18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 34

[cahn]

And including Emperor Joseph II!

from Derek Beales: Joseph II, Volume 2: Against the World, 1780 - 1790:

Joseph's alleged comment to Mozart about the Entführung, "Too many notes", has been taken as evidence of his ignorance. But he probably said something like, "Too beautiful for our ears, and monstrous many notes." It is always necessary to bear in mind, when appraising the emperor's remarks, his peculiar brand of humor or sarcasm. He was usually getting at someone. And he did not use the royal "we". The ears in question were those of the Viennese audience, whom he was mocking for their limited appreciation of Mozart's elaborate music.

(though not gonna lie, I think it is a LOT of notes)

Comments

An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[cahn]

The mod of the Five Figure Fanwork Exchange just contacted me to ask to mention to you guys that there's a pinch hit for the (#74 here) for 18th-C RPF -- Alley_Skywalker, in fact! I haven't paid close attention to how fffx works, but I think the idea is to write and be gifted 10k words, either in one 10k fic or two 5k fics.

Because this is Alley_Skywalker, they're asking for Peter III-ish characters, but not necessarily Peter, as it turns out -- either Peter/Brockdorff (for the Catherine miniseries -- they got this fic at Yuletide ; asked for 5k or 10k) or Brockdorff/Gudovich for 18th-C RPF (asked for 10k only). (A_S's notes on Brockdorff and Gudovich, Peter's chamberlains, are here.)

Pinch hits are due Feb 12 though there's probably some leeway. I did tell them that it was unlikely we'd be super helpful this round, but even if that's so, maybe it's worth reading some to potentially poke at it for future rounds, since Alley_Skywalker seems to be very fond of these characters? (I know salon isn't quite as interested in Peter III in general, but I know selenak learned about Catherine for Yuletide last year, mildred_of_midgard and I wanted to learn more about Catherine, and I'm rather interested in chamberlain loyalty trope anyway :PP )

Mod also asked if we knew of any good resources on Peter III (for, I think, the purposes of mod possibly having to take the pinch hit themselves :( ) -- I pointed them towards Massie's Catherine bio as the closest thing I knew about (and I might go poke at that myself). Any thoughts there? selenak, what did you read for your Yuletide fic, I've forgotten?

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[selenak]

I read a couple of German Catherine biographies one of my local libraries had plus Catherine‘s and Poniatowski‘s memoirs (or rather, I had read the later two first). Now our Frederician library has the later two but neither of them have much good to say about either Peter or Brockdorf, and the German language biographies aren‘t useful here. (Plus I didn‘t find them better than servicable, but they were a useful corrective to the memoirs.) Oh, and I read „The Last King of Poland“ about Poniatowski which was in English and very entertaining, though none too accurate on the Prussian side (Partitioning of Poland = Evil Fritzian Long Term Masterplan, Heinrich Who?, also Hanbury Williams is the best source of Frederician Berlin and Fritz).

All of which amounts to: can‘t help, alas!

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[cahn]

Oh Catherine and Poniatowski :D Okay, thank you!

...I thought maybe you had watched Ekaterina because I could have sworn we talked about it salon -- and I was right about salon having talked about it, but I found the reference and it was mildred_of_midgard who watched it! Which I would not have guessed, lol!

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[mildred_of_midgard]

I "watched" it in my weird, non-linear way. ;) Precisely for Peter III. It's much kinder to him (although also critical) than Massie.

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[mildred_of_midgard]

Lol, we're famous! :D

Massie is a problem for this one, though: he's a Peter-hater who takes Catherine's self-justifying memoirs at face value! alley_skywalker has described Massie as their nemesis!

Source-wise, alley_skywalker has given me most of my recs: they've both written a shipper's manifesto on Peter/Brockdorff (linked to in their letter), and this reply to my comment asking for source recs.

One article that was recced by alley is in the Frederician library. I don't have time rn to dig up their other posts, but I feel like there's another juicy one on Peter's characterization, the one that linked to this article and probably mentioned other sources. Anyway, alley's tumblr and lj are where I would go. If I can find that post later, I will.

(Will not be writing pinch hits, alas. Good luck to whoever does!)

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[cahn]

Ahhhh this is actually quite helpful, thank you! And I have passed on that I should not have been reccing Massie, whoops. (I actually have some questions about Massie and William of Orange that I'll try to write up this weekend.)

