months ago he wrote a letter to Wolden, in which at least he wanted to give me the choice of some princesses; I do not hope that he will give himself the lie. I rely entirely on the letter that Schulenburg will give you, for there is neither hope of good, nor reason, nor fortune that can make me change my feeling, and unhappy for unhappy, that is all the same. Let the King think only that he is not marrying me for himself, and that it is for me; and he himself will have a thousand sorrows to see two people who hate each other, and the most unhappy marriage in the world, to hear mutual complaints which will be so many reproaches to him for having erected the instrument of our yoke. As a good Christian, let him reflect if it is right to want to force people, to cause divorces, and to be the cause of all the sins that an ill-suited marriage makes us commit. I'm determined rather than anything, and since things are like this, you can somehow let the Duke know, come what may, that I'll never take her. I have been unhappy all my life, and I believe it is my destiny to remain so; you have to be patient, and take time as it comes. Perhaps such a sudden fortune which would follow all the sorrows which I have professed since I was born would have made me proud. Finally, whatever happens, I have nothing to reproach myself with; I have suffered enough for an exaggerated crime, and I do not want to undertake to extend my sorrows to future times. I still have resources, and a pistol shot can deliver me from my sorrows and from my life; I believe that the good Lord would not damn me for that, and, having pity on me, in exchange for a miserable life, will grant me salvation. This is what despair can bring a young person whose blood is not so stale as that of a septuagenarian. I feel, sir, and when one hates the ways of force as much as I do, that our boiling blood always carries us to extremities.

I strongly approve of the Emperor's courier, who condemns the senseless action of his sister-in-law. What ridicule does this woman give herself in the world, which consequently reflects on her daughter! If there are honest people in the world, they must think of saving me from one of the most perilous steps I have ever taken. I am consumed in melancholy thoughts, and I am afraid I cannot conceal my grief. This is the state in which I find myself.

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Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

Re: Euler and Fritz

Re: Euler and Fritz

Re: Euler and Fritz

Re: French gossipy sensationalism

Re: French gossipy sensationalism

Re: French gossipy sensationalism

Re: French gossipy sensationalism

Re: French gossipy sensationalism

Re: Peter Keith in the archives!

Re: Peter Keith in the archives!

Re: French gossipy sensationalism

Re: French gossipy sensationalism

Re: Lochiel of the '45, by John Sibbald Gibson (1994)

Re: Pop Quiz opportunity for Fredericians

Re: Le Secret du Roi

Re: Euler and Fritz

Re: Euler and Fritz

Re: Grad school

Curriculum overhaul

Re: Peter Keith in the archives!

Re: Euler and Fritz

Re: Pop Quiz opportunity for Fredericians

Re: French gossipy sensationalism

Re: Pop Quiz opportunity for Fredericians

Re: Pop Quiz opportunity for Fredericians