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

Sophia Dorothea of Celle

[mildred_of_midgard]

Remember how SD's mother, Sophia Dorothea of Celle [henceforth SDC], was locked up by G1 for consorting with her lover? I was reading this episode in Horowski, cross-checking in Wikipedia, and found the following:

When his affair with Sophia Dorothea threatened to become public, von Königsmarck handed their love letters to his brother-in-law, the Swedish Count Carl Gustav von Löwenhaupt. The latter's heirs later offered the correspondence to the House of Hanover for money but they demanded such a high price that the court rebuffed them and questioned the authenticity of the letters. The correspondence was published in the middle of the 19th century and the majority of the letters are now in the possession of Lund University in Sweden. A few of the letters ended up in the possession of Sophia Dorothea's grandson, King Frederick the Great of Prussia, after his sister, Swedish Queen consort Louisa Ulrika, allegedly stole them and sent them to him. Today the authenticity of the letters has been established beyond any doubt.

So apparently Heinrich gets letters written by Grandma Sophia Charlotte, and Fritz gets (stolen!) letters written by Grandma SDC!

The source for this is Friedrich der Große: Gedanken und Erinnerungen. Werke, Briefe, Gespräche, Gedichte, Erlasse, Berichte und Anekdoten. Stabi link for when Stabi is a thing again. I'm willing to buy this for our library if it has good stuff that's new to us, but not sight unseen.

Re: Sophia Dorothea of Celle

[selenak]

Okay, I’ll check it out once it’s an option again. Meanwhile, I’m curious as to why Ulrike thought some of Grandma SDCs love letters would make a good gift for Fritz and went to the trouble of stealing them. ; ) I mean, sure, SDC was the first to try to run away with their lover only to end up imprisoned and with the lover murdered, but otoh, given SD did not visit her when she had the chance to as an adult and Queen of/in Prussia, and given according to Hervey G2 did not speak of his mother at all (with the caveat that Walpole clames G2 did hang her portrait up as soon as G1 was dead and would have brought her to England had she still been alive), I can’t imagine SDC’s grandchildren were told anything good about her. Hm.... is it too convoluted and devious to speculate that maybe Ulrike thought they’d make good blackmail material for Fritz on the Hannover cousins so he’d owe her?

(Not surprised the Hannovers wouldn’t pay the Swedes earlier, though; “these are fakes!” Is way cheaper and would have been imposssible to disprove for contemporaries.)

Re: Sophia Dorothea of Celle

[mildred_of_midgard]

I wondered the exact same thing! That's why we need you to check out the book once you can. Hopefully it will have more context. Just a year or even decade would be great.

Also, "allegedly": I want to know who alleged and when.