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: Casanova

[selenak]

Voltaire's niece and lover--yes, you read that right.

Incest: just a thing in this era. Given Casanova in his later life had a one night stand with an old flame of his and their mutual (adult) daughter, he certainly wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.

The memoirs are a treasure trove for period detail, observations on interesting people all over the continent and of course his own life (as remembered as a librarian in Bohemia). Occasionally also horrifying not necessarily for the reason the people of his era would have considered it to be so. Starting with his childhood; he’s the oldest son of a singer/actress and her less successful husband who’s also an actor because she’s, and simultanously admiring and deeply resentful of his glamorous mother, so he doesn’t speak until he’s about eight (and is considered dumb accordingly), and then he doesn’t shut up. Which gets him his mother’s interest in as much as she pays for his schooling in Padua (since he’s not so dumb after all), but not so much that she considers taking him with her on her tours through Europe (as opposed to a younger brother and sister - of several, the other siblings end up with their grandmother, the dad is already dead). What also happens in Padua before he’s even hit puberty: he gets fingered by his teacher’s sister. This to contemporary readers looked like “lucky dog, early initiation, eh” and to us like “child molestation much?”. And so forth.

Re: Casanova

[cahn]

*blinks* Well, okay, that's... definitely something In Addition to all the rampant PTSD around, wow.