cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 16

We have slowed down a lot, but are still (sporadically) going! And somehow filled up the last post while I wasn't looking!

...I was asked to start a new thread so that STDs could be discussed. Really! :D

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Can I just say I love the amount of research you put into your contributions? This was an amazing write-up, thank you so much!

My absolute favorite part of this fandom is the constant breaking news: either finding the answer to something we've been wondering about, or discovering something we thought was true has just been turned on its head.

I had on my list of things to talk about (which is unfortunately getting quite long, as my computer time is limited by health--I hope you're having more luck with your health problems) the letters that we can no longer use as evidence, which include, among others:
- marriage to the King of Prussia
- dirty laundry
- orange peel
- Darget being unhappy about the Palladion

About the dirty laundry, though, Jessen reports MT using the phrase in a letter to Joseph in 1766, so while Voltaire was still alive, i.e. before the posthumous publications of his memoirs and letters. So word of this phrase being used in regards to Fritz's terrible spelling must have been making the rounds in Europe, however it originated.

his French-language analysis in Dossier Voltaire en Prusse (1750-1753)

Man, I admit I would love to read this. Need to work on my French after German!

Voltaire is also being dramatic here, wanting to introduce a sense of irony, since he of course knows how the 'marriage' will end up.

You know, I did think that line was odd, but I wrote it off as the fact that he'd spent 10 years reluctant to commit. It makes infinitely more sense now.

Voltaire speaks directly to posterity, as he seeks to claim the authority to write about himself, to create and control his image.

Well, one thing I learned (from a source of unknown reliability!) was that in the bard-dominated ancient/medieval Irish culture, even the kings were warned about pissing off bards, because an angry bard will compose a satire against you.

Unfortunately for Voltaire, Fritz is made of teflon (or was until mid-20th century), and anyone who didn't want to believe Fritz was gay wrote it off as "just a Voltairean canard."

Also, Voltaire, speaking from the POV posterity, I already knew Fritz was gay, all lines like "my heart beat nervously at the altar" accomplish is making you come across as Gay for Fritz^TM. :P

Oh, the "can't live without you, can't live with you" letter, that was from Voltaire to Fritz and is still authentic as far as we know, right?

It also means that the events aptly summarised by [personal profile] selenak in her fanfic probably didn't happen

Yeah, the longer we stay in this fandom, the more inaccurate all our fics look. :D Prussian Trenck fooled me into including him as batman at Soor! Now there's an author's note at the end of my fic saying, "If he gets to write fiction, so do I."

We can say the same for Voltaire: if he gets to write fiction, so do we!

both you and the writer have been fooled by Voltaire across time.

And Catt is still fooling scholars, some 150 years after Koser took his credibility apart. After Trenck and Catt, I guess it was Voltaire's turn! He is the resident trickster of our fandom, after all.

So I'm glad I picked up Davidson, but how did you run across this? Looks like we were both making this discovery around the same time (although you went a lot deeper than I did).

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Breaking news! Our native French consultant and honorary salon member Guillaume says that it can mean either, but after discussing the context of who's saying what to whom, he's leaning toward singular "the woman" as the most likely intended meaning.

He says it comes across as insulting and misogynistic either way, which, you know, Fritz is a misogynist, news at 11. ;) But given that Fritz is gay and the one forcing the marriage and he's talking specifically about the marriage when he says thus, we agree he's probably not talking about Heinrich's sexuality but about how this marriage is a really great idea, like all of Fritz's ideas.

Plus I gave Guillaume the whole passage, and he says that there would have been much more natural ways to say "women" in that sentence, even if you wanted to be misogynistic about it.

So that's the verdict from our Frenchman.

From:

cahn

gambitten!! You're back!! :DDDDDD

Also, this is AMAZING. :D

More later as I, uh, am frantically finishing up a fic tonight. But speaking of fic, you may be interested in knowing that there are about to be five (slash) fics coming out for 18th C Frederician RPF! (Collection is supposed to open tomorrow, but may be delayed due to late-breaking pinch hits.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The good news re delays is that all 6 people who were in the final pinch hit list have at least one gift waiting for them. However, there's no guarantee that one of them is an assignment, and the rules say treats won't be repurposed as assignments, so there's still a possibility of a last-minute default and delay in opening.

Pleeeease don't let it be delayed, there are 5 fics waiting for our little fandom!

five (slash) fics coming out for 18th C Frederician RPF!

