Yuletide Reveals

[selenak]

My assignment this year was also my first Star Trek: Discovery story. As my recipient's prompt had only been "anything about Michael Burnham and L'Rell interacting, other than non-con", I first was planning on a future fic set in the TOS era or after, but quickly backed away from that idea. The chance of getting thoroughly jossed by new canon within weeks of posting was simply too big for me. As I rewatched the L'Rell heavy episodes in s1, it occured to me that all Michael knows about L'Rell comes from Tyler, both the earlier negative (the story of torture and rape) and the later positive (true believer in T'Kuvma's ideal of Klingon unity, she and Voq were in love), which makes a certain decision Michael makes in the s1 finale regarding L'Rell an incredible gamble. This, in turn, made me decide to give them some missing scenes of direct interaction leading up to this decision of Michael's, but from L'Rell's pov, exploring the parallels and contrasts between them.

Catalyst (3783 words) by Selena
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: L'Rell & Michael Burnham, L'Rell/Ash Tyler | Voq, Katrina Cornwell & L'Rell, Michael Burnham/Ash Tyler | Voq
Characters: L'Rell (Star Trek), Michael Burnham
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Character Study, Yuletide, Misses Clause Challenge, Complicated Relationships
Summary:

Michael Burnham changed L'Rell's life twice without meaning to. This is the story of how it happened for a third time.

Due to rl business, I hadn't planned on writing a treat. But otoh, a post of cahn's had started a conversation about Schiller's (versus Verdi's, and also by itself) Don Carlos between us, which made me think about the play again; in school, and later in college, it had been very present in my life, and talking about it for the first time since decades reminded me of much, including my wish to provide the two prominent female characters in it with a fix-it. (BTW, this seems to be my lot in fannish life. 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. Reminds me of being a Breaking Bad fan and going for Skyler and Marie) instead of Jesse and Walt.) Since both ladies are alive at the end of the play and in an ambiguous state of liberty, or lack of same, this wasn't impossible. Also, my having written a story about Catherine de' Medici and her daughters a while ago meant I had my facts re: the historical Elisabeth de Valois at hand, though they were only of limited use in terms of my story, since good old Schiller took his usual great liberties. (Starting, of course, with Carlos himself, who was very different in rl. But also the type of marriage historical Philip and Elisabeth had; in rl, it had of course been a political arrangment as well but worked out so well that he remained at her side even when she had smallpox, no small risk, and not something the Philip of Schiller's play would have done.)

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). And thus I found myself writing Schiller fanfiction. What would my university professors say!

Queen‘s Gambit (4382 words) by Selena
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Don Carlos - Friedrich Schiller, 16th Century CE RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Élisabeth de Valois & Princess Eboli, Élisabeth de Valois/Philip II of Spain, La princesse Eboli | La Principessa Eboli/Felipe II de España | Philip II of Spain, Phillippe II of Spain/Ridrigue (Don Carlos), Carlos/Élisabeth de Valois, Élisabeth de Valois/Rodrigo
Characters: Élisabeth de Valois | Elisabetta di Valois, La princesse Eboli | La Principessa Eboli, Felipe II de España | Philip II of Spain
Additional Tags: POV Female Character, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Post-Canon, Unrequited Love, Survival, Yuletide, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

How Elisabeth de Valois escapes her doom, with some help from the Princess Eboli.

Comments

[cahn]

methinks the Marquis could have been projecting a bit. He himself wasn't immune to the temptation of power through being a King's new favourite.

Ooh. I hadn't thought about it like that, but yes, I like that.

And note that if Eboli denounces Elisabeht and Carlos to Philip without of course mentioning her own interest in Carlos, Posa in his initial reaction to Philip confiding in him never tells Philip about his friendship with Carlos, either, and spins a story as well re: Elisabeth and Carlos.

*nods* This makes perfect sense. Heh, I'd figured out that Eboli and Posa were mirror images in the opera (somewhat differently than in the play, of course), but I hadn't thought to apply similar logic to the play and the plotting therein. This is fascinating.

(BTW, "the Queen is ambitious and frustrated you didn't give her any actual power in Spain, so she's just interested in Carlos for his future political use" is the type of lie-with-some-truth - Elisabeth IS into politics and frustrated - that also is revealing about the teller (Posa's the one who is acutely aware of Carlos' political potential and who tries to use him for his political cause).

Ohh, that's a really good point and one I hadn't thought of in relation to Posa's lie about the Queen, even though I have always thought exactly that about Posa's motivations re: Carlos.

With the play, you can justify productions where she's not in love with him, though she still has strong affection and compassion for him. (And of course productions where she is in love but represses it until the final scene.)

Well -- subject to translation bogeymen, I feel like

QUEEN.
I love no longer!
CARLOS.
Because your heart forbids it, or your oath?
QUEEN.
Leave me; nor never touch this theme again.
CARLOS.
Because your oath forbids it, or your heart?
QUEEN.
Because my duty—but, alas, alas!

reads very much to me like at the very least she was once in love with him, but certainly she has been making the best of a bad situation and isn't going around all melancholy and mooning about like opera!Elisabeth :)

Hee, opera!Carlo weeps a lot too, seems like to me, or at least Rodrigo seems to comment on it a lot, but yes, although I adore Verdi so madly I am also so done with weepy tragic Verdi heroines. (I mean, there are a couple of villains in there like Lady Macbeth, and I guess Amelia/Maria Boccanegra isn't as weepy, I think? but for the most part they are so weepy.) ...right, Goethe's Werther is also going to have to go on my list (argh, I still haven't read Faust, but this discussion did remind me I'd forgotten to order it, so now it's on its way, yes!) especially if/when I manage to pick up the opera.

