Eeeeee I was wondering if it was you! :D Especially after hitting that "too much wit for a woman" quote :P I was honestly secretly hoping for Elisabeth, who is also absolutely my favorite in the play. (In the opera I have fallen forever for Rodrigo, as you know, but opera!Elisabeth is also not nearly as totally awesome and brilliant as her play counterpart, although you can see parts of her coming through sometimes...) I hadn't thought of her using all that brilliance to save herself, which I just loved.
Anyway, the Elisabeth of this story is most definitely Catherine de' Medici's daughter but also, hopefully, recognizably Schiller's Queen (who is one of the smartest and most politically minded of Schiller's female characters while also being emotionally insightful).
Yes -- I sort of said this in my comment, but anyway, one of the things I really loved about the fic is how you draw Schiller's Queen as arising naturally from being Catherine de' Medici's daughter. <3 And I'm impressed that you got historical!Philip to fit as well as he did, well, at least, the way he felt about everything but Elisabeth, hee.
I will confess that Eboli as a character draws me in less than Elisabeth (what can I say, I really like extremely thoughtful, canny characters, and Eboli, like Posa, has annoying blind spots) but I do like the way the relationship is drawn in the play.
Don Carlos is a very male centric canon, with intense and/or slashy relationships abounding, not just between Carlos and Posa but also between Posa and Philip. Yet whom am I drawn to? Elisabeth and the Princess Eboli.
And every time I read your fic (which I've done several times already) I'm amazed at how Elisabeth makes those intense male relationships work for her, how in this fic they serve the female characters and their arcs :)
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Anyway, the Elisabeth of this story is most definitely Catherine de' Medici's daughter but also, hopefully, recognizably Schiller's Queen (who is one of the smartest and most politically minded of Schiller's female characters while also being emotionally insightful).
Yes -- I sort of said this in my comment, but anyway, one of the things I really loved about the fic is how you draw Schiller's Queen as arising naturally from being Catherine de' Medici's daughter. <3 And I'm impressed that you got historical!Philip to fit as well as he did, well, at least, the way he felt about everything but Elisabeth, hee.
I will confess that Eboli as a character draws me in less than Elisabeth (what can I say, I really like extremely thoughtful, canny characters, and Eboli, like Posa, has annoying blind spots) but I do like the way the relationship is drawn in the play.
Don Carlos is a very male centric canon, with intense and/or slashy relationships abounding, not just between Carlos and Posa but also between Posa and Philip. Yet whom am I drawn to? Elisabeth and the Princess Eboli.
And every time I read your fic (which I've done several times already) I'm amazed at how Elisabeth makes those intense male relationships work for her, how in this fic they serve the female characters and their arcs :)
Thank you again for writing this for me <3