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: Fassmann's life of FW

[cahn]

...I don't think I could read that if it were in English and regular lettering! !I can make out a "Leben und" and a "Augusti An" (maybe?) and that's it. Some of that just looks like chunks of black!

Re: Fassmann's life of FW

[mildred_of_midgard]

See, I think you could, though! I can get a fair bit even with my limited knowledge of German. And one thing I learned in my linguistics studies is that the brain has a pretty astonishing ability to extrapolate from the signal in a stream of speech, written or spoken, that has a high noise-signal ratio. Which is why I'm not surprised (but deeply grateful) that a fluent speaker like selenak can make heads or tails of this, even if she has to make some educated guesses along the way.

Also, I was looking at Hanway's travel journal (you may remember he was friends with Peter and talks about Peter), published in 1750, and while I still think it's better print quality than a lot of the German publications I've seen (yes, Selena, the 1731 Katte pamphlet was unforgettable, and I've been thinking of it through this whole conversation!), I realized I *am* somewhat compensating for faint letters with my knowledge of the English language. (In other words: if it were German, I'd be annoyed; because it's English, I'm not.)

What I can read, guess, and wildly speculate about for the Fassman is this:

Jahren
Der Allerdurchlauchtigste und Gross-
machtigste König, dessen Leben und
Thaten hierinnen zu [?lesen], [?erblickte] das
Licht der Welt [?am] 15. Augusti An.
1688 und [?man] [?solte] sich [?fast] [?wu]ndern
[?das] [...][?chrono]logi bey derselben Zeit [..]cht [?et..]
[...] [?befand] [...]viret, [...]

The all-illustrious and most powerful king whose life and deeds are contained herein, beheld the light of the world on August 15 Anno 1688, and [then Mildred starts to lose the plot].

It's not nothing, and you can see how I got bits and pieces while flipping through! But you can also see how quickly I decided to pass it over to the all-illustrious and most powerful Selena. ;)

Interestingly, I just realized Wikipedia gives his birthdate as August 14. I swear that looks like a 5, though.

Also, my brain keeps trying to fill in "am" before the date, but my eyes do not see an 'm' there. Maybe there's a word that means "the night before" but is much shorter than Vorabend. Anything is possible if you don't know the language and it's this smudged!