avrelia asked: You are going to time travel. Which historical figures you will pick up as your team and how they will help or complicate your travels?

A veritable challenge! Let's see what consuming a lot of time-travelling featuring media has taught me.

- Evidently, I would need a good engineer in case whatever time travelling device I use breaks down, because I really don't want to stay in the past. To that end, I shall recruit Nikola Tesla and Hedy Lamarr. (Why not Émilie du Chatelet? Because Émilie was a theoretical physicist, and I'd need someone with experience in practical applications who can repair stuff.)

- I would also need a doctor in case someone catches an infection in the past; as this has to be someone who on the one hand is experienced enough in modern medicine (no bloodletting, OMG!) to be of use but otoh not too far away from an era where a lot of current day medication isn't available (so they could improvise instead of going "where the hell is my aspirin!"), I shall pick Rahel Straus, the first woman who studied medicine and graduated in a German university (earlier medical ladies had to graduate abroad); she's also related to my guy Feuchtwanger, but that's not the deciding factor here. Rahel has experience in both high tech (for her time) and primitive (for her time) surroundings, is tough and extremely practical.

- Next, I need someone who is really good at gatecrashing, who is practically immune to social embarrassment (which I'm not) and who will persuade most of the interesting historical people and eras we want to meet and experience to give us the time of the day. Someone with a proven track record of cajoling even the most prickly and hermit-like people into conversation, someone with endless curiosity and ability to chat. That someone should also have a good memory and an ear for gossip so we can later note down our amazing experiences together. There's an ideal candidate for this role: step forward, James Boswell!

- in case you're wondering, I'm not recruiting a historian because I consider myself well versed enough to fill in that spot, but I do want someone with insight and knowledge of the natural life and into geography, someone with a keen scientific mind when it comes to the natural sciences, with lots of travel experience, who can observe the flora and fauna of our time travelling destinations and make sure we don't step on the proverbial butterfly and end up ensuring our own extinction; this must be Alexander von Humboldt.

- and finally, most past eras are dangerous places; I need someone with fighting experience who could defend members of our team, someone who could, depending on where we end up, do this either as a man or as a woman. I did consider the Chevalier d'Eon, but clearly, it has to be Julie d'Aubigny.


Complications: Boswell will of course hit on all female team members and be rebuffed. (Well, mostly; I could see Julie D'Aubigny having a one night stand with him in the right circumstances.) He will also end up catching some veneral disease in whichever era we end up in, and better hope he's not annoyed Rahel Straus too much. Nikola Tesla and Alexander von Humboldt might either have a mightly clash of the egos or a flirtation or both. Julie d'Aubigny will definitely hit on Hedy Lamarr, and I have no idea how that would go. Also, she might end up in a duel with someone just when she's needed elsewhere to defend the team, but Humboldt is an 18th and early 19th century Prussian noble, he does have the requisite training with weapons, so I hope he'd step up in that case.

The other days

I wll say something about the swap suggestion that inspired this question at the end, because I have my own opinion about it, unsurprisingly, but first, here are some spontanous 18th Century ideas from yours truly. I tried to pick contemporaries of the same generation:


( Kingdom Swap 1: Friedrich Wilhelm I. (Prussia) swaps with his first cousin George II (Britain and Hannover) )

( Kingdom Swap 2: Stanislas I. Poniatowski (Poland) swaps with Joseph II (HRE) )

( Kingdom, err, Realm Swap 3: Peter the Great (Russia) swaps with Gian Gastone de' Medici (Tuscany) )

Now, what thornyrose42 wrote to me was: I was listening to a podcast (You’re Dead to Me) where a comedian quipped that Peter III of Russia and Frederick the Great would have both been quite satisfied with a kingdom swap, since Peter admired Prussia so much and Frederick would not have said no to such a giant hunk of Empire.

Whether or not that is true, what do you think would be some of the best and worst kingdom swaps from your favourite periods? Whose style of governance was much better suited to another kingdom’s problems? Who managed where they were ruling but would have floundered when forced to deal with someone else’s political brew.