Re: Friedrich Wilhelm: everything you say about these people makes them more and more fascinating, and I would say I want all the FW-Fritz-Katte angst-woobiness ever, but I suppose (as you said when you first told me about them) Schiller and Verdi between them have basically done it, haven't they! (Well, okay, I still want it. Woobified angsty rulers making many good decisions and a couple of Very Bad Decisions because of their own personal bad experiences and thinking they're doing the right thing is my jam!)

I... did not know about Klepper before. :(((((((

[selenak]

even though I have always thought exactly that about Posa's motivations re: Carlos.

Though rereading the play for my story has reminded me of the backstory of their friendship which I had forgotten - i.e. that when they were in school together young Posa, because he didn't want to serve princes, repeatedly rejected young Carlos' various overtures of friendship until Carlos took the blame for something Posa had done and got whipped for it, upon which young Posa knelt (crying, note, because as mentioned before 18th century written males get to weep a lot) at his feet in repentance about having been standoffish and declared his love - but also "I will pay you back when you are King". (With what, one wonders? Loyalty? Good advice?) Anyway, it's not that the play ever leaves you in doubt Posa does love Carlos - if he simply wanted political influence, he'd go with Philip and ditch Carlos entirely, instead of dying for him -, but I also, as I think I said in our first discussion about the play - doubt he's thinking of Carlos the person completely separate from Carlos the future ruler at any point of the play, because ultimately Posa/Free Netherlands, Reformed Spain & Freedom of Thought = OTP. So his very real love for Carlos also always carries that element of future of the realm and Europe calculation in it.


Speaking of loving Carlos: I didn't want to imply that Elisabeth had never loved him, and yes, that dialogue makes it clear she did (though there's no "alas alas" in the original), just that depending on the production, you can play it ambiguously of how much in (romantic) love with him she is in the present. Mind you, Schiller when giving us their engagement backstory is careful not to mention anything other than letters and to leave it open when exactly they met, since in reality Carlos never left Spain and Elisabeth didn't get there until after her marriage to Philip. (Certainly when I read the play as a girl in school I assumed they had met and had gone through an openly in love period before Philip switched engagements, but after I learned about the rl history I checked, and like I said, Schiller is careful not to give us any details other than the letters.)


Jochen Klepper: one of his late diary entries is the gutwrenching: "God knows that I cannot endure it to let Hanni and the child go into this cruelest and most brutal of all deportations. He knows that I cannot promise this to him, as Luther was able to do: “Should they take body, good, honor, child and wife, let it all go –.” Body, good, honor – yes! Yet God also know that I want to accept everything from him in trial and judgment, if only I know Hanni and the child to be somewhat protected. … If Hanni and the child died, God knows that nothing in me would resist his will. But not this." (BTW, this also shows Klepper, a German citizen without military or political connections to provide him with special information, in 1942 had no doubt as to what would happen to his wife and daughter in a concentration camp. One can take meagre comfort in his diary being used during the Eichmann trial as testimony, because Eichmann had personally refused to grant a visa to Klepper's stepdaughter.)


But even aside from this tragic author story, his novel about Friedrich Wilhelm is one of the best written on the subject, which is why it's still in print in Germany so many decades later (his characterisations of young Friedrich and Wilhelmine are very good, too, and he doesn't shy away from their father having been abusive to them, no matter how good Friedrich Wilhelm's intentions). Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available in English. That goes for fictional depictions of Friedrich II at any stage of his life, too - as young crown prince or as king - too, unless you count media where he has bit parts, like a British tv miniseries about Catherine II of Russia where he shows up in old age played by Maximilian Schell as an antagonist.

Part of this is probably due to the impact of two world wars and the way the Nazis fetishized Frederick the Great (who, for what it's worth, at his most cynical and ruthless would have been appalled, ideologies about racial superiority and genocide based on same being about as anti-Voltairian philosophy as you can get). If you go back to the 19th century, Thomas Carlyle's "History of Frederick the Great" is probably the work which formed Friedrich's image in the English speaking world before the 20th century baggage, and that one is available online here. It's of course an 19th century look at an 18th century character, and historical research since then has contributed a lot Carlyle didn't know, but there's a reason why that biography became a classic.

[cahn]

Posa/Free Netherlands, Reformed Spain & Freedom of Thought = OTP. So his very real love for Carlos also always carries that element of future of the realm and Europe calculation in it.

Yes, and as we mentioned in that conversation, although he does love Carlos, if Carlos hadn't been reform-minded, well, perhaps Posa wouldn't have felt nearly as strongly about him.

I think that even if Elisabeth isn't in love with Carlos, that passage seems to me to indicate that she understands she could be if she let herself. But, huh, coming to it from the opera I'd assumed that they'd met before!

Klepper: :((((( That bit about Luther... I'm familiar with that from the hymn (my husband's Lutheran) and, ugh, we sing that without... having to ever really contemplate doing it.