cahn | 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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

*looks at all the sketches* OMG, you illustrated our favourite Fritz-to-Fredersdorf letter! Can't think of a better birthday present. (Well, you know, except for the part where he'd be mortified if he knew these letters survived, but never mind that.) The family picture is adorable.

Incidentally, given that both Fritz and Heinrich are January kids, I can only conclude that April, not May, did it for FW and SD....

Number of FW/SD kids born per month, with two missing data points for infant deaths, and keeping in mind that the first few kids were born during F1's lifetime, so the social calendar looked a little different:

January: 3
March: 1
May: 1
July: 2
August: 3
November: 2

Late October - November and April, it looks like!

When did May/June as the big military revue start? Maybe he was busy that time of year.

Late October - November (at least early Nov) is Wusterhausen time, right? Man...

Edited 2021-01-26 00:17 (UTC)

I am so entirely amused that (a) you actually tabulated the data (because of course you did), and (b) there does seem to be a chance there's a non-negligible signal there...

Of course I did, it was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, or putting out catnip for a cat, or something. ;)

Yes, I'm not at all claiming there is statistical significance here (do *not* have time to run the data through R and get a p-value :P), and there are missing data points, so this is just for silliness, but it *is* interesting that we have two clumps here, one that potentially correlates with the military and one with hunting!

(If you look at the times of years he spent traveling and reviewing his domains, when SD didn't come with him, there probably are some statistically significant months in which she *wasn't* likely to give birth.)

Yes, as far as I recall they went to Wusterhausen from August to early November. (October still being included because of the hunting season factor. You could do your hunting far better from Wusterhausen.)

So... FW gearing up for the big review and FW gearing up to hunt lots of animas = FW in amorous mood?

Makes sense to me!

Question: was the May/June review a thing already in 1711, under F1? Because if not, then we have to remove Fritz's January birth as a piece of evidence for a correlation between the review and FW/SD's sex life.

My real point in asking about the review, jokes about FW being in the mood aside, was that if he's reviewing the army and traveling to Wesel and East Prussia and such, he might not have had many opportunities to impregnate SD in the late spring and early summer, which means having only one kid (that we know of) in the February-April period may actually be statistically significant.

was the May/June review a thing already in 1711, under F1?

I have no idea. But I do think that in the F1 era, SD used to travel with him when he travelled, as they were both under pressure to produce the next heir. (See also Grandpa F1 marrying again just in case they didn't manage.) Plus even in more normal marriages, a young couple usually has more sex with each other than a long term one.

Well, you know, except for the part where he'd be mortified if he knew these letters survived, but never mind that.

They're SUCH awesome letters, I wish more had survived. <3 The bit in "Grind" where Amalie gets the letters before any of them are destroyed was total wish fulfillment on my part, which I had to include regardless of plausibility. :P

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

Re: January 24

Re: January 24

Re: January 24

Re: January 24

Re: January 24

Re: January 24

Re: January 24

Re: January 24