HIstorical Shipper Manifesto Alert!

[selenak]

Because shipping is often a part of fandom, mildred_of_midgard and yours truly have now finished a fanfriendly overview of just about everyone you (well, we) can ship Frederick the Great with, handily ordered by the following criteria:

Do they thave a trope?

The story in short: (And we do mean short, this is an A03 fic type of summary.)

Key quote(s):

Tell me more: (This one links anyone curious to more exposition):

Since we aim this everyone, including and especially newbies who don't know their Katte from their Keith, have a look, hopefully enjoy and tell me if something strikes you as utterly incomprehensible. The post is here.

Comments

[mildred_of_midgard]

Zimmermann is sad at the lack of MT.

[selenak]

Well, we can‘t have that:

Fritz/Maria Theresia

Do they have a trope: Worthy Opponent

The Story in short: They both ascend to the throne in the same year. He wants fame and invades her riches province, tries a protection racket on her, gets rebuffed, wins his territory, dumps his allies and makes peace; she defeats the allies, he gets suspicious and invades some more. They go through this cycle a couple of times through the decades while exchanging portraits until he gets to keep his original conquest for good and she makes peace between him and her son before dying.

Key Quotes:
Fritz using MT as an example of how to inspire his men in their second war, on 27th April 1745:

Just think that even the Queen of Hungary, a woman, has not given up hope when her enemies had arrived at the walls of Vienna, when they had conquered her richest provinces – and you don’t want to show as much courage as this woman, and in a moment, too, when we haven’t lost a single battle and made a single loss!

MT about Fritz to the Venetian Ambassador, also 1745: "(Friedrich) she called a prince who, despite the ease with which he breaks his word - and that he does so can't be called a minor flaw - can't be denied to possess a great acumen, a comprehensive talent and a relentless occupation with his duties as a ruler. As a general, he adds to these qualities an always alert vigilance, which she judges to be absolutely essential for the profession."

MT about Fritz to her son Joseph who admires him, 14th Sepember 1766: But has this hero who won himself such fame, has this conqueror a single friend? Doesn't he have to distrust the entire world? What kind of life is this, that has humanity banished out of it?

Fritz about MT, 6th Jan. 1781: And yet, I have regretted the death of the Empress-Queen: she brought honor to her throne and sex; I have gone to war with her, but I was never her enemy.

Tell me more:

https://rheinsberg.dreamwidth.org/16091.html#cutid2

[mildred_of_midgard]

What kind of life is this, that has humanity banished out of it?

Biche: Woof!

[cahn]

LOLOLOLOL!

[mildred_of_midgard]

It's a dog's life!

[cahn]

Is there a trope for Backhanded Compliments? :)

(gosh, I am not sure I can get behind Fritz/MT, sorry Zimmermann, but I'm the biggest fan of Fritz&MT :D )

[aella_irene]

The other day on reddit I made a casual remark about Frederick the Great having daddy issues for reasons included but not limited to his father having his boyfriend shot in front of him, and attracted A Man who was very determined to insist that Frederick was extremely straight, it was just that Elisabeth Christine was unintellectual.

I thought of you.

[cahn]

ahahahaha OMG Fritz extremely straight in the year 2023. That's. Something. I appreciate your taking one for the team! :)

[aella_irene]

He finished every comment with 'No offense intended'.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, god.

I still think the best slam-dunk argument for Fritz being at the VERY least bisexual (we of salon think he went through a questioning/experimentation phase in his teens and early twenties, before deciding he wasn't really into women) is that Zimmermmann, who met Fritz and wrote a polemic after Fritz's death on how extremely straight he was, had to couch his argument thus:

"I too used to think Fritz was into Greek love, but now I realize he was just pretending!"

If you're going to argue that Fritz wasn't gay, you have to engage with the fact that he was so far out of the closet that the strongest argument his contemporary could come up with was that he was PRETENDING to be gay. Only once you've engaged with his EXTREMELY GAY presentation and explained it away, can I even begin to take your argument seriously.

[cahn]

OMG. *facepalm*

[selenak]

What cahn said. :) Mind you, the "no-homo!" line of thought has a long and proud tradition, including such highlights as the 1920s editor of the Fredersdorf letters insisting that yes, the emotion on display here was love, but that "the King loved him (Fredersdorf) like a son". (Fredersdorf was two years older than Frederick, and they met when Frederick was 19.) Going all the way back to 18th century contemporary Fanboy Extraordinaire Dr. Johann Georg Zimmermann who got himself into a fannish argument with other Frederick fans about the state of the royal penis (I'm not speaking metaphorically here, the argument was about the actual penis) to justify his "No Homo!" theory; more here and here. Reddit has nothing on this.

Also, poor Elisabeth Christine might not have been an intellectual, but she's actually one of the few women we can be pretty sure Frederick did have sex with (during the Crown Prince years), not least because that was too easy for his father to verify (if he hadn't). But what completely disqualifies The Man as a proper mansplainer is that he tried to lecture you on Frederician straightness instead of pointing out that Katte wasn't shot in front of Frederick, he was beheaded (by a sword, not an axe, to be 100% precise).