18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 36

[cahn]

Starting a couple of comments earlier than usual to mention there are a couple of new salon fics! These probably both need canon knowledge.

felis ficlets on siblings!

Siblings (541 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Summary:

Three Fills for the 2022 Three Sentence Ficathon.

Chapter One: Protective Action / Babysitting at Rheinsberg (Frederick/Fredersdorf, William+Henry+Ferdinand)
Chapter Two: Here Be Lions (Wilhelmine)

Unsent Letters fic by me:

Letters for a Dead King (1981 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen (1726-1802)
Characters: Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Love/Hate, Talking To Dead People, Canonical Character Death, Dysfunctional Family
Summary:

Just because one's king and brother is dead doesn't mean one has to stop writing to him.

Comments

Re: Backstory!

[mildred_of_midgard]

-The paragraphs that Mildred wrote are "I've waited and waited..." down to "My efforts." I'd written a version with the same factual content, and much of the phrasing Mildred kept, but she took it from being a more-or-less bloodless recap of Ziebura to Heinrich actually sounding upset, and I liked her version so much I mostly kept it :)

I was surprised to see you say I'd written them! In my mind, you wrote them. I just rephrased them to turn past tense action words ("I wrote and I waited and I could tell he thought") into present tense emotion words ("I can't believe"), and then you touched up the prose for the final draft. Collaborative effort. :)

-Totally random noob question that I have wondered for ages:

Not a noob question, I wasn't sure either!

Also, as cahn says on AO3, "from beyond the river Styx" was a collaborative effort! She had "from Hades," but I had always been taught that Hades was used by the Greeks (and Pluto by Romans) primarily as the person, not the place, and for the place you used something like "house of Hades." Googling and also searching Trier confirmed this: well past our period, "Hades" as a place is predominantly *Christian* usage, not Classics-emulating usage like Fritz and Heinrich's in-group.

And because in the 18th century, the Romans are more in vogue than the Greeks, what Fritz uses most often is "chez Pluton" and "l'empire de Pluton." So I suggested that or the slightly poetic "beyond the river Styx" (Fritz does refer to the Styx a lot, just not that exact phrasing) that popped into my head, and Cahn went with the latter.