Voltaire also wrote a slash fic for 18th C Frederician RPF! It was a self-insert!

From:

selenak

Oh, the "can't live without you, can't live with you" letter, that was from Voltaire to Fritz and is still authentic as far as we know, right?

Yep, because it's from the Prussian State Archive. How's this for irony: both Fritz and Voltaire didn't hesitate to falsify evidence about each other, but with their correspondance, they couldn't do that because the other party kept the receipts, so to speak. Also reply letters will mention things in the previous letter etc. (For example, the letter where Voltaire makes the rat/lion comparison for himself and Fritz (complete with signing off "the rat kisses your paws"), which I also love, has a reply letter from Fritz where he picks up the metaphor and runs with it. You can bet that if Voltaire had altered or rewritten any letters there, Preuss et all would have pounced.

From:

selenak

Welcome back! And yowsers. That's fascinating, and so very ic.

Questions: Did Voltaire "only" forge his correspondance with Madame Denis from 1750-1753, or with his other niece as well? Because I recall Orieux quoting from those letters as well, and at least one of those was pretty slashy as well. (Sadly, I'm currently without the Orieux volume to look up the exact quote, but it goes something like, paraphrased: "Yes, I know it's a big step, but look: king, philosopher, satirist, adores me - who can resist a man like that?" (When explaining why he's moving to Prussia.)

(I suppose if he got the letters back from one niece, he could get it from the other, but Madame Denis was the one living with him and also the one with a personal reason to get back at Fritz after his death. If, however, there's no indication that he retrieved all of his correspondance, including that with his other niece, then he used the flirtation metaphors during the actual time frame already.)

Mildred has already mentioned that MT writing to Joseph re: a Fritzian letter, "he could have used someone to clean up his dirty laundry" would argue she's at least familiar with the story that Voltaire said this about Fritz. BTW, since it's not in the 1752 anonymous pamphlet, my money is on the Imperial Ambassador in Berlin as her source, the Marquis de Puebla, who was around during the Voltaire years. (And according to Lehndorff well connected to Prussian society. His mistress, the Countess von Bredow, kept his portrait on the wall even after he left at the start of the 7 Years War.)

From:

selenak

Trenck would like you to know that with all his goings on of how he was Fritz' fave before Soor, he had at least some subtext in his 18th C Frederician RPF, even if the main pairing was het! And Henri de Catt shipped himself with Fritz, too, in his RPF, and far more people believed him than they believed Voltaire.

(Somewhere in the distance, there's Zimmermann, who would have shipped himself with Fritz if he hadn't had so much homophobia, and thus decided to become the 18th Century's lone Fritz/MT shipper instead.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Rare Male Slash Exchange is an old and venerable tradition in our fandom!

Zimmermann, who would have shipped himself with Fritz if he hadn't had so much homophobia

So, SO true.

cahn, in case you've forgotten: After his first encounter with his hero in 1771 he left the room in floods of tears, exclaiming, "Oh, my love for the King of Prussia is beyond words!"

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Now, daddykink is not my thing (mentor/protege is), but when I read

the restrained Classical ~~daddykink~~ mentor/protege vibe of Fritz/Suhm

I had to laugh, because when Suhm writes to Fritz in 1736 that he's been so sick he almost died, Fritz writes:

What! my dear Suhm, your days, which are of infinite value to me, have been threatened! What! premature death would have hindered the effects of my recognition and the effectiveness of my good intentions! No, Heaven, which loves and commands the duties of virtue, did not want to take away an opportunity to be grateful. Live, my dear Suhm, live, since Heaven allows it; live for your friends, who, by the true attachment which they have for you, could not support the appalling thought of being separated from you. I admit and understand that you only had to expect, in the last period when you touched, only the rewards with which Heaven crowns virtue, and that thus, as regards yourself, you lose more by prolonging your days than ending your career. But, my dear Suhm, do not forget the tenderness which you owe to an infant whom you have not yet weaned in the school of philosophy. What would I have become? for I feel that I need your eyes to see, and that, losing sight of my guide, I run the risk of losing my way.

:D

From:

cahn

Heh! It probably helps that my entry point into this whole fandom was Verdi's version of Philip II, who is way more relatable than FW (even though he's really quite bad, which I guess says something about FW -- on the other hand, FW doesn't get a cello aria :P ).

From:

mildred_of_midgard

That would do it!

