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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.
Candide (first half)
I chose this one under the vague idea that "critical edition" was what I wanted, and also I read the sample and thought the footnotes were probably decent enough, whereas most other editions I tried in the five minutes I looked around had no footnotes. I don't know that I'm totally content with the notes now that I have them (they are sort of short) but they're actually not too bad for my uses, as I need them to explicate things I didn't know I was missing, and once I know I'm missing them I can go look them up or ask in salon :) It's the stuff I don't know I'm missing that bothers me...
I've read the first half so far and it turns out the first several chapters are relevant to our fandom :)
Chapter 2 - in which Candide gets recruited into the army of the Bulgars - "Voltaire chose this name to represent the Prussian troops of Frederick the Great because he wanted to make an insinuation of pedastry against both the soldiers and their master. Cf. French bougre, English "bugger."
LOLOLOLOL. This is the kind of thing I'm here for, footnotes! Also as always I think it is hilarious that Voltaire is so stuck on Fritz that he has to make fun of Fritz being gay, lol.
"Two men in blue took note of [Candide]... 'Aren't you five feet five inches tall?'" And the footnote attached to that: "Frederick had a passion for sorting out his soldiers by size; several of his regiments would accept only six-footers."
...surely... they are mixing up Fritz and FW?? But still, this is 5000% funnier now that I know the Fritz/FW connection (tall guys, while sad for the tall guys, is always going to be hilarious to me)
The impressing of Candide into the army of the Bulgars by two guys who accost him in a tavern reminds me a lot of Ulrich Bräker's memoirs that
Chapter 2/3: "The King of the Bulgars went to war with the King of the Abares." The footnote says here that this is a reference to the Seven Years' War and that "Allegorically, the Abares are the French, who opposed the Prussians in the conflict known to hindsight history as the Seven Years' War."
Me: The French?? Against the Prussians??
Footnote: Look, the Seven Years' War is complicated, okay? We are a footnote, we're not going to get all of this across in our allotted couple of lines. Check out the Battle of Minden, that's what he's referring to, it took place in Westphalia which is where Voltaire has set this bit.
Wikipedia: Yeah, your buddy Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated a French army there.
Me: He's not my buddy, I just thought it was funny that mildred thought of him before Ferdinand... never mind. Fine.
"...the two kings in their respective camps celebrated the victory by having Te Deums sung" -- Also appreciated the note about how this was sung to celebrate victory! By both kings, natch. Don't know if this was intentional, but it sure did remind me of Fritz for obvious reasons.
That's it for Fritz-related hilariousness in the first half (and, idk, maybe for the whole thing, I'll check in once I'm finished), but a couple of random other comments:
After we leave Westphalia and the Bulgars, in Chapter 11, the Old Lady says: "I am in fact the daughter of Pope Urban the Tenth and the Princess of Palestrina." The footnote observes that Voltaire left a note behind on this passage, first published in 1829: "Note the extreme discretion of the author: hitherto there has never been a pope named Urban X; he avoided attributing a bastard to a named Pope. What circumspection! What an exquisite conscience!" I don't know which I think is funnier, the "exquisite conscience!" or the fact that Voltaire is saying all this about himself in third person.
Chapter 16: "How can you expect me to eat ham when I have killed the son of my lord the Baron, and am now condemned never to see the lovely Cunegonde for the rest of my life? Why should I drag out my miserable days, since I must exist far from her in the depths of despair and remorse? And what will the Journal de Trevoux say of all this?" I would have thought this was funny by itself, but the footnote says this is a journal published by the Jesuit order, founded in 1701 and consistently hostile to Voltaire. HEE.
Re: Candide (first half)
"Voltaire chose this name to represent the Prussian troops of Frederick the Great because he wanted to make an insinuation of pedastry against both the soldiers and their master. Cf. French bougre, English "bugger."
This I actually knew!
"Two men in blue took note of [Candide]... 'Aren't you five feet five inches tall?'" And the footnote attached to that: "Frederick had a passion for sorting out his soldiers by size; several of his regiments would accept only six-footers."
...surely... they are mixing up Fritz and FW?? But still, this is 5000% funnier now that I know the Fritz/FW connection (tall guys, while sad for the tall guys, is always going to be hilarious to me)
They may be, partially? But height requirements were a thing in Fritz's army (this is what Heinrich got dinged for--admitting recruits who didn't meet the requirements), and different regiments definitely had different requirements (and I do recognize five-five as a cutoff...for the cavalry, I think?). The six-foot regiment I'm not sure of; the Potsdam Giants (whose cutoff was six feet) got distributed into other regiments immediately after Fritz became king, and he certainly didn't have a passion for collecting every single tall soldier in Europe. But he may have had some regiments (grenadiers?) who had that as their height requirement. The editor may be confusing this part with FW, but I would be very reluctant to say so; it strikes me as at least 75% likely it's Fritz.
ETA: Further research tells me the Potsdam Giants were an entire regiment under FW, and downgraded to a battalion (of grenadiers--I was right about that part!) under Fritz. So maybe "several regiments" only accepting six foot men was an exaggeration, but there being six-foot requirements for some bodies is possible? Will let you know if I find out more. (Though I'm not going full-out detective on this, as I'm prioritizing other things.)
Wikipedia: Yeah, your buddy Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated a French army there.
Me: He's not my buddy, I just thought it was funny that mildred thought of him before Ferdinand... never mind. Fine.
LOOK, if we're talking not purely about regents but about Heinrich replacements to get Prussia through the Seven Years' War, there's the guy who at least one scholar (remind me which one, Selena?) has claimed was a better general than Fritz or Heinrich, and then there's the guy who was "incapacitated by illness" the entire time, then proceeded to live another 55 years. :PPP
You had your reasons for not thinking I wrote a crack corporate AU, and I had my reasons for not thinking of Ferdinand as a viable alternative to Heinrich during the Seven Years' War, okay. :P
Re: Candide (first half)
Te Deum: I seem to recall Fritz mentions this in a couple of his letters as well. He notably ordered one after Mollwitz, complete with letting the field preacher afterwards preach on the subject of St. Paul's "Let women be silent". And of course during the 7 Years War he'd used the "defender of free Protestants everywhere" propaganda to the hilt, which came with attending services and Te Deums after battles.
LOL on the Journal de Trevaux. re: footnotes - pretending to be just the editor for an unknown author was a literary device very popular in the 18th century, though usually in epistolary novels. Goethe did it in "Werther", for example, and Chloderos de Laclos in Les Liasons Dangereuses. It wasn't meant seriously. (EXcept in cases as when Voltaire used it when publishing pamphlets which could get him arrrested.) (And by MacPherson, the guy who wrote the Ossian poems.) Umberto Eco pays homage to the custom in The Name of the Rose which has an opening narration of him finding Adson von Melk's original manuscript.