King Frederick Renard was King of (presumably, and only) Austria, and head of Kronenburg House, which had interests as far as America, Germany* and possibly some other places too.
He had two children that we know about – his son by his wife, Eric, and his son by Elizabeth Laschelles, Sean.
It’s unsure how much control he actually had over the Royals. Most of the power appears to have been devolved to the Crown Prince – Eric wasted it, but Viktor was able to launch assassination attempts against one of his sons with the full knowledge of the leader of the Verrat, who sided with Viktor and not the King. Rispoli later said their loyalty is to the Family, not to any particular member, so it served Viktor well to frighten them, so perhaps Frederick had less control of the Verrat in particular.
However, he could recall Viktor from his duties in Portland and it perhaps becomes less of whether Frederick had any power, and more whether he gave a shit about certain things or not. We don’t know what else the Royals were up to, and it could be the case that Frederick was tied up with more conventional royal duties and delegated most of the Grimm duties to Viktor.
He was a bit of a fluffball and had grand plans for Diana that didn’t seem hugely creepy, because we did see him treat Diana like the little child she was. However, he did mention she would be the builder of kingdoms or something like that, so maybe he had the sort of plans that Sean was so worried about. We don’t know all that much about him. He states that it was his wife that attempted to have Sean and Elizabeth killed, but it’s never been confirmed or denied by anyone else. Sean doesn’t seem particularly bothered to hear his father has been killed, being much more emotional about his half-brother, but that’s another post.
It’s unsure whether he killed his wife for her machinations against Sean, or she was killed by someone else or even died of natural causes. He certainly has a fondness for Hexenbiests as evidenced by his flirtations with Juliette, so it’s more than possible HE knew Elizabeth was a Hexenbiest, just that the castle as a whole didn’t. We’ll talk more about the ousting of Sean from the palace in a separate post.
He certainly didn’t forsee Viktor making a deal with the Resistance to murder him, but whether that is because Viktor is very good with a very tight inner circle, or Frederick wasn’t very smart, or nobody liked Frederick as King for some unknown reason. Or a mix of all three.
The next post we’ll look at Sean and Elizabeth leaving the castle, and Sean’s relationship with his father and brother.
*Monroe can work out from one or two keys that whatever the keys lead to is in Germany, so presumably the Royals with their four keys have come to the same conclusion.
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