( And okay, Peter III and Frederick are contemporaries but of two different generations, but here's my own opinion of how that would go: )

The other days

Because shipping is often a part of fandom, mildred_of_midgard and yours truly have now finished a fanfriendly overview of just about everyone you (well, we) can ship Frederick the Great with, handily ordered by the following criteria:

Do they thave a trope?

The story in short: (And we do mean short, this is an A03 fic type of summary.)

Key quote(s):

Tell me more: (This one links anyone curious to more exposition):

Since we aim this everyone, including and especially newbies who don't know their Katte from their Keith, have a look, hopefully enjoy and tell me if something strikes you as utterly incomprehensible. The post is here.

Started to watch the first few episodes of The Great, aka the show starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult, written by Tony McNamara. Now it's frank about being a satire and not historical with its "occasionally inspired by a true story" disclaimer, but I'm impressed on how much it tries to be the exact opposite of anything that happened in history from the major stuff down to the smallest insignificant detail. That takes dedication! (And presumably research.) To the degree that I'm startled when anything remotely resembling an actual historical detail shows up, making me believe they're getting sloppy and this happened by accident.

(Some) Examples, some trivial , some not:

1) Catherine's introduction: Show!Catherine (blonde) is from Austria. RL Catherine (brunette) (born Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst) is from a Prussian client state. Her father is one of Frederick the Great's generals. Austria and Prussia are lethal foes in this period. (Now going by the first three eps, it would have made zero difference to the show's plot if they had given Catherine her actual state of origin, so I can only assume making her Austrian does hail from the show's goal of making their characters the complete opposite of the historical characters.) Show!Catherine is naive about sex and love when arriving; RL Catherine had already been groped by Uncle Bad Touch Georg Wilhelm of Holstein and suspected her mother knew about this. Show Catherine comes alone. RL Catherine with her ultra ambitious mother, Johanna von Holstein. This is quite a plot point in RL Catherine's life (especially the sending away of Johanna later on).

2.) Peter's introduction: Show!Peter is Russian, the show present him as the (surviving) son of Peter the Great. He's never met Catherine before. He's an all powerful Emperor. He has an excentric soap bubbles blowing aunt Elizabeth with zilch political power, and he has mother and father issues. His being an all powerful potentate whose environment has to be sycophantic since they're otherwise dead is key to his show character. RL Peter was German (his Romanow connection was through his mother), born Peter von Holstein-Gottorp, in fact had met Catherine/Sophie (whose mother was a Holstein and his aunt) when they were both children, never quite adjusted to Russia after coming there as an early teen, and had zero political power when teenage Catherine came to Russia a few years later because his aunt, the Tsarina Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, was reigning. E. had adopted him as her successor since she didn't have children of her own (at least not legal ones, there was some gossip about bastards, but nothing ever proven). Peter reigned as Czar/Emperor for six only months before being killed. Before that, he had of course the social power that comes with being a Grand Duke, but in terms of politics, he was also utterly dependent and at the mercy of his aunt, who, having come to power via a coup herself, certainly did not want to share with the next generation.

3.) Show! Catherine's marriage to Peter gets immediately consumated (a lot, if entirely sans affection). RL Catherine and Peter needed 7 years to get there, with their wedding night featuring toy soldiers rather than sex (at least according to Catherine). (All in all, their marriage lasted 18 years.) Show!Catherine makes foes with the local Archbishop (there's just one on the show) almost immediately. RL Catherine, despite being born a Protestant (and her father was pretty hard core about this), managed to endear herself to the Russian Orthodox church almost immediately when in her sickness shortly after arrival she asked for an Orthodox priest instead of the Lutheran pastor her mother offered. (If you side-eye this, you're probably right. Teenage Catherine already knew what was good for her, plus said illness with the request for an Orthodox priest happened before the wedding, at a point when RL Catherine was aware the Czarina Elizabeth could still have sent her back like unwanted goods.

