When Frederick became King, the Princess soon lost even the slight part which she had won in her husband’s affections.  His long absence in the first Silesian War gave the finishing stroke to their estrangement.  The relations of husband and wife became more and more distant.  Years passed when they did not see each other, and icy brevity and coolness can be perceived in his letters to her.  Still the fact that the King was obliged to esteem her character so highly maintained her in her outward position.  Later, his relations with women influenced his emotions very slightly.  Even his sister at Bayreuth, sickly, nervous, embittered by jealousy of an unfaithful husband, was estranged from her brother for years; and not until she had given up all hope of life did this proud member of the House of Brandenburg, aging and unhappy, seek again the heart of the brother whose little hand she had once held as they stood before their stern father.  His mother also, to whom King Frederick always showed excellent filial devotion, was not able to occupy a large place in his heart.  His other brothers and sisters were younger, and were only too much disposed to hatch obscure domestic conspiracies against him.  If the King ever condescended to show any attentions to a lady of the court or of the stage, these were in general as disturbing as they were flattering for the persons in question.  When he found intelligence, grace, and womanly dignity united, as in Frau von Camas, who was the Queen’s first lady-in-waiting, he expressed the amiability of his nature in many cordial attentions.  But on the whole, women did not add much light or splendor to his life, and the cordial intimacy of family life hardly ever warmed his heart.  In this direction his feelings were dried up.  This was perhaps fortunate for his people, it was undoubtedly fatal to his private life.  The full warmth of his human feelings was reserved almost exclusively for his little circle of intimates, with whom he laughed, wrote poetry, discussed philosophy, made plans for the future, and later discussed his military operations and dangers.

His married life in Rheinsberg opens the best period of his younger years.  He succeeded in bringing together there a number of well educated, cheerful companions.  The little circle led a poetic life of which those who shared in it have left a pleasing picture.  Frederick began to work seriously on his education.  The expression of emotion easily took for him the form of conventional French versification.  He worked incessantly to acquire the refinements of the foreign style.  But his mind was also busy with more serious matters.  He eagerly sought answers to all the highest questions of humanity in the works of the Encyclopedists and of Christian Wolff.  He sat bent over maps and battle-plans, and, along with parts for the amateur theatre and architects’ sketches, other projects were in preparation, which, a few years later, were to arouse the attention of the world.