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: Camas Letters II - Countess Camas Part Two (1760-1763)

[felis]

Especially how she asks him for more tobacco later on :)

Right? Her writing style is entertaining in general, and this is certainly one example.

this meaning started in ~16-17th C (so definitely would have had that connotation by this time)

Okay, that's a useful thing to know.

So yeah, I think a "baiseur" literally might mean "someone to kiss," buuuuut it probably meant "someone to fuck." (But, confusingly, as far as I can tell, "un baiser" really does mean a kiss, and not a fuck.)

Yeah, and while he uses both nouns here, he doesn't use the verb, so ... ambiguity it is I guess.

(Not as sure about Countess Camas right here, honestly, although I guess it's true that she knew her and Fritz didn't...)

That, and she did write to enlist Fritz' compassion/help in the first place, despite not having a good opinion of her. Plus, as a woman at court herself, she might have a more direct grasp of the social and societal realities here, whereas Fritz, male and king, might have the luxury of being a bit more blasé about it?

ETA: I was just looking through Lehndorff for a different anecdote and he actually talks about a scandal concerning a pregnancy in early 1763 as well! If that's the same one, which would make sense, the scandal horse has definitely left the barn. He is even less complimentary about the person in question, calling her unworthy and detestable, a liar and a gossip, and someone who managed to deceive the Queen and even Countess Camas for a while. He also says the father is an Austrian officer. Huh.

Re: Camas Letters II - Countess Camas Part Two (1760-1763)

[selenak]

Austrian father: not that unusual, if you consider that the captured enemy officers socialized a lot with the Prussian court ladies, were drafted as dancers and what not. (Unless Fritz especially gave order for the officers in question not to.) But it explains why she'd think he'd marry her after the war (according to Countess Camas), not during. Having just found the relevant entry in Lehndorff when you pointed it out, I guess this Countess H. is probably the same person. In terms of Lehndorff's negative characterisation, on the one hand, he does have a double standard and is prone to cry out "MESSALINA!" intermittently at young women behaving the same way noble young men do, otoh, he doesn't do this all the time (see the very positive entry about the Austrian Ambassador's mistress in 1756, for example, and with Countess Bentinck, he goes from bristling at her from liking her. So IDK how reliable his judgment is here. Otoh, what he's most angry about is that she's been lying to both the Queen and Countess Camas when they had promised to help her and handle everything discreetly, i.e. the unnecessary lie more than the sex, and it would make sense that this is what makes Camas herself annoyed with the woman, too.

Re: Camas Letters II - Countess Camas Part Two (1760-1763)

[felis]

that she's been lying to both the Queen and Countess Camas

OMG, I just realized that a preceding sentence from Fritz' letter, which I cut because I thought it was unrelated, was actually very related: Verily, my good maman, you are quite an expert, and I congratulate you on being so well versed in dropsy. She obviously told him that the woman had insisted that she wasn't pregnant at first, saying that she just had a spot of dropsy and that's why she was gaining weight, which the queen and Camas initially believed! And that's also why Camas thought Fritz would mock her a bit! Lehndorff, thank you for the context. Again. (See, Preuss, this is what happens when you exclude one side of the conversation.)