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: Merrie Olde England

[cahn]

I feel like I saw her books around at the library when i was growing up! I... don't think I read any of them, though. (I read a whole metric ton by someone named... Jean Plaidy, I think? I don't remember anything about them, only that she wrote a bunch and I read them, but all the actual historical content seeped out of my head shortly after reading.)

Re: Merrie Olde England

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, man, that takes me back. I think I read everything by Jean Plaidy back in the day, and yes, it is a metric ton. I'm not surprised they seeped out of your head, they were fairly forgettable as literature goes, but they were super useful for me in retaining history. My MO for history in high school was nonfiction to know what to believe, and historical fiction so I had a hope of retaining it. So it's partly thanks to her that I remember any European history outside the 18th century.

Haha, I read a Stephen/Maud-shipping romance that, while it was full of inaccuracies and implausibilities, was probably responsible for more of my vague memories persisting to this day than the few actual histories I read.

Re: Merrie Olde England

[cahn]

haha, yes, it would have helped had I actually been interested in any of the people as people at the time! As it was they all kind of blurred together. I think historical fiction only works for me as a memory aid if I really like the book or like the history :)

Re: Merrie Olde England

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, yeah, if you weren't into the people, they would super all blur together, one queen after another. Her books *were* pretty darn similar.

Jean Plaidy was also only one of the other's several pseudonyms. I happen to know far too much about her and her work because my mother was a fan, and I had so little access to books growing up that I desperately read all my mother's romance novels, even though that's not my genre *at all*. Wikipedia tells me Plaidy (real name Eleanor Hibbert) produced 200 books under her various pseudonyms in her lifetime, which I think has a lot to do with them being so similar.

And now I am glad I have access to other books. :)

Re: Merrie Olde England

[cahn]

Yeah, I remember reading something by Jean Plaidy writing under another name! I don't think it was Eleanor Hibbert, though. And I don't care enough to look up the other name :)

Re: Merrie Olde England

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, I don't know that she wrote under that name; that's her real name. Her two pseudonyms that my mom had in the house when I was growing up were Victoria Holt and Philippa Carr, if either of those ring a bell. (I don't care enough to look up her other pseudonyms either. ;) )

Re: Merrie Olde England

[cahn]

Oh, yes! Both those names ring a bell, so I probably read something by both of them. :)