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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.
You should see me an a crown
Nabielka and I were matched on three characters - Catherine, Fritz and MT - and when I read her letter, I was relieved that she was okay with only using two of them given that her main wish was for the (First) Polish Partition to be a theme and the difficulty of all of them being in different countries. This alas meant no MT, because the time I really wanted to focus on was Heinrich's visit and the build up to the Polish Partition, so MT was the one of the three who would not be used. Fritz only gets two "on page" scenes but as he's very much in Catherine's and Heinrich's thoughts all the time, I thought he still qualifies as an important character.
Now, in order for the story to convey the complexity of the relationship, I knew flashbacks had to be a thing - show over tell, because I wanted readers to get invested into the childhood friendship and hope they can maintain it despite being in current day also professional cutthroats, err, power players who have to be aware the other party has their own agenda. Also, the flashbacks could show how much Catherine did and didn't change from Sophie to Catherine, and by remaining in her pov, I hopefully added a bit of mystery for newbies as to what Heinrich was up to - i.e. getting to wonder along with Catherine and Fritz.
Nabielka had asked for Poniatowski to be included, if possible, and I was happy to do that, not just because of the obvious relevance the Catherine/Poniatowski backstory has if you write about the Polish Partition but because it (hopefully) makes what Catherine and Heinrich come to plan/do more personal. The fate of millions, as the saying goes, is a statistic, alas. Destroying your ex lover's life and world - not motivated by personal malice towards him at all - is a tragedy. It also works as a counterpoint for Catherine's relationship with Heinrich and for his decision not to stay in Russia at the end, and her realisation about why this is ultimately a good thing. As Poniatowski really was the only person who got to call Catherine "Sophie" in her Russian life, it also very workeable for her emotional development in past and present throughout.
Incidentally, in terms of research, in addition to their respective memoirs, I had read some books about the first Polish Partition, some Catherine biographies, and the Poniatowski biography "The Last King of Poland". Which was very useful when it came to inner Polish matters, but I raised an eyebrow or both when it came to the wholesale buying into, say, Poniatowski's admiring image of Charles Hanbury Williams (you would not think this was the same envoy who managed to piss off Fritz and MT, the sole ambassador to achieve this feat, in his respective postings), and I found Horowski’s take (in Das Europa der Könige) rendition of how what Hanbury-Williams thought was his crowning achievement - the 1755 treaty between England and Russia - turned into a complete fuck-up because of the 1756 treaty between England and Prussia. (Hence Elisaveta, who hadn't ratified the earlier treaty yet, telling the Brits in 1756 sarcastically she would absolutely hold to that treaty and help them in the event of Hannover getting attacked by Prussia, sure thing!) Not to mention that The Last King of Poland has Fritz as the Evil Mastermind who planned the Polish Partition from the get go, in detail. Heinrich who? (He gets two mentions in the entire biography, once as an alternate candidate for the Polish crown - in one sentence that says Fritz didn't go for it and doesn't mention he explicitly forbade any mention of this to Heinrich - and then again by saying Fritz sent him to Catherine as part of the Evil Masterplan.) But, like I said: when it came to inner Polish matters, and of course Poniatowski himself who was after all the subject of the biography, it certainly delivered.
Since I was trying to keep the ensemble limited in order not to make things too confusing, I had to decide who in addition should show up. Kaphengst got mentioned in dialogue mostly to make it clear that Heinrich really had no romantic interest in Catherine, but there was no reason to give him an actual scene, and so there isn't one. By contrast, Grigory Orlov got to show up in person because he really was still an important factor during Heinrich's first trip to Russia (if about to be deposed), to demonstrate how Catherine handled her lovers at this point, and for exposition reasons. Otoh Potemkin, who was already around and about to become Catherine's No.1, didn't make the cut because that would have been too distracting from the main story.
Lastly: I was going back and thro about the matter with Sophie's uncle. But it happened, according to her memoirs he (the uncle) was jealous of Heinrich, it gave me a good opportunity to show the youthful bffs in action and it conveyed some of Sophie's emotional background long before coming to Russia, so I couldn't do without it.
Re: You should see me an a crown
Re: You should see me an a crown
I was rather impressed by how present he was in the fic even though he didn't get so many on page scenes!
Destroying your ex lover's life and world - not motivated by personal malice towards him at all - is a tragedy. It also works as a counterpoint for Catherine's relationship with Heinrich and for his decision not to stay in Russia at the end, and her realisation about why this is ultimately a good thing.
Yessss I really thought this worked very well.
So one question I had after reading the fic: what historically is known about why Catherine decided to promote Poniatowski to King of Poland? In the fic the reason given is personal, but I assume that's the personal tip of an iceberg of political machinations that of course you weren't going to show in an "only" 10k fic :)
I'm glad you put Orlov in! I know that he showed up in a couple of Lehndorff entries (because I was browsing through your writeups earlier :) ) All this fic is filling in gaps in my knowledge :D (But maybe Potemkin for another time! :D )
Re: You should see me an a crown
In addition to the reasons given in the fic (he's from one of the leading Polish aristocratic families BUT he won't have foreign backup (other than hers) to fall back on, you have to consider that the last two Kings of Poland were Saxon Prince Electors who did their best to make the job inheritable (though they failed; Brühl had to spend a lot of money to get August III. elected as King of Poland after August II.'s death). (After August III. died, his son did make an attempt to be a candidate but knew it would probably fail because Saxony had been bled dry, literally, through the 7 Years War which was over only for a year. Poland governed by foreign Kings was the norm rather than the exception - the other Stanislas, Stanislav Lescynski, who ruled in between August(us) the Strong's two terms and was Louis XV's father-in-law, was such an exception, being an actual Pole, but even he was reliant on French backup (and when that wasn't delivered had to high tail it ouf of Poland, with Katte's Dad as his first host in exile at Königsberg; Lescynski eventually ended up getting FS's dukedom of Lorraine and playing host to Émilie, Voltaire and Saint-Lambert). And Poland was, in theory, a large and potentially rich country. On Russia's doorstep. Having it controlled by essentially another foreign power (no matter which one) is not in Russia's interest. Poniatowski, otoh, is someone whom Catherine knows to be strongly attached to her, who is smart in book and conversation ways but not a natural power grabber on his own account, and while his belonging to one of the biggest Polish families means he's just about acceptable as a candidate of royalty he was the youngest son who was never meant to rule, just to make himself useful as a diplomat, which means he didn't grow up considering himself entitled to greatness. He'll know he owes it all to her. Conclusion: from her pov, he's a good candidate.
...except for the part where all the other Polish aristocratic families now hate his guts in jealous indignation and where he actually takes that coronation oath seriously and tries his best for Poland. Which is not the best for Russia.
Re: You should see me an a crown
...except for the part where all the other Polish aristocratic families now hate his guts in jealous indignation and where he actually takes that coronation oath seriously and tries his best for Poland. Which is not the best for Russia.
:( Poor Poniatowski.