Frederick the Great, discussion post 5: or: Yuletide requests are out!

[cahn]

All Yuletide requests are out!

Yuletide related:
-it is sad that I can't watch opera quickly enough these days to have offered any of them, these requests are delightful!

-That is... sure a lot of prompts for MCS/Jingyan. But happily some that are not :D (I like MCS/Jingyan! But there are So Many Other characters!)

Frederician-specific:
-I am so excited someone requested Fritz/Voltaire, please someone write it!!

-I also really want someone to write that request for Poniatowski, although that is... definitely a niche request, even for this niche fandom. But he has memoirs?? apparently they are translated from Polish into French

-But while we are waiting/writing/etc., check out this crack commentfic where Heinrich and Franz Stefan are drinking together while Maria Theresia and Frederick the Great have their secret summit, which turns into a plot to marry the future Emperor Joseph to Fritz...

Master link to Frederick the Great posts and associated online links

Comments

Re: Meanwhile, in Sweden

[mildred_of_midgard]

I too am astounded by all the gossipy sensationalism of these latest installments! Clearly, like you, I need to up my fiction game. As they say, the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. :P

Alternatively, "Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction." --Lord Byron, who would know.

Please tell me you know all the good Byron anecdotes, selenak; I mostly only know they exist. Something about keeping a bear at college because they wouldn't let him bring his dog, but there were no rules against bears. Probable sex with his sister. Things like that.

Byron

[selenak]

Sure I do. Check out my Byron tag. And there's no "probable" about it. From a love letter he wrote to her from Italy, after the big scandal ("That very helpless gentlemen your cousin" is her husband and in fact her and his (first) cousin, too, George Leigh, a typical gambling Regency rake who depended on Augusta for his income):

I still hope to be able to see you next Spring, perhaps you & one or two of the children could be spared some time next year for a little tour here or in France with me of a month or two. I think I could make it pleasing to you, & it should be no expense to L. or to yourself. Pray think of this hint. You have no idea how very beautiful great part of this country is—and women and children traverse it with ease and expedition. I would return from any distance at any time to see you, and come to England for you; and when you consider the chances against our—but I won’t relapse into the dismals and anticipate long absences——

The great obstacle would be that you are so admirably yoked—and necessary as a housekeeper—and a letter writer—& a place-hunter to that very helpless gentleman your Cousin, that I suppose the usual self-love of an elderly person would interfere between you & any scheme of recreation or relaxation, for however short a period.

What a fool was I to marry—and you not very wise—my dear—we might have lived so single and so happy—as old maids and bachelors; I shall never find any one like you—nor you (vain as it may seem) like me. We are just formed to pass our lives together, and therefore—we—at least—I—am by a crowd of circumstances removed from the only being who could ever have loved me, or whom I can unmixedly feel attached to.

Had you been a Nun—and I a Monk—that we might have talked through a grate instead of across the sea—no matter—my voice and my heart are

ever thine—

Re: Byron

[cahn]

I knew about the sister thing (I don't even remember why, I think Byron was a character in some book I read a while back, and I got curious about it) but not about your tag! Right, brb...