Entry tags:
Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 22 (or: Yuletide 2020 edition)
ETA: Whoops, I missed my cue -- this might as well be the next discussion post, I guess! :)
This is about the fic I didn't author (I have another reveals post for the fics I did author).
So my goal this Yuletide was NOT to write any historical fandom (because hard!) and just enjoy the excellent stuff that other people wrote. And... that sort of happened? I didn't end up authoring anything history-intensive? Buuuuut I ended up spending a lot more time than I did on any of my own fics working with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mildred_of_midgard on her fic, which she was worried about being able to pull off because she had had this completely insane idea to write a long casefic about Frederick the Great that every time I turned around had another twist put in :P :) She supplied me with what we called a "rough opal in matrix" bus pass casefic, and I cut away the matrix that remained and in some cases carved the opal -- that is to say, writing additional text for some of the scenes, what we liked to call "putting in feels," and in at least two cases entirely rewriting and/or restructuring the scene she'd written. She didn't always keep what I wrote (which we'd agreed upon in the beginning), but when she did (which was most of the time :) ) she then went in and rewrote/restructured what I put in to wordsmith (some of the words I gave her were really rough) and match her style, adding even more scenes -- that is, polishing it up and adding some gold and diamonds -- and voila, a beautiful pendant, I mean, story :)
I'm really proud of it and also it was really fun and also what I could handle this year, especially because mildred did all the parts I thought were hard and also wrote all the parts involving actual history or subtle AU before I was brought in so I didn't actually have to know historical stuff (though I guess I will never forget the battle of Leuthen now), and took full responsibility for how the whole thing turned out, so all I had to do was be like "Here, I'll write some rough feels for you for this scene!" The funny part was that I would often then write a paragraph justifying why I *had* to write the scene the way I did, and more likely than not mildred would be like, "yeah, I was sure you would do that, of course it should be written like that." (The most glaring example of this was where I inserted the Letter of Doom at the climax. I was worried there was some reason she didn't want it there, but she said, no, she just didn't have time to put it in herself and was just trusting me to do that :) ) She started jokingly calling me her "other self," to which I replied that it was with 1000% less angst and frustration -- as Frederick the Great's brother was his "other self" (which actually comes up in the fic) that he could trust to do all kinds of competent things, but they had a relationship that was, um, fraught? radioactive? Whereas this was just fun :)
Mildred did so much more than I did (we estimated a 90%/10% word ratio, not even counting the part where she wordsmithed a lot of my text) that I felt very uncomfortable being listed as a co-author, but hey, ~3000 words is a respectable Yuletide fic length :)
Yet They Grind Exceedingly Small (30384 words) by mildred_of_midgard
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Anna Amalie von Preußen & Wilhelmine von Preußen, Anna Amalie von Preußen & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen, Wilhelmine von Preußen & Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia
Characters: Anna Amalie von Preußen (1723-1787), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758), Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802), Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1732-1780), Wilhelmine von Hesse-Kassel (1726-1808), August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Alcmene 1 | Frederick the Great's Italian Greyhound, Voltaire (Writer), Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Family, Suicide, Alternate Universe - Dark, Siblings, Canon-Typical Violence, Mystery, Tide of History Challenge
Summary:
This is about the fic I didn't author (I have another reveals post for the fics I did author).
So my goal this Yuletide was NOT to write any historical fandom (because hard!) and just enjoy the excellent stuff that other people wrote. And... that sort of happened? I didn't end up authoring anything history-intensive? Buuuuut I ended up spending a lot more time than I did on any of my own fics working with
mildred_of_midgard on her fic, which she was worried about being able to pull off because she had had this completely insane idea to write a long casefic about Frederick the Great that every time I turned around had another twist put in :P :) She supplied me with what we called a "rough opal in matrix" bus pass casefic, and I cut away the matrix that remained and in some cases carved the opal -- that is to say, writing additional text for some of the scenes, what we liked to call "putting in feels," and in at least two cases entirely rewriting and/or restructuring the scene she'd written. She didn't always keep what I wrote (which we'd agreed upon in the beginning), but when she did (which was most of the time :) ) she then went in and rewrote/restructured what I put in to wordsmith (some of the words I gave her were really rough) and match her style, adding even more scenes -- that is, polishing it up and adding some gold and diamonds -- and voila, a beautiful pendant, I mean, story :)I'm really proud of it and also it was really fun and also what I could handle this year, especially because mildred did all the parts I thought were hard and also wrote all the parts involving actual history or subtle AU before I was brought in so I didn't actually have to know historical stuff (though I guess I will never forget the battle of Leuthen now), and took full responsibility for how the whole thing turned out, so all I had to do was be like "Here, I'll write some rough feels for you for this scene!" The funny part was that I would often then write a paragraph justifying why I *had* to write the scene the way I did, and more likely than not mildred would be like, "yeah, I was sure you would do that, of course it should be written like that." (The most glaring example of this was where I inserted the Letter of Doom at the climax. I was worried there was some reason she didn't want it there, but she said, no, she just didn't have time to put it in herself and was just trusting me to do that :) ) She started jokingly calling me her "other self," to which I replied that it was with 1000% less angst and frustration -- as Frederick the Great's brother was his "other self" (which actually comes up in the fic) that he could trust to do all kinds of competent things, but they had a relationship that was, um, fraught? radioactive? Whereas this was just fun :)
Mildred did so much more than I did (we estimated a 90%/10% word ratio, not even counting the part where she wordsmithed a lot of my text) that I felt very uncomfortable being listed as a co-author, but hey, ~3000 words is a respectable Yuletide fic length :)
Yet They Grind Exceedingly Small (30384 words) by mildred_of_midgard
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Anna Amalie von Preußen & Wilhelmine von Preußen, Anna Amalie von Preußen & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen, Wilhelmine von Preußen & Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia
Characters: Anna Amalie von Preußen (1723-1787), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758), Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802), Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1732-1780), Wilhelmine von Hesse-Kassel (1726-1808), August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Alcmene 1 | Frederick the Great's Italian Greyhound, Voltaire (Writer), Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Family, Suicide, Alternate Universe - Dark, Siblings, Canon-Typical Violence, Mystery, Tide of History Challenge
Summary:
January 1758. Prince William is dead, some say of a broken heart. Frederick wants to absolve himself of blame for William's death. Henry schemes to end the Third Silesian War on his terms. Amalie and Wilhelmine team up to find out what really happened to their brother. Alcmene just wants to be told she's a good dog.