Me: Hating FW or saving Katte's life?--actually a tough call. :P

From:

selenak

Having spent several days in Saxony this week, I also visited Königstein Castle, where they have the very special big scales where August the Strong got himself and his guests of honor weighted. And thus I can report Fritz' weight in the year 1728, fully clothed, was 64 kilo. (FW was 108.) Sadly, I don't know his height by heart, but I fully expect Mildred to know it.

From:

cahn

That is awesome!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Hee! If it were known, I would know it. But I've seen a range of reported heights for Fritz, anywhere from 158 cm/5'2" to 173 cm/5'7". That's quite a range. Given how stooped he was with gout in his old age when he was a celebrity and people were visiting him whenever he would allow it, and how old people tend to lose a couple of inches from spinal compression, that might account for some of the disparity.

If that's what he weighed at 16 when his father was keeping him underfed...I'm inclined to lean toward the taller end of that range for his youth, and maybe the shorter end is when he was older. (I'm 163/5'4" and 64 kilos/140 lbs and do *not* look underfed. The most relatable description of my weight I've ever seen is "that awkward in-between stage where you have a double chin, but only when you're texting." :P)

But maybe, since his father was only intermittently around, and his mother was sneaking him food, he had the frequent experience of being hungry without actually looking starved. Furthermore, alternating being underfed with indulging can mess up your metabolism and actually cause you to put *on* weight. And food insecurity and periodic memories of hunger cause as much PTSD and eating issues as permanent hunger.

Also...was this at the beginning of the trip, or the end? Because I feel like a couple of kilos must have been gained during the trip. ;)

The only height I've ever seen for FW is 158 cm/5'2". Short and fat. ("The fat man," as Fritz and Wilhelmine called him in the 1730s while waiting for him to die.)

How much did August weigh, do you remember?

From:

selenak

Alas no, not least because they had several numbers for him, since he did this repeatedly over the years with different guests, and of course expanded over the years of drinking and partying.

Also...was this at the beginning of the trip, or the end? Because I feel like a couple of kilos must have been gained during the trip. ;)

Königstein is about 30 kilometres away from Dresden in the other direction if you come from Berlin, so I guess it was at the end of the trip.

Agreed on the likely old/young size difference.

From:

selenak

So, remember that both Fritz and Katte admitted in their interrogation that Fritz used the White Eagle medal given to him by August(us) the Strong to make some cash by selling off individual gems from it? This is what it looked like:

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Ooh, this is so neat! I love having a visual. Thank you so much for this!

Poor Fritz. :(

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I shall keep this in mind for my next visit to Germany. Thank you for letting me know it exists. :)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I'm going to have to spread out my discussion of our fics, but I'll start the threads tonight. :)

So partway through the writing of this fic, I popped back into a quiet thread and started asking specific questions about Lehndorff, Heinrich, and Lehndorff's One Who Got Away. Then,

selenak, you started volunteering quotes and dates and page numbers in case we needed them for any reason.

We immediately concluded that you knew there was a Lehndorff fic in the works for you. :) And I did incorporate the altar in Lehndorff's heart to Heinrich as a direct result of you sharing the quote, In pagan times, they would have made him a god, in our time, all who know him build altars to him in their hearts.

I also tried to strike a balance between Lehndorff as Protestant and Lehndorff as chill and open-minded. I figured if his hero Heinrich could have pagan rituals at an altar, Lehndorff could go along with the practice in a secular, symbolic way.

One question I couldn't ask without tattooing "Hi! I'm writing a Lehndorff fic" on my metaphorical forehead and that I'm dying to know the answer to: did Lehndorff at any point in his life that you know of use a cane? I left out all references to canes, but it's been bugging me that I just don't know if I should put one in.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I still can't stop laughing my head off over the fact that three of us decided to cover Fritz/Fredersdorf in the same time period.

cahn and I both did Christmas 1732 (thank you, Wilhelmine!), and

selenak covered a somewhat longer time period, including but not limited to Christmas 1732.

This and "How I Survived My First Christmas with the Hohenzollerns" came about because:

- I had a Fritz/Suhm WIP already written that was based around Suhm shipping Fritz/Fredersdorf. It included him offering to do the French/German glosses for them (which is obviously an allusion to his translation of Wolff for Fritz a few years later).

- I needed to build some Fritz/Fredersdorf around that core, but was blanking on plot.

- I remembered

cahn's very secret diary and decided it was perfect!

- I asked her if I could borrow some ideas.

