Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30

[cahn]

In 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

Comments

Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox

[mildred_of_midgard]

Be that as it may - if a thousand people in Berlin were inocculated in 1763, directly after the 7 Years War, royals were inocculating themselves in Saxony (ditto re: war), and MT got on board the inocculation train in 1768 in Vienna (which presumably meant the rest of her domains would/could have followed suit), then Massie is clearly wrong about inocculation not being practiced in countries other than England and Russia.

On the one hand, yes, I immediately got indignant when I read that. On the other hand, in his defense, MT had not yet gotten on board the train, and Louis XV was still on the throne. (I remember Blanning calling out Louis vs. Fritz's archaic vs. modern approaches to handling infectious diseases, in one of his more "go Fritz" moments (noticeable in a book that's much more about demythologizing Fritz)).

But yeah, Massie's definitely not giving Fritz enough credit here. :P OTOH. Wife named Sophie. Fritz research clearly subpar here!

Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox

[selenak]

Does his book include a bibliography? Maybe he did what Orieux did and just read "Fritz and..." kind of books.

Re: Catherine the Great: smallpox

[mildred_of_midgard]

Does his book include a bibliography? Maybe he did what Orieux did and just read "Fritz and..." kind of books.

No, I checked and he's got a few Fritz bios in there, including Asprey.

To be fair, I remember Ziebura had Peter III the son rather than the nephew of Elizaveta. The inevitable perils of working outside your comfort zone.