Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30
Sep. 8th, 2021 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnIn which, despite the title, I would like to be told about the English Revolution, which is yet another casualty of my extremely poor history education :P :)
Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:
The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.
Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.
The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P
Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:
The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.
Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.
The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P
Re: Stuarts escaping the British government, reprised
Date: 2021-09-13 11:58 pm (UTC)I have to give Gabaldon some credit for dastardly Scots and noble Englishmen, but yeah. :)
Also two flashback episodes from Highlander: The TV Series.
Oh, gosh, I remember that now! (Highlander aired while I was in my Jacobite fandom, which was when I lived with my television-owning parents, and was thus one of the three things I would watch in high school: Highlander, Star Trek, and the History Channel (back when it still showed history).)
I had next to me in the reading room a middle aged guy who looked like he was a biker - jeans, white haired pony tail, tattoos - and whom did he research? Flora MacDonald!
Hee!
Can't be sure, because my Boswell diaries are in Munich and I am in Bamberg, but I think he and Dr. Johnson met Flora MacDonald on that one and only Scotland & Hebrides trip Boswell talked Johnson into.
Wikipedia says yes:
The writer and Jacobite sympathiser Samuel Johnson met her in 1773 during his visit to the island, and later described her as "a woman of soft features, gentle manners, kind soul and elegant presence". He was also author of the inscription on her memorial at Kilmuir: "a name that will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour".
I quoted to you the Boswell diary entry where he witnesses a London theatere crowd booing and hissing "No Scots!" at some Highlander soldiers
Gah, I meant to pre-empt you mentioning this, but I forgot, so it's good that I knew that you would if I didn't. ;)
irony that what led to the lasting love affair between British Royals and Scotland and the general popularity of Highlanders in Britain
Yup. First you have to crush the Other so that they're not a threat any more, then you can romanticize them. Not the first or last time this scenario has played out.
Re: Stuarts escaping the British government, reprised
Date: 2021-09-14 08:06 am (UTC)Still separated from my Boswell books, but employing google fu, I came up with these tidbits and illustrations:
Painting showing Dr. Johnson, Flora MacDonald and James Boswell plus Flora's husband, MacDonald of Kinsburgh, who according to Boswell was a snappy dresser defying the Hannover ban on Scottish clothing:
“Kingburgh … had its tartan plaid thrown about him, a large blue bonnet with a knot of black ribband like a cockade, a brown short coat of a kind of duffil, a tartan waistcoat with gold buttons and gold button holes, a bluish philibeg and Tartan hose.”
(Quote from a website who says it's from Boswell's "Journal of a Journey to the Hebrides".) The painting is from the 19th century, i.e. made when everyone concerned was dead, hence the portrait of BPC in the background which probably didn't hang there in rl, and now hangs in Dr. Johnson's house in London.
Actual 18th century portrait of Flora:
And yet another website has the exact day and says: "On Sunday, the 12th of September, 1773, Flora received the visit of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Boswell was to write of that rainy day, “To see Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great champion of the English Tories, salute Miss Flora MacDonald in the Isle of Sky, was a striking sight.”
Yup. First you have to crush the Other so that they're not a threat any more, then you can romanticize them. Not the first or last time this scenario has played out.
Alas yes. BTW, the way Cumberland Bill was originally celebrated as the savior of England for Culloden, complete with Händel anthem, tells you something about just how threatened by the 45 rising not just G2 must have felt. Given the vast difference in numbers and arms, one wouldn't think so, but I guess your avarage Englishman actually believed in the possibility of French military support and correspondingly Civil War (or English/Scottish warfare, depending on your pov) in GB?
BTW, regarding the clothing restrictions, googling reminded me Boswell mentions a couple of people ignoring it and wearing tartans and kilts in the 1770s on that journey. And of course in his diary entries from Berlin, there's the one where he and Mitchell's secretary dress up in Highland gear to tease Mitchell in 1764. (Meaning they must have possessed it in the first place - you hardly can shop for it easily in Berlinl.) But then, all three people in this case were Scots - Boswell, Mitchell's Secretary and Mitchell -, whereas when Boswell insisted to be introduced as a Scot, not an Englishman, to future FW2, it made Mitchell's secretary nervous.