4.) Is the geeky book lover played by Sasha Dhawan supposed to be Catherine's later hard drinking third lover Grigorii Orlov, soldier and no one's intellectual? I don't recognize anyone else's name among the Russian courtiers from RL in the pilot, though later a "Leo" shows up, whose first name could be taken from a rl friend of both Catherine's and her rl second lover, Stanislas Poniatowski. (Poniatowski, btw, definitely was geeky and a bookworm. Among other things.)

5.) Show!Russia is at war with Sweden. Now the show doesn't say when the hell it's supposed to take place (no wonder, given that there were eighteen ears between RL Catherine's wedding and Peter succeeding his aunt as Czar), but at neither point was there war with Sweden. Let alone one started by Peter. The war actually going on when Peter came to power was the Seven Years War, in which Russia, allied with Austria, France and Sweden, fought Prussia (oh, and thus also England, technically, but in rl the English mostly fought the French, while the Russians fought the Prussians.) Since RL Peter was just about the biggest Frederick the Great fanboy ever, he immediately changed alliances and returned conquered Prussian territory. (His generals weren't thrilled.) He also wanted to start a different war (against Denmark, for Holstein territory.) (His generals were even less thrilled.) Since all of this in rl is absolutely key to how Catherine managed to get the Russian military (not into either Prussia or fighting for Holstein goals) on her side, replacing the 7 Years War with a fictional one against Sweden also means the military in this show must have completely different motives. Again, since evidently the show needs to have a war going on for its plot, why replace the one which did happen with one that's invented? Must be that dedication to avoid history at all costs again.

6.)Given that when Sophie/Catherine came to Russia, there was an Empress (Elizabeth) reigning, who had ursurped the throne from a female Regent (Anna Leopoldovna), who had followed another Empress (Anna Ivanova), who had had after a brief Peter II interlude followed the Empress Catherine I. (widow of Peter I. "the Great"), all of which was well known to young Catherine, she really did not need anyone else to tell her female rule was possible in Russia, and you didn't even have to be a Romanov to exert it. (Catherine I. had not been one, either.) I was to compliment the show on its utter avoidance of anything remotely resembling Russian history again when it it backstabbed me in episode 3 by letting possible alternate throne claimant "Ivan" show up as a prisoner whose hiding place only Excentric Aunt Elizabeth knows about. This actually is sort of, kinda, based on something. RL Ivan was the son of the regent Elizabeth had toppled, Anna Leopoldovna (who had been regent for him), a grandnephew of Peter the Great, and he was kept prisoner first by Elizabeth and then Catherine for the rest of his life. (As were his parents; his siblings were finally released and lived out their lives in Denmark.) Show Ivan is Peter the Great's illegtimate son, but still - one can actually see some vague historical origin in this character, I'm shocked.

Now don't get me wrong: given the show is entertaining and funny and all the actors are clearly having a blast, I'll definitely watch the rest of the season, and like I said, as opposed to many an earnest drama which insists on being based on a "true story" while using only a little of it, it is completely honest about its lack of historicity. Fair! But I do wonder: why bother using the names of a few historical people in it at all? Why not going all Ruritania with it and let it be set in an invented place? Because it does feel as if the writer(s) looked at history, said, no, we're not interested in any of this, let's just keep three or four names and make the rest up from scratch. Would the show not have gotten financed if it hadn't been pitched as being about Catherine, is that it?

(Mind you: the one thing no one, neither her enemies (of which she had countless) or her admirers (same) would have said about Catherine II, quondam Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst, is that her actual life lacked drama or irony. Or colorful contemporaries who'd make a good cast, hence there being countless fictionalisations of her life already.)

One point I can't decide: Is the fact that show!Catherine claims to have met Descartes, in person - when RL Descartes died 70 years before she was born - another part of the show's dedication to be as ahistorical as possible or does it just prove MacNamara is that bad at googling, never mind history?

