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!

[cahn]

<3 :)

(... now I'm wondering how that would have gone if he hadn't been ignored after Fritz' death!)

Me too! (Mildred and Selena, please write, or at least outline, this AU for us! :D )

So does etc. always mean basically "yours, [writer]" or is there like another whole line of flowery sentiments that the transcriber just got tired of transcribing?

Interesting. I might have gone with the more rococo version myself, precisely because it's so typical for the time period, but I can see why you guys came down on the other choice. It's hard enough to judge tone in the originals.

Yeah, my reasoning there was similar to Mildred's -- that my 21st-C eyes see "My dear brother" as something I might write as a (perhaps somewhat flowery) typical obligatory salutation, whereas "My very dear brother" is something I'd only write to a brother who was, well, very dear to me.

(Also informing this decision is my usual hilarious inability to history where, although I know I've looked vaguely at the Heinrich and AW letters before, I had only really read (and, I guess, remembered) the Wilhelmine letters. So up until, uh, writing this fic, I thought that maybe "ma très chère soeur" as a salutation might have been saying something about Wilhelmine and Fritz.)

One other thing that stuck out to me: And when it was perfect (I did good work!) you never admitted it. - Is this meant as selective memory on Heinrich's part, or is your premise that he never got to hear Fritz' praise? I seem to remember that he was present for one of the post-Seven-Year-War speeches for example

Hee, now the "never made a mistake" incident I did remember! But I decided Heinrich was not in the frame of mind where he'd go "You never even told me I did a good job! ...well, except for that one time, yeah, okay." So, basically, what mildred_of_midgard said about emotional truth, only I wouldn't have been able to articulate it as well as she did :)

Re: Backstory!

[mildred_of_midgard]

So up until, uh, writing this fic, I thought that maybe "ma très chère soeur" as a salutation might have been saying something about Wilhelmine and Fritz.)

Not in that way, but remember this, though, your summary of their 1745 falling out letters?

2 Oct, F to W - "We have just defeated the Austrians."
19 Oct, W to F - You're the greatest, bro!
29 Oct, F to W - Thanks, sis! I am the greatest!
30 Dec, F to W - (Ma chere soeur instead of Ma tres chere, :(((((( ) - I just made peace with YOUR FRIEND

:D

Re: Backstory!

[cahn]

I KNEW there was a reason I thought the "très chère soeur" thing was meaningful! Aw, Fritz.

Re: Backstory!

[mildred_of_midgard]

So does etc. always mean basically "yours, [writer]" or is there like another whole line of flowery sentiments that the transcriber just got tired of transcribing?

I'm pretty sure it's the latter, and that "your [flowery adjectives] servant" has got to be a major one. Comparing the Wilhelmine letters to Fritz in Trier to ones in the Bayreuth enthusiast collection, the former has a lot of "etc"s, (understandable given the sheer number of volumes Preuss was assembling!), and the latter has none and the editor consistently ends Wilhelmine's letters with repetitive flowery sentiments.

Bayreuth Enthusiasts, a 1757 letter:

Je suis avec tout le respect et la tendresse imaginable

Mon tres cher Frere
votre tres humble obeïssante
Soeur et Servante
Wilhelmine

Preuss, a 1756 letter:

Étant avec toute la tendresse et le respect imaginable, mon très-cher frère, etc.

So Preuss has to be eliding "Votre tres humble et tres obeïssante Soeur et servante Wilhelmine," or something very close to it.

Re: Backstory!

[felis]

Yeah, it always seems to be the formal and more or less flowery phrase of self-description + name that get omitted. I compared a couple of Fritz->Voltaire letters and while Preuss includes the closing "respect/tenderness/friendship" lines that are an actual part of the text and directly related to the recipient, he skips the final "your faithful friend, Frederic" or similar via the etc.
Another example are Fritz' letters to FW, where Preuss's etc replaces "Meines allergnädigsten Königs und Vaters getreu gehorsamster Diner und Sohn Friderich".

ETA: Which is to say - yes, flowery stuff gets omitted, but it seems like it's always formal flowery stuff which functionally amounts to today's "yours", nothing actually substantial in terms of compliments that the editor just got tired of or some such.

Re: Backstory!

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yes, precisely: it's the formula that gets omitted because the editor can trust the reader to supply the formula, and no information is lost. (Except to those of us who are like: "Wait, who's doing the omitting here?" ;) )

ETA: Also, I don't blame editors of the past for this, in the days when the traditional MO was to write everything out longhand and get your intellectually frustrated wife to type up your manuscript, but modern day editors have an excellent use case for a macro here! :P

Re: Backstory!

[cahn]

This is GREAT and I should clearly have asked this question before now -- I would have had a lot of fun with Heinrich starting out with ending his letters "Your very humble and very obedient brother and servant" and being all "...wait! I'm not humble OR obedient and I don't have to pretend to be any more!" But I guess fic!Heinrich got his point across either way.