I, um. May be watching Ekaterina. More on this later, because yeah, I've got questions about that :P

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[selenak]

If you want a reminder of the hilariously bitchy and NOT AT ALL BIASED way Poniatowski sums up his beloved's husband, here is the direct link to my translation of the passage in question. (It's followed by his ardent description of Catherine, aka "the woman who was to rule my destiny" (and deflowered me).)

Unlike Mildred, I haven't watched Ekaterina as such, just a few clips of it on YouTube (put there by the same lady who put up clips from the Carlos Rey Emperador show, btw) - it's the show where Fritz has giants for dogs instead of small Italian greyhounds and is essentially Vladimir Putin, set on poisoning the Russian Imperial family (the one thing even his worst enemies in his life time or after have not accused him of), right?

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[mildred_of_midgard]

That's the one! They're borzhoi dogs, which I imagine were easier to get in Russia. The poor Italian greyhounds would freeze!

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[cahn]

Heeeee thank you for re-linking this, I had forgotten how hilarious Poniatowski was! :D

(Also, I welcome the reminder because the name of the first episode is "Dulcinea," which I didn't understand until now!) (Probably someone referred to it, and I missed it because I was wondering who that guy was :P )

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[selenak]

Dulcinea: along with Holden naming the ship Rocinante, the first season really went heavy on the Don Quixote allusions. :) For you, Dulcinea the song from ´Man of La Mancha, the musical, as a future helpful reminder.

Poniatowski: hey, just because Catherine would go on breaking his heart doesn't mean he has to feel any warmer towards her late husband!

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[cahn]

*blinks* ...apparently I completely mixed up Expanse and Ekaterina. Uh, because they're so much alike, I guess :P Omg! I somehow came away thinking the first episode of Ekaterina was called "Dulcinea," even though it looks like they don't have episode titles at all, and thought after reading your Poniatowski excerpt, "oh, this title was a clever allusion to how Peter likes Fritz so much, which I totally missed!" (I actually do know who Dulcinea and Rocinante etc. are, although to be fair this is mostly from the musical, which I love -- I've only read a very little bit of Cervantes.)

(...aaaaand work deadline is now encroaching, I may not be able to check in very much, or watch much, until mid next week or so. Though given the amount of stuff I'm mixing up, lol forever, it's probably not a bad idea to take a little break for now :) I'll try to dip in when I can, but it will definitely be sporadic.)

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[mildred_of_midgard]

Omg! I somehow came away thinking the first episode of Ekaterina was called "Dulcinea,"

LOL! I was SO confused! Okay, this makes sense now. :D

I'll try to dip in when I can, but it will definitely be sporadic.

This is good, actually! Because I have hit the point where I can finish a (sufficiently interesting) German book in a reasonable amount of time, and so I'm now in a "Buy book - read book - buy book - read book" mania. As opposed to "Choose one book that's worth spending an entire month wrestling with it, wrestle with it, then take a break before gearing up for another book," which is where we were until this month.

I'm furiously investing in that future day on which my German proficiency allows me to make salon contributions a la selenak and felis.

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[mildred_of_midgard]

Hee! Well, good luck with Ekaterina, and, uh, anything else you may be doing, and I look forward to your questions! (I will do my best to answer them, but my part-time gig project still isn't done, so research time may be curtailed and response time may be delayed. OTOH, there's currently no German book I'm obsessively reading, so, that helps.)

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[mildred_of_midgard]

Okay, this is the post I was thinking of that has more detail than their current ficathon letter. It's the one I would link to for anyone who needs to pick up the fandom quickly. In case that is Relevant To Your Interests. ;)

There's also even more in their tumblr Peter III tag.

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[cahn]

This is SUPER helpful and I've forwarded it on, thanks!!

Btw guys, I don't think I'm going to be able to do, er, this round of nefarious purposes because of RL commitments I forgot to factor in before, and I haven't gotten as far into Ekaterina as I was hoping I'd get this weekend before those other commitments kick in.

Buuuut I imagine that finding out about all this is going to be relevant even after this particular exchange, if you know what I mean, so I'm still going to keep watching (and reading -- I'm gonna have to read Massie to at least figure out the Lestocq stuff, even if A_S hates him :) )

Re: An 18th-C RPF pinch hit

[mildred_of_midgard]

I endorse you reading Massie for this, because, uh, I found a German-language biography of Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples, as an e-book last night and am now single-mindedly plowing through it in all my spare time. Massie will save me explaining a bunch of things, and you already know to take everything he says with a grain of salt, and to disregard his characterization of Peter III. So win-win!

Buuuut I imagine that finding out about all this is going to be relevant even after this particular exchange, if you know what I mean

I know what you mean, and I agree!