Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 44

[cahn]

Not only are these posts still going, there is now (more) original research going on in them deciphering and translating letters in archives that apparently no one has bothered to look at before?? (Which has now conclusively exonerated Fritz's valet/chamberlain Fredersdorf from the charge that he was dismissed because of financial irregularities and died shortly thereafter "ashamed of his lost honor," as Wikipedia would have it. I'M JUST SAYING.)

Comments

Luz tries to read a historical romance

[luzula]

This might amuse salon: I read a few sample chapters of Like the Down of a Thistle by Sarah Swan, which is a historical f/f romance set in the Scottish Highlands, with two ordinary clanswomen as protagonists. It went like this:
Protagonist: My family has a Clydesdale horse and I am wearing a muslin chemise!
Luz: Okay, I think you must be in the 19th century.
Protagonist: My neighbor’s husband is going off to raid and fight a battle against another clan!
Luz: Whoa. You're in the 17th century at the latest.
Protagonist: This summer we are going to try the strange new crop called potatoes!
Luz: Right, you just positioned yourself in the mid-18th century.
Sigh, probably not the Jacobite f/f romance I was looking for...

Re: Luz tries to read a historical romance

[selenak]

LOL. Historical knowledge: sometimes a real detrimental to enjoying fiction.

The other day, I watched the first episode of a new (German, but very evidently produced for the US market) show, and therein the hero gets presented with an old chronicle written by his ancestors. In Latin letters handwriting. No Kurrent in sight.

Self: Life would have been far easier for Mildred if Kurrent had not existed and early 18th century Germans were writing in clearly and always according to modern rules spelled Latin letters!

Self: finds it harder and harder to focus on the suspense...

Re: Luz tries to read a historical romance

[luzula]

Hee. Clearly there should instead have been an episode about the hero learning to read Kurrent, gradually revealing the exciting content of the chronicle! Or at least having to hunt down someone who did read it.

Something similar went through my mind:
Author: *tries to build romantic/sexual tension by having the main character in her wet diaphanous muslin chemise in front of another character*
Me: If this is indeed in the 17th/18th centuries and she is poor enough to have a dirt floor in her house, I really doubt she would have been able to buy muslin clothing! Probably she would have been in locally made linen or wool... *loses interest in sexual tension*

Also, I did not properly read the blurb until now, and find there the sentence "The Highland Clearances are affecting all the clans in the 1740s." Which does at least show us when the author intended it to be set...but unfortunately the Highland Clearances didn't happen until about 50 years later...*facepalm*

But if she's setting it in the 1740's, why is the author not then using the '45 as the excuse for the husband to get out of the way?? And instead talking about some unspecified clan raids and battles...it's a mystery.

Re: Luz tries to read a historical romance

[mildred_of_midgard]

In brief because back pain: I agree this book sounds monstrously inaccurate, but I thought the Clearances had started at least by 1770, and Wikipedia says they started around 1750-1760, and the very first ones started before the 45. Though obviously not on a large scale, affecting all clans, until later in the 18th century.

Re: Luz tries to read a historical romance

[luzula]

Sorry about the back pain! : (

I guess it depends what you mean by the Clearances. It's true that in the 1740's, some clan chiefs (notably the Campbells) had started giving leases to the highest bidder, instead of to the families who were the traditional tenants. Sometimes these kinds of evictions were also driven not by economic reasons but by clan rivalries or politics, such as when Colin Roy Campbell as factor evicted Stewarts from Appin in favor of Campbells.

But from what I've read, the main driver behind the Clearances came when the elite could make more money by having less people on their land, than by having it be well populated. Which was not yet true in the mid-18th century, as I understand it.

ETA: But sure, I could have expressed myself more carefully! "The point at which the Clearances were affecting all the clans at a large scale was not until several decades later."

Re: Luz tries to read a historical romance

[cahn]

Author: *tries to build romantic/sexual tension by having the main character in her wet diaphanous muslin chemise in front of another character*
Me: If this is indeed in the 17th/18th centuries and she is poor enough to have a dirt floor in her house, I really doubt she would have been able to buy muslin clothing! Probably she would have been in locally made linen or wool... *loses interest in sexual tension*

LOL FOREVER!