why *would* they have a good relationship with their abuser and his circle?
Eichel: Seeing as I famously had no social life, I guess I don't count as a member of FW's social circle. In any event, I wasn't the only member of FW's staff whom Fritz adopted, but I think I was the only one to make it on the list of six beloved people. *smug in a bureaucratic fashion*
Old Dessauer: I didn't, but I also didn't get fired, and I was FW's bff, of which I was life long proud.
Fredersdorf: Which is why the King and I were anything but sad when you kicked the bucket, as evidenced by our corrspondence. He did keep you in the army on account of your usefulness and legendary status, granted, but he hardly included you in his social circle.
Grumbkow: I luckily died in 1739, so I never found out how Junior would have treated me. I mean, I did try my best to cultivate him, and told Seckendorff the younger it was working, but then I wanted my Austrian pension to continue. Somehow, I suspect my fate might have resembled that of my buddy Seckendorff the elder...
One more think about the delicious insanity that are those excerpts you present: with all the insistence that Frederik V. loved Christian to bits and only started drinking because of Juliana, and that Christian got corrupted by Juliana, and how Christian is able to make pointed quips at Moltke, I would suspect Christian himself as the author if he hadn't died ten years earlier...
Eichel: Seeing as I famously had no social life, I guess I don't count as a member of FW's social circle.
Didn't you or felis find that he actually had a social life, he just wasn't accessible to envoys who wanted to bribe him, so they said he was kept locked up and impossible to contact?
In any event, I wasn't the only member of FW's staff whom Fritz adopted, but I think I was the only one to make it on the list of six beloved people. *smug in a bureaucratic fashion*
I don't know about staff, but Wartensleben made the list, and he was famously one of the few people who managed to be in both Fritz's and FW's good graces in the late 1730s. If you're right that he was in Manteuffel's pay, this makes perfect sense: he had every incentive to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds and not show what he was really thinking.
Old Dessauer: I didn't, but I also didn't get fired, and I was FW's bff, of which I was life long proud.
OFF: Only Friend Forever!
Fredersdorf: Which is why the King and I were anything but sad when you kicked the bucket, as evidenced by our corrspondence. He did keep you in the army on account of your usefulness and legendary status, granted, but he hardly included you in his social circle.
Hee, I was thinking of this when I saw OD's name!
One more think about the delicious insanity that are those excerpts you present: with all the insistence that Frederik V. loved Christian to bits and only started drinking because of Juliana, and that Christian got corrupted by Juliana, and how Christian is able to make pointed quips at Moltke, I would suspect Christian himself as the author if he hadn't died ten years earlier...
Ha! We were thinking along similar lines! Because I didn't think he was the author, but my first thought was whatever source this goes back to was probably following Christian's version of events very closely. If he was king at the time, that makes sense.
If so, it makes perfect, and sad, sense that he had some good memories of his father. With Frederik's Dr. Jenkins and Mr. Hyde personality, he must have hugged and praised his kid at least once in a blue moon. And like Moltke, Christian grew up telling himself that Nice Frederik was the real Frederik, and Abusive, Neglectful Frederik had some explanation that wasn't "My father has a drinking problem and anger management issues going back to his unhappy childhood." It must be the evil stepmother and evil advisors!
Didn't you or felis find that he actually had a social life, he just wasn't accessible to envoys who wanted to bribe him, so they said he was kept locked up and impossible to contact?
It was me in that I quoted an excerpt from Lehndorff's diary where he describes meeting Eichel and how Eichel's typical day goes, which does include hanging out with friends in between work, and you replied with "Eichel had friends"? The quote was from Lehndorff's Hotham era, i.e, early 1756, and goes:
After I had escorted the Queen to the opera, I went to Count Reuß, where I find all the gentlemen from the King's cabinet, above all Herr Eichel, the Mazarin of our country, as ever eager to study the different human characters. (I think Lehndorff means he's eager to study, not that Eichel is. Herr Eichel is a man who combines infinite reason with an agreeable exterior. He works for ten, and despite the immensity of his power her keeps his modesty. His expression already betrays his kindness and his benevolence. His way of life is very strange. He works from 4 am in the morning to 2 pm, then he sits with his friends till 8 pm at the table where he only drinks a small glass, without getting drunk. Afterwards, he works again until midnight, and then he goes to sleep.
