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: The Great Northern War opens
Date: 2021-10-01 04:08 am (UTC)The 17th century was Sweden's glory days.
until their time/date-keeping became so bad that they didn't know when to show up for battles and got annihilated --oh wait, sorry, you're going to tell me what actually happened(Poland: "Some days you partition, some days you are partitioned.")
LOL, omg.
Re: The Great Northern War opens
Date: 2021-10-01 04:49 pm (UTC)Absolutely! And me being me, you will hear about them. :D (He's not as much of a problematic fave as Fritz, but I *am* enjoying him.)
until their time/date-keeping became so bad that they didn't know when to show up for battles and got annihilated-- oh wait, sorry, you're going to tell me what actually happenedLOLOLOL, I had forgotten you'd said that!
Yes, I will tell you, but not just yet. I'm still early in the learning stages. I'm finally unblocked, though, thanks to Massie (thanks to Selena)! Massie's ~900 page book is great because he will actually take the time to spend pages and pages on people who aren't his hero, like Charles XII, Louis XIV, William III. There are entire chapters from Charles' POV, and they're very sympathetic ones, too. I may not trust all the anecdotes and I may be frustrated by the lack of footnotes, but I am getting the reader-friendly overview of the Great Northern War that is unlocking more dense books for me.
Aaaand, guess what! Hatton's bio of Charles XII that I've had my eye on for a year now, but didn't want to pay $50 for sight-unseen, is freely available for borrowing on archive.org! The interface is abysmal, but hey, it's free. It's how I made it through the Philip V bio and decided it was worth buying.
Also on archive.org (I really need to learn to check whenever I want a book): Hatton's bio of G1 (the one with Melusine and Petronella info), and, volume 1 of Derek Beales' 2-volume bio of Joseph II! (For some reason, not volume 2, but if I want volume 1 enough to buy it, I'll get 2 too. This at least allows me to see whether I want to pay for it, which is the main thing.)
All this is, uh, why I only finished chapter 5 and read chapter 6 of Goldstone this morning when I saw you had finished chapter 9, and I only skimmed.
The one thing Goldstone is doing is making me really wish I had finished the SR bio and had the ability to reread and look things up more easily. It's a good incentive to buckle down on my German!
Re: The Great Northern War opens
Date: 2021-10-05 04:54 am (UTC)