Frederick the Great reveal post / discussion post 8

[cahn]

In the last several months, as anyone who reads this DW knows, mildred_of_midgard and selenak and I have been part of this quite frankly amazing Frederick the Great fandom, and I sort of assumed that the two people in this fandom who actually knew anything, mildred and selenak, were going to write fics for Yuletide, and I (who know nothing except what they've told me in the last several months) was going to awesomely enjoy reading them. In fact, mildred wrote a Fredersdorf fic for selenak's prompt which I betaed, but then mildred's medical issues got bad enough to interfere with her writing fic (making the beta edits would have involved a substantial amount of rewrite), and she wrote a post lamenting she wasn't going to be able to produce any yuletide fic. Meanwhile, I had two fics that I was pretty sure were from selenak, and I thought it would be a shame for her to write us fic and for her not to get any :(

So then mildred and I had this (very paraphrased) conversation (mildred_of_midgard has her own account here, and she has promised to reproduce the actual conversation in comments to this post):

me: You know, we should really write something for selenak! Now that I've read what you wrote about Fredersdorf, I think I could take a stab at her Fredersdorf prompt, if you edited and otherwise helped me out with historical stuff and also if you don't mind it being way more about music than something you would write.
mildred: YES GOD YES and also oh you sweet summer child thinking you know enough to write this. [Mildred was far FAR nicer than this in real life.] For starters, here are 3500 words [really!] of things I know for a fact you don't know about Fredersdorf.
me: ...I was clearly overoptimistic. But I can work with this. Um, also, all the creativity-generating bits of my brain are already being used for my assignment, so can you also come up with an idea for the fic and also answer all my historical questions?
mildred: Sure! While I'm thinking about this, have 2k more words of historical grounding! Ok, and here are some ideas too. In fact, here's a whole plot for you!
me: Great! *writes 4k words of the plot*
mildred and me, more-or-less in unison: You did all the hard parts!

Then mildred fixed all my extensive historical errors and was fortunately able in between various medical woes to add various parts like the entire Wilhelmine subtheme and the entire last scene, and we deleted some of my words, and then I wrote some more paragraphs about music at her request and edited some of her stuff. I estimate that I probably ended up writing ~4.5k of the final fic, and mildred ended up writing ~ 2k of it (does that sound about right?) Of course that does not count the... I have no idea how much historical consultantcy stuff mildred ended up writing in the end, but I imagine it was significantly upwards of 10k :P And of course she wrote the detailed endnotes :D It also does not count all the words written in comments to the google document where we argued things like that Fredersdorf should be more zen than mildred wanted to write him and less zen than I wanted to write him :)

Although mildred and I mostly agreed on things, I had final veto power (and I did wield it a couple of times), so any remaining problems should be thought of as mine :) I'm very curious, though, as to how evident the collaboration was, and how evident the seams were, as I think mildred and I have very different writing styles, but it went through enough editing passes and discussion that I suspect much of the differences got at least somewhat smoothed out?

Counterpoint for Two Flutes

Comments

Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol

[selenak]

Nope. Incidentally, I had wondered why SD if she made little Wilhelm beg for a long fellow didn‘t make him plead for his brother, but perhaps that was why she had all the children lined up when FW returned, that this had been her intention. And then FW started to beat up Wilhelmine and the younger sibs understandably panicked, so it didn‘t happen.

Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol

[cahn]

Oh man. My immediate reaction was "I can see why Heinrich has really bad memories of that." Poor everyone. Except FW :P

Our Insane Family

[mildred_of_midgard]

That does make a lot of sense. And Wilhelmine does record, after she's been knocked senseless to the ground, "My brothers and sisters, the youngest of whom was 4 years old, were embracing his knees and attempting to move him by their tears."

Also, at this point, they all believe Fritz is dead, because that's the first thing FW yells when he sees SD. Then he whales on Wilhelmine, the younger sibs try to calm him down, SD is yelling hysterically. Organized interventions would be difficult, at least if Wilhelmine's sequence of events is anything like what actually happened. (We know that the general picture is correct, because it's confirmed by outside sources.)

Once they find out Fritz is actually alive (way to mind-fuck, FW), Wilhelmine reports trying to agree to marry whoever, if Fritz will be spared, but Sonsine closes off her mouth with a handkerchief.

The dysfunction is strong with this family.

Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol

[mildred_of_midgard]

By the way, that's exactly what Catt has Fritz say: "When I left my dreadful prison at Küstrin, I learned also that my tender and worthy mother had one day told my brothers and sisters to throw themselves at the King's feet, to implore his clemency. The Princess of Baireuth, as the eldest, threw herself at my father's feet as he was crossing his ante-chamber. She was received with blows on the face, the others took fear, and got under the table as I did at the time of the mensa adventure. My father, stick in hand, was about to beat these poor little ones, when the Countess Kamecke, their governess, arrived, and asked forgiveness for the children."

The mensa adventure was when Fritz was a small boy learning Latin, and FW entered the room when he was declining mensa, -ae and started beating his tutor. Fritz hid under the table crying, and then FW dragged him out from under it and beat him too.

Fritz never did learn Latin.

Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol

[selenak]

That's why I had him mentally go "Habsburg Show off!" when MT makes a Latin remark at his surrender. I thought he did pick up some Latin during the Rheinsberg years, though?

Considering Catt, for one, had no access to Wihelmine's memoirs, or for that matter to Guy Dickens' report as given to Uncle G2, that Fritz quote looks pretty authentic to me. (Kamecke in the memoirs is the one to tell FW not to do a Peter I or Philipp II.) And again I say, no wonder this is the memory which reading Wilhelmine's memoirs many decades later brings back in Heinrich. Even when you're four and probably don't really understand what's at stake there, it must have been frightening as hell.

(I do regret we don't have an AW quote on this since at eight he was old enough to know what "Fritz is dead! No he's not!" was about, and because his own relationship with FW was so much better, seeing him like this, whaling Wilhelmine, lashing out at everyone must have shocked him to the core.)

Re: The Katte War Tribunal Protocol

[mildred_of_midgard]

I thought he did pick up some Latin during the Rheinsberg years, though?

My impression is that he picked up some vocab (probably aided by French being a Romance language) and phrases, but little to no grammar. So he could drop Latin tags and quotes when he wanted, but composing was beyond him. Again, it also depends on how much we trust Catt, but Catt has him being unable to form a simple noun plural. I admit I was surprised at the fic having him being able to make heads or tails of Latin conversation that wasn't a quote he'd recognize, but I could be wrong. He did constantly lament not having learned Latin, but of course, the standards were higher in the 18th century, so that could mean anything.

(I do regret we don't have an AW quote on this since at eight he was old enough to know what "Fritz is dead! No he's not!" was about, and because his own relationship with FW was so much better, seeing him like this, whaling Wilhelmine, lashing out at everyone must have shocked him to the core.)

No kidding. Traumatic amnesia is a very real possibility. (So, of course, is just not wanting to talk about it.)

ETA: For instance, Algarotti is the one who, upon request, composes the one-liner inscriptions for the new buildings in Berlin: "Federicus Borussorum Rex compositis armis Apollini et Musis donum dedit," "Federicus Borussorum Rex Germania pacata Minervae reduci aedes sacravit", "Federicus Borussorum Rex amplificato imperio sibi et Urbi." If he needed help with that, then his Latin is minimal. And that's 1742, so whatever he did at Rheinsberg would still have been fresh.

Notice, by the way, how every one of those can be summed up with the epic rap battle's "I've got creative talents and battle malice." ;)