This made you wonder why the French envoys then report Eichel as locked up and impossible to contact, and we concluded he's just impossible to contact for envoys. Years later, when I read that Mitchell dissertation, there was the interesting addendum that Eichel after first getting along with him started to distrust Mitchell when Mitchell did a 180° on Heinrich from "Frenchified potential traitor!" to "Other sun in the sky, great guy, we really need to reconcile him and Fritz!", which led us to conclude Eichel could have been whom Mitchell meant when he wrote in his reports that he tried to enlist "ministers" to the cause of fraternal reconciliation and they cowardly declined, and that Eichel clearly sided 100% with whoever was the monarch, first FW, then Fritz, and NOT with anyone else.
If so, it makes perfect, and sad, sense that he had some good memories of his father. With Frederik's Dr. Jenkins and Mr. Hyde personality, he must have hugged and praised his kid at least once in a blue moon. And like Moltke, Christian grew up telling himself that Nice Frederik was the real Frederik, and Abusive, Neglectful Frederik had some explanation that wasn't "My father has a drinking problem and anger management issues going back to his unhappy childhood." It must be the evil stepmother and evil advisors!
It makes very much sense as a psychological out, and if Brown while in Scandinavia got to meet some people who actually talked with Christian while he was still accessible to talk to, I could see them laying the basis for this presentation. Plus Brown seems to have had great melodrama instincts!
But, you know, even when it's not a child talking about a parent, "evil advisors" is THE great psychological balm. That's why Liselotte has her hate on for Madame de Maintenon; if she blames her for all the stuff Louis XIV does wrong, she can excuse him. And let's not forget this even works when the power structure is in reverse, as with Fritz going from still bitching about AW in his letters to Wilhelmine and firing off ungracious letters to telling Catt only months later, once AW is dead, that he was angry just that one time and he would have totally reconciled with AW and AW with him if not for those evil advisors interfering between brothers and stopping AW from making up with him, because he needs to rewrite the immediate past into something he can live with, especially since he damn well knows the rest of the family is blaming him.
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Holdovers of the previous regime speak out
Eichel: Seeing as I famously had no social life, I guess I don't count as a member of FW's social circle. In any event, I wasn't the only member of FW's staff whom Fritz adopted, but I think I was the only one to make it on the list of six beloved people. *smug in a bureaucratic fashion*
Old Dessauer: I didn't, but I also didn't get fired, and I was FW's bff, of which I was life long proud.
Fredersdorf: Which is why the King and I were anything but sad when you kicked the bucket, as evidenced by our corrspondence. He did keep you in the army on account of your usefulness and legendary status, granted, but he hardly included you in his social circle.
Grumbkow: I luckily died in 1739, so I never found out how Junior would have treated me. I mean, I did try my best to cultivate him, and told Seckendorff the younger it was working, but then I wanted my Austrian pension to continue. Somehow, I suspect my fate might have resembled that of my buddy Seckendorff the elder...
One more think about the delicious insanity that are those excerpts you present: with all the insistence that Frederik V. loved Christian to bits and only started drinking because of Juliana, and that Christian got corrupted by Juliana, and how Christian is able to make pointed quips at Moltke, I would suspect Christian himself as the author if he hadn't died ten years earlier...
Re: Holdovers of the previous regime speak out
Didn't you or felis find that he actually had a social life, he just wasn't accessible to envoys who wanted to bribe him, so they said he was kept locked up and impossible to contact?
In any event, I wasn't the only member of FW's staff whom Fritz adopted, but I think I was the only one to make it on the list of six beloved people. *smug in a bureaucratic fashion*
I don't know about staff, but Wartensleben made the list, and he was famously one of the few people who managed to be in both Fritz's and FW's good graces in the late 1730s. If you're right that he was in Manteuffel's pay, this makes perfect sense: he had every incentive to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds and not show what he was really thinking.
Old Dessauer: I didn't, but I also didn't get fired, and I was FW's bff, of which I was life long proud.
OFF: Only Friend Forever!