- She generously agreed, but said that she'd already written a couple scenes and might want to turn it into a real fic someday. She said we could call it a remix.

- I both wanted to read her fic, which I was convinced would be awesome, and to make sure you got a treat,

selenak, in case I wasn't able to finish in time (health being what it is). So I proposed we both do our best to try to write it. Best case: two fics! Worst case: you'd have a shot at getting at least *one* treat.

- Her response: "Great idea! But first I have to write hateshippy incest, because now that I've seen your idea about comfort sex/hate sex, I CAN'T UNSEE IT."

As we were getting close to being done with our fics,

iberiandoctor reported that there was a Fritz/Fredersdorf in the collection.

cahn thought it was mine at first! But I told her mine wasn't quite ready yet, and I was sure it was yours and it was a gift for

iberiandoctor. My reasoning? While it's unlikely but not impossible that somebody random might write Fritz/Fredersdorf, nobody's going to write Suhm unless they've been hanging out with me. :P

Most of all, I am still SHOCKED I wasn't the first person to tag Suhm on AO3! I was so sure "With You, There's a Heaven" was going to be it!

And I'm just so grateful, since even though I didn't sign up for the exchange, I consider all fics with Suhm to be gifts for me, in the same way your "Katte lives" fic is a gift for me in my heart.

*sparkly hearts*

Oh,

cahn and I then spent a fair amount of time trying to make sure the two Christmas 1732 fics you were going to receive at the same time would complement, not repeat, each other.

We tried to fit them into the same universe, but couldn't quite, so they're very close parallel universes.

And then we read yours, and it had some amazingly close parallels itself, though of course it was the most different, as well as being the slashiest (omg that ending, thank you for that ending).

This exchange has been the best! We knew you knew you were getting a fic, but we were pretty sure we could still surprise you with the fact that you were getting FOUR. And I remain very pleased with the surprise that *I* got one. ;)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The way this fic came to be was, in its own way, as much of a hilarious surprise (to me) as the multitude of Christmas 1732 fics. There was even some interplay with those two.

selenak, you linked me to the tagset with all the pairings you'd nominated. Shortly thereafter, your DW letter showed up on my reading page with mentions of Peter Keith, and no list of pairings you'd requested. I concluded that you had requested all the pairings.

"Great!" I thought. I had a Fritz/Peter WIP lying around I could dust off and finish. So I did that,

cahn betaed, and we were putting the finishing touches on it when, June 9, I went and looked at the actual request on AO3.

Disaster! Not only had you not *requested* Fritz/Peter (I'm guessing you nominated these other pairings because if someone had requested them, you were prepared to write them?), but the exchange rules said a treat had to be for a fandom, pairing, and medium the recipient had requested.

So I concluded that I couldn't give you this Fritz/Peter as a treat.

This is when I emailed

cahn, on June 9, to say:
1) I'm going to have to focus on Fritz/Fredersdorf, because I can't give Selena Fritz/Peter.
2) Cahn, I need you to also focus on your own Fritz/Fredersdorf, in case I can't finish mine in time, like at Yuletide!
3) A truly ambitious person would expand Fritz/Peter to include Peter/Lehndorff and Lehndorff/Heinrich, but I don't think I'm up for that.

On the morning of June 10, I emailed cahn to say:

1) I wrote 4,000 words of Fritz/Fredersdorf yesterday! I think this fic is happening!
2) I have ideas for Peter/Lehndorff and Lehndorff/Heinrich!

On the evening of June 10, I emailed cahn to say:
1) I wrote 5,000 words of Peter/Lehndorff and Lehndorff/Heinrich today to add to my Fritz/Peter!
2) Thank goodness yesterday was the day I uploaded the chronology, because Selena added reams of Lehndorff and Heinrich info that I desperately need.

The timing of the chronology was a total accident¹, as I'd been working on that for a week before I realized I couldn't give you the pure Fritz/Peter fic I'd planned.

Meanwhile, cahn was emailing me back that she had written incest and was having Christmas 1732 ideas, and that our conversation was waking up her muses and she thought she might have both ready in time. Please observe her notes to that fic on AO3: "Many thanks to my betas for ~~pushing me to write this~~ encouragement." :P She wasn't kidding!

Hilariously, now that I've seen you give

iberiandoctor a treat in a fandom she didn't even request, I see the rules were more lax than I'd thought. (I remembered when you tried to give me a "Katte lives" treat in the main Yuletide collection and weren't allowed.)

