18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 38

[cahn]

Gonna go ahead and make this post even though Yuletide is coming...

But in the meantime, there has been some fic in the fandom posted!

Holding His Space (2503 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, 18th Century CE Frederician RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf/Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Characters: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Protectiveness, Domestic, Character Study
Summary:

Five times Fredersdorf has to stay behind - and one time Friedrich doesn't leave.

Using People (3392 words) by prinzsorgenfrei
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Hans Hermann von Katte
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Hans Hermann von Katte
Additional Tags: Fluff, Idiots in Love, reading plays aloud while gazing into each others eyes
Summary:

Friedrich had started to talk to him because he had thought of him as a bit of a ditz.
And now here he was. Here he was months later, bundled up in this very same man’s blankets with a cup of hot coffee in front of him, its scent mixing with that of Katte’s French perfume.
_
Fluffy One Shot about one traitorous Crown Prince and the sycophant he accidentally fell for.

Comments

Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days

[cahn]

Awwwww this sounds great and also maybe now someone will write me Isabella of Parma fic

and she was only 14 years and 4 months old when she gave birth to Isabella, in what was a difficult birth that she was fortunate to survive. (14-year-old bodies, possibly not ideally suited for giving birth.)

ARRRRGH

"I'll have the lords sleep with me, and then they'll feel greatly honored, and I'll kill them, one after the other."

Haha, okay, that is definitely endearing! Though maybe not to the lords...

Considering how stifling Marie Antoinette found the etiquette of Versailles after Vienna, Spain was really something!

Oof! Thanks for making that connection for me. Wow.

He is the first son of Philip V "the Frog" and his *first* wife, Marie-Louise of Savoy

Seriously, never stop putting "the Frog" in, because a) I still need the reference, but b) even if I didn't it always makes me laugh

I mean, not that marrying Joseph, becoming clinically depressed, and dying of smallpox + childbirth at age 21 was such a stroke of luck, but now we see that it spared her marrying her acutely mentally ill uncle at the age of 12.

:( Gosh. It basically just... really really sucks to be a woman in the past. (Part 3245 or so.)

she was too busy hiring a tutor for Ferdinand, future duke, who wrote a 13-volume set of textbooks for him. (If I ever get around to summarizing the monograph I read on his education, you'll see how that turned out.)

I am waiting with bated breath :PP

They have to get over the Alps. In a fancy carriage. A fancy carriage that is really old and needs to be completely renovated by what are basically art historians doing restoration.

This always weirds me out when people have to do things in old creaky fancy carriages. Why couldn't they, idk, go in a non-fancy non-large traveling device? Is it an etiquette thing again?

Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days

[mildred_of_midgard]

Seriously, never stop putting "the Frog" in, because a) I still need the reference, but b) even if I didn't it always makes me laugh

b) Same!

I am waiting with bated breath :PP

On the one hand, don't hold your breath, as I've been meaning to do this since, like, February, but on the other hand, someone expressing interest definitely helps!

This always weirds me out when people have to do things in old creaky fancy carriages. Why couldn't they, idk, go in a non-fancy non-large traveling device? Is it an etiquette thing again?

More or less! It's a ceremonial thing. This isn't some private citizen just trying to get to her destination with a minimum of fuss; this is the future Empress going to marry her husband. The trip is a long way through the territory of her future subjects, and so every time she stops at a place with a sizable population, the locals have to line up to see her go by and basically throw a ticker tape parade in which speeches are made and cannon salutes fired off the walls of fortresses in her honor and feasts held and plays put on at the theater and so on ad nauseam: it's an imperial bridal progression. If the future empress shows up in a non-fancy non-large traveling device for all this, the population is going to go, "...This is who we have to obey?"

There were countries that managed to get away with less ceremonial, like Sweden, Prussia, and Savoy, but 1) they had a completely different milieu and earned respect/overawed the population in a completely different way, 2) even they had more ceremonial than you might think. Fritz delegated a lot of his ceremonial responsibilities to EC, who had to do a lot of this kind of thing on the very small budget he gave her.

And apparently Amalie got a sizable budget for her similar trip to be installed at Quedlinburg, where she was hosted and feted at every major stop along the way.

This is the kind of thing the population of Berlin was expecting when Fritz returned after winning the Seven Years' War, and you may remember he disappointed them by sneaking in through a back way at night. ;)

Re: Isabella of Parma: Pre-marriage Days

[cahn]

Haha, well, I feel like you did a good job of giving me teasers! :P

I hope Amalie enjoyed it!

But lol, I am with Fritz.