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: Sodomy

[mildred_of_midgard]

(though I had misremembered the per annum/in the entire reign ratio)

Blanning points out that it's still marvelously low compared to other countries. London alone had 48 executions per year, because even mild crimes came with the death penalty, whereas Fritz saved it for crimes that involved killing or trying to kill another person...and also soliciting desertion. *clears throat*

Hard same. Especially in a country where the law is highly capricious and backwards as hell

Right? It might have been slightly harder to grab two random men fornicating in an alley and then go, "Oh, wait, sorry, you're Philippe's boyfriend, carry on," but, like, look at miscegenation laws in apartheid South Africa. The black party to the "crime" would have their life ruined, and the white party got a "don't do it again." It's not that hard for a stratified society to enforce penalties differently! Peaceful protestors and violent insurrectionists in the US in the last 6 months

Another thing Horowski has said that I'm skeptical about is that Fritz is a showcase example of how cousins marrying doesn't lead to health problems. I mean, I can't prove that FW and his kids had porphyria and this was related to SD carrying the same porphyria gene that G3 had and that this was related to SD and FW being first cousins, but...the FW/SD kids are hardly textbook cases of robust physical health! (I agree that first cousins marrying is not as bad as it's sometimes made out to be, and repeated inbreeding a la the Hapsburgs is where it gets really bad, but...you might want to choose your example better.)

Re: Sodomy

[selenak]

Blanning points out that it's still marvelously low compared to other countries. London alone had 48 executions per year, because even mild crimes came with the death penalty, whereas Fritz saved it for crimes that involved killing or trying to kill another person...and also soliciting desertion. *clears throat*

See, here's a cause for an argument in a Katte Lives!AU. :) (I also cleared my throat when "Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria" had him say deserters are just the lowest of the low, and not because I found it inaccurate.) The difference to Britain is still striking, especially due to the historical English self image if being the most enlightened of nations, especially compared to the European continent. (Remember Bodanis in the Voltaire and Émilie book going on and on about the barbarity of Prussia and France and praising England?) Now England definitely had the greatest freedom of the press in the 18th century, but other than that...

BTW, I recently saw a tumblr post about how both Wilhelmine and Fritz would have been so much happier had the English marriages happened, and for Wilhelmine one of the arguments was that she would have escaped the Hohenzollern crazy and even without making it to the throne (since Fritz of Wales dies either way) would have been spent her days in happy serenity encouraging the arts in GB.

....someone really didn't do research on the Hannover cousins. Read Hervey's memoirs and tell me again Wilhelmine would have been happier in London than in Bayreuth, seriously.

the FW/SD kids are hardly textbook cases of robust physical health!

Indeed not. That lot was constantly ill!