But without my strict interpretation of the rules, I would likely not have expanded Fritz/Peter into the multi-ship work it became, and I wouldn't have been pushing cahn so hard for the joint Fritz/Fredersdorf effort with me, and I might not have finished my own Fritz/Fredersdorf. I was just so determined to get you at least ONE treat after I decided Fritz/Peter was disqualified. So I'm glad it worked out that way!

Which in turn leads me to this remark in your comment:

Lehndorff's pov is also an excellent way of easing a reader into Peter's situation and backstory, and to me more effective than if you'd started with Peter's pov right away.

I found it hilarious and a little spooky that you should mention this, because it was originally a Peter-only POV fic, and was basically finished as such. On June 9, when I made the discovery that a Fritz/Peter fic was a no-go, the fic was mostly done except for the struggles cahn and I were still having with the opening. We tried and tried and could not get it to where either of us was satisfied with that part.

Only the next day, when I decided this had to be a Peter and Lehndorff fic at heart, did it occur to me that Lehndorff was the right opening POV. I was so excited when I realized that that would work better. And the first thing cahn did when she read that draft was comment how much better the exposition for Peter's situation and backstory worked from Lehndorff's POV and how much she was digging this change.

So it's as if you said, "Hey, this is so much better than your first several drafts. :)" and I'm thinking, "...Why yes, but how did you know?" ;)

Then cahn was of great help while I tried to unite all these disjointed ships spread out over 25+ years into a single fic. I think of the resulting structure as a horseshoe: two parallel bands consisting of Fritz/Peter + Fritz/Fredersdorf + Peter with wife and kids and Heinrich/Lehndorff + Heinrich/Mara + Lehndorff with wife and kids, with Peter/Lehndorff as the bridge uniting them.

The fact that both my fics ended up having strong marriage themes was a total accident, but I think I'm pleased that we ended up with Fritz's forced marriage and Fritz forcing a marriage on Heinrich, plus the happy (if sometimes tragic) Lehndorff and Keith marriages.

If you hadn't prompted for Lehndorff getting mentored by his slight crush Peter Keith, I don't think this fic would have come to be, so thank you! You also, of course, helped me plot it out back in the day.

You even worked in Lehndorff's One Who Got Away and the bonding with Keith over Kattes.

I remember you wanted this, and at the time we were chatting, I was a bit "ack!" at the thought of them discussing that, because my headcanon is that Peter is not resentful so much as horribly insecure about the Kattes. But positioning the mentoring well *after* the big conversation with Fritz, so that Peter no longer believes that Fritz thinks he should have died, allowed me to work the Katte bonding in. It still stings a little for Peter, but it's not an open wound any more. Which leads me to:

And as for Friedrich's gratitude, he had that too.

Now that the misunderstanding has been cleared up, he knows he does, and you make a great case.

He does, intellectually, but this is also Peter making the case to *himself*, because emotionally he still feels like the also-ran. He's talking himself into seeing the glass as half full, just as Lehndorff later does by reminding himself that Heinrich's boyfriends come and go.

Which was kind of the moral of the story. And now that I think of it, the other fic I wrote as well: building a new life for yourself and making the most of it when you can't be with the one you love.

Oh, back when this was a Fritz/Peter story that was only about them clearing up the big misunderstanding, I knew that I'd have zero anonymity even if I didn't have a writing style that you could recognize, because that's my headcanon for what really happened. (Not the conversation, sadly. I don't think communication between them was that good, not to mention the unlikely kiss. But the mutual misunderstanding seems very likely.)

¹: What wasn't an accident, in case you're wondering, is that after months of expressing longing for the Peter Keith eulogy, I turned it up on June 1. I suddenly got a looot more motivated. :P

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Wherever it's darkest, you let the light through."

Terrific and touching explanation for the Diaphanes nickname!

AAAHHH you picked up on this! I put it in there knowing no one else would, and very much hoping you would. :DD

That's my headcanon for the nickname. I know most of Fritz's friends got silly or random or obvious nicknames, but this one is so obscure, with different historians putting forth different speculations, that I could do what I wanted, and I want something that's meaningful. And Blanning says Fritz was really big on light/dark metaphors as part of the whole Enlightenment thing. So this was perfect.

I didn't spell out that it was a nickname for two reasons. One, I couldn't make it fit as anything but a tangent. Two, I *do* have it spelled out in my fix-it fic¹, and on the off chance that I ever finish it, I want to keep it there.