Heinrich's Lookbook
"Prinz Heinrich von Preußen in Bildnissen seiner Zeit"
It should be legible (mostly), although the image quality could be better.
I originally got this catalogue with the idea that I might be able to write about Heinrich's superior taste in wigs for an art history class I'm taking, but, according to my professor, wigs are the topic that is pretty much the most difficult to research with the art history library being closed. Soooo that didn't work out, but I am still very happy with my purchase :D One of my personal favourites is this "caricature by an unknown artist", I think it's rather charming:
Almost as charming as Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun writing how she "can barely describe how ugly [she] thought [Heinrich] was".
I'll probably try to properly scan the image parts of the catalogue at some point, but until then I can also just send you better images outside of the pdf if the need arises ^^
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook
(I also love that they included a pic of the obelisk! Because OF COURSE.)
And even a couple of portraits of Mina/Wilhelmine! (whyyyyy does everyone have to have the same name, for a minute I thought that was Wilhelmine-the-sister instead of Wilelmine-the-wife and was like, this looks different than other pics I've seen? But then I read the caption more carefully) I don't think I'd seen a pic of Mina before. Even allowing for portrait flattery she does look awfully charming.
It's interesting to me that the caricature and a couple of the other more informal artworks show him with a big nose, but the portraits don't. Is this a function of him actually having a (relatively) big nose (though I assume not as big as the caricatured one :) ) but the portraits minimizing it?
(My German is still not good enough to read this properly (besides puzzling out captions, lol) -- maybe once I'm done with Lehndorff -- so feel free to tell me about anything else cool from the text :D )
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook
Since we already had the nose-minimizing going on with Fritz, I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened with Heinrich. Although they definitely had different noses, since nobody with eyes would describe Fritz's nose as "upturned".
Among the "descriptions of his looks and character" is one that describes a typical day in the life of 1790s Heinrich, including an outfit that I need to draw:
"His dress was French and cut in the style of the 80s, in summer it was made of silk or satin, in winter of fine woolen cloth that was embroidered or decorated with braids, he was always wearing trousers or stockings of silk and shoes with big buckles. A pair of enormous watchchains was hanging down in the front, combined with a flower-patterned waistcoat, big diamond rings on the fingers, a cane with a golden head and a long silken cane-band attached to it, a small, triangular hat with a steel- or, on celebration days, a diamond pin, in his hand a golden snuffbox and some sort of small binoculars in his pocket, a powdered wig with curls and a small braid; in the mornings, apparently, a cadogan imitating his own hair, and, of course, jabots and cuffs"
Later he is described wearing "a wig with curlers and a big round hat". I love him so much.
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook - and more art requests
Also, now that Yuletide has been revealed, gonna request Amalie curtseying deeply to Heinrich and Sophie(/Catherine) and Heinrich dancing, or possibly playing hide and seek, or possibly dividing up Poland between them. :D I'll let mildred or selena request something related to time-traveling valets :D
(Of course as always feel free to totally ignore my requests!)
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook - caricature
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook - caricature
The Borckes and Lentulus I recognize, and Pirch is probably related to our Carel--his father was a Georg Ernst, and this is a Georg Ludwig, so could be a different branch. Selena may know more!
Back to work so I can do German later...
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook - caricature
Possibly, yeah. A couple of the titles I skimmed sound interesting. I ended up there a couple of weeks ago because I was looking for this Koser article from 1897, which collects quotes about Fritz' looks (you know, priorities and all that), most of which I'd also read elsewhere (not least thanks to you guys).
It also has this little 1780s anecdote about Heinrich, witnessed and later written down by a young Marwitz boy (born 1777): As we were going up the great staircase, a little old man came running past us with fixed eyes and jumped down the stairs in arcs. My court master called out in astonishment: "That was Prince Heinrich!" We now stepped into the window on the first floor and looked to see what could induce the little man to use such arcs. And, lo and behold, the king came to visit him.
I was most impressed because Heinrich wasn't exactly the youngest at that point, either. ;)
--
Finally, in case of interest, I posted a couple of winter pictures of the Sanssouci grounds in my journal earlier, all from years ago. Kind of anachronistic, since I don't think anybody lived in the two palaces during winter time (?), but still, some views of the snowy grounds. Although sadly, I didn't actually take one of Sanssouci itself that time, no idea why (possibly too many people milling about).
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook - caricature
Also, yes, as far as I know, it was only Fritz's palace from April/May to the beginning of October, but I still love seeing it. If only because I have an abundance of fanfic in my head that isn't tied to canon. :P Next time you go in winter, I would like to commission a picture of the palace itself, no matter how many people are milling about! :D
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook - caricature
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook - caricature
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook - caricature
(This fandom certainly made me miss it.)
Re: Heinrich's Lookbook - caricature