Was the historical Frederick a bisexual? Every historian feels obliged to take up a position on the subject, and some have subsumed their entire existence as individuals to the advancement of their Frederick Was/Wasn't Gay arguments.

I personally don't overly much care. It's the sort of question that I can imagine J. Edgar Hoover whispering to himself repeatedly in the dark of his basement while masturbating to pictures of dogs dressed as ballerinas, a remnant from a time which took sexual preference as the fundamental key to one's personality, and homosexual leanings as the wellspring of every contradictory impulse or questionable decision displayed in public life. Eighteenth century Europe certainly didn't view it that way, and as we here in the States slowly strip away the layers of Neurotic Fretting accumulated during the Fifties, these questions lose their earnest, fundamental quality. People are more than what they stick their genitals into. Leave it alone. Move on.

That being said, Frederick's mature life can be broken into two eras: The Rheinsburg and the Kingship. After his forced marriage, his father gave him some freedom, and he used it to build a community of intellectual activity in Rheinsburg, spending idyllic days with close companions discussing music, philosophy, literature... writing poetry and playing the flute and, as rumor has it, screwing everything that wasn't nailed down. Did this include men? There's no evidence either way, but it might well have. There's no way of knowing since, after becoming King, he more or less shut off the sexual part of himself, sublimating all desire to the needs of the state. He spent the majority of his first two decades as monarch in battle, and after peace came, he was too jaded by what he had seen and, to a great extent, caused, to form much of a meaningful relationship with anybody.

Now would be a fine time for a poop joke.

-DvL

I still don't get the salted almonds joke.