cahn | Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

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So for anyone who is reading this and would like to learn more about Frederick the Great and his contemporaries, but who doesn't want to wade through 500k (600k?) words worth of comments and an increasingly sprawling comment section:

We now have a community,

rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

I figured it was that book! I can't actually remember if I've read that or not, but I kind of think not. I've actually read relatively little Jacobite fiction. Though I first became aware of the subject via fiction, I dived from there straight into the history and never looked back, started writing an 800-page military history AU novel wherein my expansionist general Mary Sue antihero conquered one country after another. :D I was 15-17 and it wasn't a very *good* novel, but the research was impressive considering I was 100% self-taught on the subject and didn't even have the earthly paradise that is the internet until the very end.

It was a massively educational endeavor and was responsible for me learning a surprising amount about history, including at least one thing that the otherwise learned

selenak came out of the German school system not knowing: that Old Fritz was in fact married! I knew about his forced marriage and his later refusal to do more than visit his wife on rare occasion.

Okay, if you want a rundown of my plot, I find it entirely hilarious in hindsight. (I admit I knew at the time that it was implausible. Behold the field in which I grew my fucks, and see that it was barren. :P)

Our antihero I have described as a crossover between Joan of Arc and Alexander the Great. She explicitly models herself on Joan, because she's looked around Europe and decided Charles Edward will be desperate enough to listen to military advice from a woman (behold the field, etc.), then puts him on the throne of Great Britain. Once she has that momentum behind her, she uses this as a mere stepping stone on the path to ever greater glory, and I forget the order in which she conquered all the other countries, but you can take my word for it that it was glorious. :D

As I recall, I gave Fritz the honor of actually fighting her to a draw and status quo ante (see how historical I am? lol) during his lifetime, and a secret treaty in which she or her descendants get to inherit Prussia after he dies. Then, after marching her Prussian army to Vienna, she gets to be elected HRE! "Elected," obviously.

She knows better than to invade Russia (she's a time traveler from the future who has the huge advantage of having studied everyone's tactics and strategy, natch), so she marries her granddaughter off to Alexander and tells her, "This country has a long history of women ruling. You know what to do."

I think Napoleon came out of one of her military schools, and then tried to start a revolt and he briefly ruled France, but by then she had decades of conquest experience under her belt, and of course had memorized his campaigns from when she lived centuries in the future (22nd or 23rd century?), and she kicked his butt handily.

*laughing so hard tears are coming out of my eyes*

You can see that self-restraint was not a feature of 15-yo me, but if you want to know why I've been able to regurgitate so much European history despite not taking a single history course other than AP US history in high school, I have to say years of fic research sticks in your head better than most things you're formally taught.

And that is my history with the Jacobites and 18th century history. :D If I hadn't decided to occupy my bored and understimulated high school brain with researching and writing that historical AU, we wouldn't be here having this lovely 700k word conversation today!

From:

luzula

It sounds like your 15-year-old self had a lot of fun. : D Good for you!

And I know what you mean about how much you can learn from fic research, or indeed from anything where you learn for fun rather than from formal schooling (says the amateur bryologist).

Do you have any especial recs for books relevant to the '45 that I might miss?

Sadly I don't think The Flight of the Heron is available in electronic form. But next year it goes out of copyright, so I'm sure it will eventually end up on Gutenberg. Meanwhile, I have bought myself a (cheap, actually) first edition so that I can record the book for Librivox the minute the copyright goes out (I'm a podficcer). So if you like audiobooks you could listen to it then. : )

From:

mildred_of_midgard

It sounds like your 15-year-old self had a lot of fun. : D Good for you

SO. MUCH. FUN. \o/

Do you have any especial recs for books relevant to the '45 that I might miss?

I was actually thinking about that before you asked, you know. And I came to the conclusion that while I could name a bunch of books I read, I no longer remember what was in each of them, and even if I did, I definitely don't trust my 15-17 yo's judgment.

For fiction recs, though, if you want to read about 18th century Highlanders, including but not limited to the '45, I can recommend Diana Gabaldon with caveats. If you don't know her, she has an 8-doorstopper series and several novellas, that contain vast amounts of historical research, and also vast amounts of historical error. Even my 16-yo self was spotting errors left and right, and other people have bounced right out of her depiction of post-WWII Scotland in the opening chapters of the first volume. (She later admitted that chapter was entirely inaccurate.)

But I've enjoyed the characterization and writing style greatly, especially in the earlier books. Sequelitis is definitely a thing in this series. Will probably still pick up book 9 when it comes out, though.

There's also a show called Outlander based on the books (how far they've gotten, I don't know), which I have not seen but which a lot of people like. The protagonist is female, the book is sex positive, and the show apparently does female gaze well.

Trigger warnings for all the things, especially torture and graphic rape of main characters. Equal opportunity rape, fwiw: male on male, male on female, female on male...but if you're at all squeamish, don't go near this series.

So if you like audiobooks you could listen to it then. : )

Sadly, audiobooks don't work for me, but good for you! Maybe I'll have a solution to the book disability problems by then (one can hope I eventually do).

From:

luzula

Thanks for the recs! : ) I do know about Gabaldon and Outlander, and at some point I will probably read/watch them. But I am still too immersed in Flight of the Heron, I think...