Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 22 (or: Yuletide 2020 edition)

[cahn]

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 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.

Comments

Re: Cousin Katte's Correspondence

[prinzsorgenfrei]

forgets to address it to the Katte in Berlin, so it ends up with a different Katte, a cousin in a different part of Germany, who reads it, realizes what's going on, and warns his brother-in-law Rochow

I am so sorry for randomly jumping in like this, but the letters cousin Katte (Rittmeister Hans Friedrich von Katte) wrote were printed in Kloosterhuis (and Hinrichs) and they are quite interesting! :D

He wrote to Daniel von Rochow first and told him to keep an eye on Fritz no matter what, then he wrote to Friedrich Wilhelm von Rochow to tell him the details of what he knew and that Lieutenant Katte of the Gens d'armes must have lost his mind completely and will end them all :'D

According to Hans Friedrich, Hans Hermann actually told Fritz to send letters through him and Fritz met up with HF at some point (and asked "Huh? Why is my Katte not with you?"). HF states further, that, when he told Fritz that Berlin-Katte had difficulties getting out of the city, Fritz reacted with "Damn. Okay, so, do you want to come with me then?", to which HF answered that he does not and that Fritz should really not run away in the first place. Fritz then proceeded to spam him with letters, but HF said that he had a fever and couldn't come. The letter to Daniel also said "please don't tell the Crown Prince that I told you, he would never forgive me".

HF's letter definitely sounds more like the whole thing was another idea that backfired on Fritz rather than just an accidental mix up (since HF apparently only wrote to the Rochows after a few letters from Berlin-Katte had already passed through his hands and Fritz had told him about the whole plan). Although I assume the first letter (i.e. the one saying "come meet me" before reacting to HF with "hey, you're not my Katte") could have been the wrongly addressed one?

Re: Cousin Katte's Correspondence

[mildred_of_midgard]

You know, now that you mention this, this is ringing a faint bell. Perhaps Selena told us about it when she summarized Kloosterhuis for us. Clearly this is another one of those examples where two conflicting pieces of information co-exist quite happily in my brain, until one day they meet like matter and antimatter and implode!

Thank you very much for this write-up! I will continue assiduously working on my German so I can read Kloosterhuis myself. (Nearly 25 pages of Horowski yesterday just after dinner, which is very encouraging.)

Re: Cousin Katte's Correspondence

[mildred_of_midgard]

Also, can I just repeat for the umpteenth time that it breaks my heart to see Fritz trying and trying to get someone on board with the idea of him getting to safety? He takes (and took) a lot of heat for not being able to do the obvious thing called keeping a conspiracy secret, and instead trumpeting his plans to the world (of course he got caught), but aside from his natural "fight, not flight" instinct, this was clearly an oft repeated and oft ignored cry for help.

I'm not *blaming* (most of) the people who didn't want to get involved and saw coming a mile away that this was a really dangerous idea, but I totally see how Fritz ended up with trust issues. </3

Re: Cousin Katte's Correspondence

[cahn]

I'm just reading all this with great pleasure and have nothing much to say about it, but I just wanted to say you should never feel sorry about randomly jumping in! We have been trying to get people to randomly jump in! Please randomly jump in all you like! :D

Re: Cousin Katte's Correspondence

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yes, this! I meant to say this too but ran out of time by the time I realized I hadn't! That's what salon is FOR!