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: The Adventure of the Time-Traveling Valet - and Heinrich/Grind

[mildred_of_midgard]

And yes, as mildred says, I flagged that bit as well as something where I had to suspend disbelief :)

As noted, I wrote myself into *several* corners with this fic. I didn't want to include this bit at all! The premise was supposed to be "dark!Heinrich kills Fritz" in something like our universe. As you know, I couldn't make this work, so I went for making him a slightly less dark (but still not our Heinrich) version with more pressure on him. But I wasn't thrilled with that.

Then I wanted to show his conflicting feelings about and loyalty to Fritz, because I know that's what you're there for, and I got as far as expressing my frustration to cahn that my fic had made that basically impossible by making Fritz DEAD by the time Heinrich shows up, and she said, quite correctly, "You can't! It doesn't fit and we don't have time and Selena's already done that--it just has to be a dark AU." And she was right, but please know that I tried.

Several points during the writing, I had to argue with my internal editor that 1) you would understand the time crunch I was writing under, and 2) the strengths of the fic were just going to have to carry the story in spite of the weak points, and that there were enough strengths to carry the weaknesses I couldn't eliminate. I kept wanting to push back the beginning of the story to show Heinrich handling Fritz and how that was far less Heinrich's screw-up than Fritz's ability to twist anything around into criticism of himself when under enough stress (see also my opinion on the Albert condolence letter), but in lieu of enough time to develop that plot line, you got a "this Heinrich screwed up, moving on" in the first scene.

We'll just say Heinrich in this universe has less tolerance for Fritz's BS than canonically, and that leads to both the initial misjudgment and the willingness to authorize murder, and next time I'll try to write you the Heinrich of our universe. (The bug just bit me on this AU, and then I fenced myself into corner after corner in fleshing it out.)

Re: The Adventure of the Time-Traveling Valet - and Heinrich/Grind

[cahn]

I do think that with more time we could have finessed it a bit more so that it was a little more subtle of a miscalculation -- like, instead of Heinrich going on about how many mistakes Fritz made, just bringing up AW at the wrong time... but Fritz using that to double down on criticizing AW. But I know you (mildred) also wanted to show him as darker than our universe, so there were some competing things going on there.

"You can't! It doesn't fit and we don't have time and Selena's already done that--it just has to be a dark AU." And she was right, but please know that I tried.

I think you (selenak) can see how this got to be 30k! Mildred also debated putting in Louise to be nicer to Amalie:

as much as Louise would be perfect Watsonianly, I'm not sure a fic as tight as this can take another character. I'm not dead set against it

and I mercilessly squelched this idea too: I am dead set against Louise, I don't have the time to alpha-and-beta integrating her in :PP

But I don't even feel sorry, because a) neither of us DID have the time b) her idea to put in Amalie's Mental Health Day was brilliant and I'm really glad to have it :)

Re: The Adventure of the Time-Traveling Valet - and Heinrich/Grind

[selenak]

30k of awesomeness, and once again, I salute the both of you for this superb gift. And yes, Louise would have been one character too many. Good call!

Re: The Adventure of the Time-Traveling Valet - and Heinrich/Grind

[mildred_of_midgard]

With a little more time, we could have done SO many things! As it is, I'm just relieved (and very grateful to you) we finished in time at all.

I think you (selenak) can see how this got to be 30k!

Oh, lol, I'd forgotten Louise. Yeah, you can see how I'm a long-fic writer by nature.

her idea to put in Amalie's Mental Health Day was brilliant and I'm really glad to have it :)

I'm really glad it worked out! As you can see (selenak), it was added very late in the process (only the Voltaire scene was added later, I think), because the fic was just being brutal to Amalie, and she kept taking everything in stride like she was Hercule Poirot investigating the lives of strangers and didn't have stress-related illnesses or anything, when canonically she did, and that was without Fritz being assassinated in 1758 and Wilhelmine dying with Amalie at her bedside!

So I wanted a way to give the reader some sign that Amalie is struggling, and also give her some hurt/comfort (hence the Louise idea). The Tiergarten (poor former administrator Peter Keith is dead, alas) was perfect in allowing me to introduce her adopted waifs and give Frau Fredersdorf a plot-advancing cameo!

Which reminds me: I am almost SURE that you told us that Amalie had an interest in anatomy, but I couldn't find it when I went to research it. I kept her bird dissection lesson for the kids anyway, as it was too good not to include, even if I dreamed the part where her interest was canon. Is my memory correct?

Re: The Adventure of the Time-Traveling Valet - and Heinrich/Grind

[selenak]

Your memory is correct. It's from Lehndorff's diaries, a January 1758 entry, starting with "Vom exzentrischen Wesen der Prinzessin Amalie möchte ich an dieser Stelle noch etwas berichten".

Re: The Adventure of the Time-Traveling Valet - and Heinrich/Grind

[mildred_of_midgard]

Perfect, thank you! I felt that I couldn't possibly have made that up out of whole cloth, but I could have gotten something confused.

Anyway, I really enjoyed combining the two and having her remember the time she impromptu dissected a bird for the kids. I like to think for at least some of the kids she would have been the Cool Aunt. :)