Let’s get back to some non-event ships this week, shall we? Meet Friedrich der Große, Friederich der Grosse in English, the power behind the scenes for the Iron Blood faction. Like Roon, she’s a blueprint ship, her real-world existence confined to speculation on names for the German H-Class battleships that were planned as the next step up from Bismark.
That bit of planning clearly didn’t go so well for Germany. The first two hulls in the class were partially completed by 1941, but eventually scrapped, with the steel being repurposed for other uses. There’s definitely an interesting alternative history scenario where Germany takes lessons from Japan in the 1930s, focuses on more carriers and fewer super battleships (starting with KMS Peter Strasser), and has air superiority in the Atlantic at a time when American and British carriers were all either tied up in the Pacific, or sunk.
In Azur Lane, Friedrich serves as the head of the Iron Blood after Bismark’s plot-line and semi-historically accurate departure. Much of her dialogue takes on a gentle motherly tone, theoretically as a play on Frederick The Great’s nickname of “Papa Fritz”. Or maybe it’s just bait for gamers with mommy issues. Your choice.
As befits a significant faction player, Friedrich has a lot of fanart. About 27 pages worth on Danbooru, most of it severely NSFW, per usual. On the plus side, that did mean I had a lot of options to select from when crafting this particular Rule 5 post.
Friedrich also has two additional skins available in game. She’s one of the ships with a unique Oath skin if you as the player decide to wife her up (how some of these EXTREMELY jealous shipgirls are somehow okay with the number of oathed shipgirls that the player can have is a mystery best not pondered too long, like many things in Azur Lane. As befits her status as an ultra-rare research ship, she is a solid member of any fleet.
