Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 46

[cahn]

Background: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.

Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*

Comments

Lady Grange: Fix-it fic?

[mildred_of_midgard]

So! We have a woman who is the victim of the men around her, and who attempts to fight back. She is declared mad and sent north to live in isolation. She is unable to communicate her plight to the people around her. The ship that's sent to rescue her is named the Arabella.

Is this giving anyone else flashbacks to Lady Pole in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? There are obvious differences:

- She actually shot Mr. Norrell in revenge, instead of threatening to shoot her husband to get him to marry her.
- She was treated well in captivity.
- It was a spell rather than monolingualism that kept her from talking about her plight.
- She does get rescued.
Etc.

But honestly, JSMN reads like a fix-it fic for Lady Grange to me!

Re: Lady Grange: Fix-it fic?

[selenak]

I can see it! I bet Susanna Clarke did a lot of research that didn't start in her exact era (i.e. the Regency) but predated it, and she very well could have come across the case.

Back when I marathoned the "History of Byzantium" podcast, I thought at one point "okay, previously I thought "House of the Dragon" mostly uses the Anarchy (Stephen versus the Empress Maude) and what led to it as its historical template (in the same way Game of Thrones is vaguely War of the Roses based), and that's probably the case, but Daemon Taegeryen clearly isn't based on Geoffrey Plantagenet, he sounds way more like Andronikos Komnenos! Only the leather trousers, fixit version of Andronikos...

And John Ford wrote (among other things) a Richard III fixit in "The Dragon Waiting", so clearly, more than one fantasy writer did it...:)

Re: Lady Grange: Fix-it fic?

[mildred_of_midgard]

I bet Susanna Clarke did a lot of research that didn't start in her exact era (i.e. the Regency) but predated it, and she very well could have come across the case.

Not only that, but guess who one of our main narrative sources on Lady Grange is? The Sobieski Stuarts, who recorded a bunch of oral legends in 1847. That's still after Clarke's period, but it's closer, and I wouldn't be surprised if she ran across it.

cahn, the Sobieski Stuarts were 19th century con artists claiming to be the grandsons of BPC and thus rightful heirs to the British throne. They did not start a rebellion, but did parlay their supposed inheritance into a lot of romanticism about Jacobites, the monarchy, and Scotland. They helped popularize the idea of clan tartans, which is not as old as some tourist shops would have you believe. :P

Re: Lady Grange: Fix-it fic?

[luzula]

Ha, that's cool. (I was so annoyed while rereading JSMN a while back at Jonathan Strange and the way he did not listen to what his wife was saying. It's almost worse than Norrell and his more overt sexism.)

Re: Lady Grange: Fix-it fic?

[cahn]

Ohhhhh that is awesome! I will take fix-it fic for Lady Grange, since we can't go back and fix canon :P :(