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: Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria: A Miniseries in six parts (B)

[selenak]

Plans to invade and take Silesia by people not Fritz: well, I guess both Poland and Saxony do in fact share borders with Silesia, but Sulkowski planning to take it is entirely invented (by either the tv show or the original novelist). Yes, the Austrian army was in decline, but the Habsburgs still had not only their territories but the entire HRE to draw on (since this was before MT's Dad had died, his rule was uncontested). Such an action would have made August III. an outlaw all the other German princes would have been obliged to go against. And the Saxon army really wasn't nothing much, not least because all the money went elsehwere. If you don't have a completely modern, drilled and well equipped army at your disposal like Fritz did in 1740, in a situation where MT's rule hasn't been accepted yet, it can't be done.

It is, however, in tandem with this show letting the Saxons think of everything first - Silesia, and later the Diplomatic Revolution. (It's true that Brühl was involved in some of the negotiations, but it definitely hadn't been his brainchild.)

...this would seriously distract me, sort of like when I watched Hamilton and the guy playing Hamilton was taller than anyone else in the cast, like, apparently it is totally OK with me that they're all POCs but the height thing is so weird??

I know. It kept bugging me. The Fritz actor in general is taller than most cast members. Then again: Peter O'Toole is way, way, taller than rl T.E. Lawrence was in Lawrence of Arabia, and I never had a problem there, possibly because I first saw the movie before learning about TEL.

The ending is weird. I mean, Brühl just disappears out of the story after he and August III. flee to Warsaw, and we never even learn what became of the Countess Brühl. (Since they don't have children in this miniseries as opposed to rl, the miniseries doesn't have to cover them.) This after having been the villain protagonist for several episodes. So after the two young lovers are reunited and pledged to each other, you get this montage obout the Triumphs Of Fritz (with one defeat in betweeen, which he bears in stoic manliness) and then a sentence to justify the title, and we're done.

What I found interesting from a contemporary history pov is what the series shows, and doesn't show of its locations. Because Dresden in the 1980s didn't look like it does now; a lot of reconstruction and restoriation only happened after the German reunification. So you see some bits and pieces of the royal palaces, but it's no coincidence that the only palace you see completely from the outside Moritzburg, far away from Dresden and in a lake, so there's no WWII damage or modern buildings to cover. And the outside of Sanssouci looks far older and neglected than it does now; clearly they hadn't done a paint job in a while. Not to mention that today, the vineyard is a vineyard again, whereas it wasn't in GDR times (too expensive). What we see of the inside of the Sanssouci palaces is in fine condition, by contrast, though I note the series cheats a bit now and then and lets Fredersdorf and Fritz talk in a room inthe Neue Kammern, not in the main palace itself, while giving the impression we're in the main building. But like I said, you can tell the director and producers decided to milk that permission to film there for all it was worth, and to hell with the fact Fritz would have been with the army in Saxony after the first two or so scenes he has.

But the dogs were really well done. They're not just around running after him; he's shown more than once coddling or stroking them while being a Machiavellian bastard to everyone else, and they're the correct size. I haven'd made a screencap yet because I've never done this before, and I don't know whether it's possible with an Amazon Prime video, but I will try to capture the dog bits and make you and Mildred go awwww.

ETA: Alas. I tried, and I did get screenshots, but it seems they only show black if you do it from Amazon Prime.

Son of ETA: Aha! But the series is also on one of our public broadcast channels and archives, and I just suceeded in a screenshot. Will try further.

Re: Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria: A Miniseries in six parts (B)

[mildred_of_midgard]

I guess both Poland and Saxony do in fact share borders with Silesia, but Sulkowski planning to take it is entirely invented (by either the tv show or the original novelist)

Is it giving them too much credit to speculate that they might have been inspired by the brief Silesian conquest by Saxony a century earlier, during the Thirty Years' War? (When military conditions were entirely different than in the early 18th century.)

ETA: Alas. I tried, and I did get screenshots, but it seems they only show black if you do it from Amazon Prime.

Odd, I've never had problems screenshotting Amazon Prime and was able to do it just now as a test. Googling indicates that it's not possible from an Android phone, but is possible from any web browser. Glad you were able to get us the screenshots from another source, though!