Until I got to this scene, it hadn't occurred to me that this would have been likely the first they met since before Katte's death.

I can't be sure it was, but it seems likely.

June 1730: Zeithain camp. Fritz and Katte are there. *Surely* Suhm is, short of being deathly ill.

1730, mid-July: Fritz leaves on the trip west with FW.

Rest of 1730: Fritz tries to run away, gets locked up.

November 1731: Fritz let out for the first time, to attend Wilhelmine's wedding. Now, maybe he met Suhm on this occasion, but Suhm wasn't in Berlin full time, I believe, and Fritz was still under house arrest and being watched like a hawk, so if they did meet, it might have been brief and supervised.

November 1732: Fritz's next visit to Berlin? Where was he when he got engaged to EC and met FS?

Anyway, there's at least a decent chance November 1732 was his first meeting with Suhm, especially with Suhm coming and going between Berlin and Dresden, and Fritz under supervision. I'm assuming that as time went on, his leash gradually got longer.

As for why they meet at Suhm's place and not at court...Pfff, I can come up with all sorts of in-universe explanations, but the real reason is I wanted Suhm to feed him and touch him like FW's not in the picture. :P Especially since Wilhelmine is freaking out about the marriage and Fritz can't talk about Fredersdorf to anyone else. I figured Suhm isn't deeply traumatized, isn't dependent on Fritz for his emotional well-being, and only sees him rarely, so it's easier for him to consistently present a supportive front without letting his own emotions get in the way.

As great as Fritz confiding in Suhm about Fredersdorf was, I adore Fritz telling Fredersdorf this even more; such a psychologically plausible detail that gets Fredersdorf to make the step, asking the question.

Aww, yay, thank you for telling me this. I wanted them to have a catalyst, because there are just too many forces ranged against them as far as becoming lovers.

Finally...

the noble Suhm, who is old enough to be the Prince’s father, practically has stars in his eyes when talking to the Prince.

Not from my fic, but I'm still squeeing over this, thank you so much. SPARKLY HEARTS.

^1: Funnily enough, back in May, all my "Can't study German, must write fix-it fic!" really did start out about the fix-it fic. Then you signed up for the exchange, and I pretended for a while that I was still working on that fic. Then I started asking very specific Lehndorff questions and the jig was up. :P I still hope to go back to that fic at some point, but I'm trying to do some German first.

Edited Date: 2020-08-09 03:58 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

...sadly, it's my turn to be having some hand/shoulder issues from too much computer stuff (I can't imagine why :P ...well actually, it probably has more to do with pandemic and my entire life moving online than fic in particular :PP ) This has happened before and usually doing PT exercises helps it clear up, so we'll see.

So I won't be saying too much, at least not right now, but I just wanted to say that as I'm sure you knew,

selenak, mildred betaed both of these and in addition to coming up with a LOT of random plot/character ideas and fixes, hopefully also fixed my seventeen billion historical mistakes (thank you!!), though if any remain please let us know and we'll fix them :D The best correction, which I'm still laughing about, is that at one point I had Fritz's breeches off of him and Mildred informed me that this would have been hard to do (in the rapid timescale of the fic). Historically accurate clothing mechanics in porn for the win! In addition,

sprocket betaed "Survived" and fixed the structure so the thing actually flows properly (thank you!!)

I am totally blaming your (Selena's and Mildred's) discussion of Fritz/Heinrich a couple of months ago for "Affair," though :PP I swear I had not given it all that much thought beforehand (okay, maybe a little when reading selena's Marwitz fic) but that remark about how Heinrich thought it was hatesex and Fritz thought it was comfortsex -- like mildred says, I COULDN'T UNSEE IT.

The last section and first section of "Survived" were actually written at the same time I wrote Fredersdorf's Very Secret Diary, when you asked for it with that title, Selena. I had always wanted to write the less crack-filled, more servant-centric version for you, but lost my nerve and went for crack instead. Anyhow, I had always meant to write it, but I guess needed that extra push from mildred :P

Edited Date: 2020-08-09 04:06 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

Oooooh that's so great, thank you!

...so, uh, this is the kind of question I ask about shiny things: it looks like the gems were replaced? Did Fritz replace them with paste or were they replaced by real ones later?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, is this the actual one Fritz owned? I was assuming it was an example of the medal of the White Eagle Order, of which there are probably many in Saxony.

As for Fritz, I believe he replaced the gems with glass in his, but I could be remembering wrong.