Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 42

[cahn]

Last post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.

Comments

Re: How not to raise a child: the Tsarevitch Alexei edition

[selenak]

I was particularly struck by the tutor's criticism of the "grimaces" Alexei always made, and how he should have a relaxed, natural, pleasant facial expression. Isn't that exactly what FW wrote to young Fritz in one of his diatribes?

Indeed it is, and given FW was early on raised by Danckelmann's choice of tutor before SC had her showdown with Danckelmann, and that the tutor was a Danckelmann buddy, chances are "don't make grimaces" were a Prussian dogma. This said, probably not just Prussian. Looking gracious, pleasant, relaxed in most unnatural circumstances as court etiquette inevitably produces was a constant ideal for royals to live up to in that century.

My impression was that if anyone was awful, it was his father Peter, and in much the same way as FW: he wanted to be the fun friendly dad, but when he realized his life's work was going to be destroyed, he got harder and harder on the kid. And Peter expected his son to have 1) his commitment to a life of service to the state, 2) his exact superhuman levels of energy for physical activity. Much like FW, he could not cope with his child being different from him.

I had the very same impression.