Fredersdorf: Which is why the King and I were anything but sad when you kicked the bucket, as evidenced by our corrspondence. He did keep you in the army on account of your usefulness and legendary status, granted, but he hardly included you in his social circle.
Hee, I was thinking of this when I saw OD's name!
One more think about the delicious insanity that are those excerpts you present: with all the insistence that Frederik V. loved Christian to bits and only started drinking because of Juliana, and that Christian got corrupted by Juliana, and how Christian is able to make pointed quips at Moltke, I would suspect Christian himself as the author if he hadn't died ten years earlier...
Ha! We were thinking along similar lines! Because I didn't think he was the author, but my first thought was whatever source this goes back to was probably following Christian's version of events very closely. If he was king at the time, that makes sense.
If so, it makes perfect, and sad, sense that he had some good memories of his father. With Frederik's Dr. Jenkins and Mr. Hyde personality, he must have hugged and praised his kid at least once in a blue moon. And like Moltke, Christian grew up telling himself that Nice Frederik was the real Frederik, and Abusive, Neglectful Frederik had some explanation that wasn't "My father has a drinking problem and anger management issues going back to his unhappy childhood." It must be the evil stepmother and evil advisors!
Re: Holdovers of the previous regime speak out
It was me in that I quoted an excerpt from Lehndorff's diary where he describes meeting Eichel and how Eichel's typical day goes, which does include hanging out with friends in between work, and you replied with "Eichel had friends"? The quote was from Lehndorff's Hotham era, i.e, early 1756, and goes:
After I had escorted the Queen to the opera, I went to Count Reuß, where I find all the gentlemen from the King's cabinet, above all Herr Eichel, the Mazarin of our country, as ever eager to study the different human characters. (I think Lehndorff means he's eager to study, not that Eichel is. Herr Eichel is a man who combines infinite reason with an agreeable exterior. He works for ten, and despite the immensity of his power her keeps his modesty. His expression already betrays his kindness and his benevolence. His way of life is very strange. He works from 4 am in the morning to 2 pm, then he sits with his friends till 8 pm at the table where he only drinks a small glass, without getting drunk. Afterwards, he works again until midnight, and then he goes to sleep.
This made you wonder why the French envoys then report Eichel as locked up and impossible to contact, and we concluded he's just impossible to contact for envoys. Years later, when I read that Mitchell dissertation, there was the interesting addendum that Eichel after first getting along with him started to distrust Mitchell when Mitchell did a 180° on Heinrich from "Frenchified potential traitor!" to "Other sun in the sky, great guy, we really need to reconcile him and Fritz!", which led us to conclude Eichel could have been whom Mitchell meant when he wrote in his reports that he tried to enlist "ministers" to the cause of fraternal reconciliation and they cowardly declined, and that Eichel clearly sided 100% with whoever was the monarch, first FW, then Fritz, and NOT with anyone else.
If so, it makes perfect, and sad, sense that he had some good memories of his father. With Frederik's Dr. Jenkins and Mr. Hyde personality, he must have hugged and praised his kid at least once in a blue moon. And like Moltke, Christian grew up telling himself that Nice Frederik was the real Frederik, and Abusive, Neglectful Frederik had some explanation that wasn't "My father has a drinking problem and anger management issues going back to his unhappy childhood." It must be the evil stepmother and evil advisors!
It makes very much sense as a psychological out, and if Brown while in Scandinavia got to meet some people who actually talked with Christian while he was still accessible to talk to, I could see them laying the basis for this presentation. Plus Brown seems to have had great melodrama instincts!
But, you know, even when it's not a child talking about a parent, "evil advisors" is THE great psychological balm. That's why Liselotte has her hate on for Madame de Maintenon; if she blames her for all the stuff Louis XIV does wrong, she can excuse him. And let's not forget this even works when the power structure is in reverse, as with Fritz going from still bitching about AW in his letters to Wilhelmine and firing off ungracious letters to telling Catt only months later, once AW is dead, that he was angry just that one time and he would have totally reconciled with AW and AW with him if not for those evil advisors interfering between brothers and stopping AW from making up with him, because he needs to rewrite the immediate past into something he can live with, especially since he damn well knows the rest of the family is blaming him.