Replies to yesterday's Frederician quiz, for the curious, and protected by a cut for anyone who still wants to take it. BTW, honestly, just two and a half years ago, I would not have known the majority of the replies, either. There's nothing like falling in with a fandom to get the reading and research juices going, what can I say. :)

So, answers with explanations and source quotations below the cut.

( The boyfriends, the siblings, the quotes: Did you guess right, oh gentle reader? )

Thanks to everyone for participating in this frivolity!

cahn dared me to do this, and I dare say it's funnier when you know the 18th century history as well as the Cell Block Tango from the musical Chicago, but I thought it might amuse some readers, so, here we go, my first filk effort since at least a decade. If you've wondered how the Seven Years War came to be, well, here's one version...



Chorus: Rhyme, List, Squish, Uh Uh, Silesia, Kolin
And now, the three Ladies of European Power and two of their offsprings
In their rendition of the 7 Years War
Rhyme, List, Squish, Uh Uh, Silesia, Kolin
Rhyme, List, Squish, Uh Uh, Silesia, Kolin
Rhyme, List, Squish, Uh Uh, Silesia, Kolin
Rhyme, List, Squish, Uh Uh, Silesia, Kolin
He had it coming, he had it coming
He only had himself to blame
If you'd have been there, if you'd have seen it
I betcha you would have done the same
Rhyme, List, Squish, Uh Uh, Silesia, Kolin
Rhyme, List, Squish, Uh Uh, Silesia, Kolin

Marquise de Pompadour: You know how people have these little habits
That get you down? Like Frederick.
Frederick liked to write bad poetry.
No, not write: spew.
So, I’m coming home from Versailles one day,
And I'm looking for a little bit of sympathy,
And there's this Berlin letter.
All about how Fritz has been joking about my love life again.
No, not joking, rhyming.
So, I said to him, I said
"You abuse the French language one more time", and he did.
So, I took the offer from the Austrians about an alliance,
And I tore up the treaty with Prussia – into shreds.

Chorus: He had it coming, he had it coming
He only had himself to blame
If you'd have been there, if you'd have heard it
I betcha you would have done the same

Czarina Elizabeth I. of Russia: I heard from Frederick first a few years ago
When he told me to lock up his brother-in-law, and we hit it off right away.
So, we started out as allies.
He'd invade Austrian territory, I’d kick out the Austrian envoy.
I'd marry my nephew to his general’s kid.
And then I found out.
"Respect", he told me
Respect, my ass.
Not only was he trash-talking me, oh no, he published a list of my lovers.
And he didn’t even get them right, you know
So next thing, when I got an offer from the Austrians
I rewrote the lines of our relationship.
You know, some guys just can’t shut their gob.

Chorus: He had it coming, he had it coming
He took a flower in it's prime
And then he used it and he abused it
It was a lang grab but not a crime

Empress Maria Theresa: Now, I'm ascending to the throne in 1740,
learning on the job, since my Dad never taught me.
Being pregnant with my fourth kid.
In storms bloody Frederick in a greedy rage.
"You hand over Silesia", he says
He was winning, and he kept on invading
"You hand over Silesia"
And then he ran into my push back.
He ran into my push back three times.

Chorus: If you'd have been there, if you'd have seen it
I betcha you would have done the same.

Peter III. of Russia: Wie bin ich bloss in diese Lage gekommen? Meine Tante hat mich adoptiert, und als ihr Nachfolger war ich auf einmal im Krieg mit Fritz. Aber das will ich nicht. Ich bin Preußen-Fan! Ich weiß nicht, warum die Russen mich für verrückt erklären, nur weil ich die Seiten wechsle und Fritz damit Herrschaft und Leben rette. Ich hab’s versucht, meiner Frau zu erklären, aber die versteht mich nicht.

Emperor Joseph II: Yeah, but did you have to do it?

Peter III.: Uh uh, not guilty.

Chorus: He had it coming!

Finding out the No.1 box offiice hit in the year I was born, as per the meme used by sovay, isn't easy - first of all, numbers for 1969 are hard to come by, secondly, for which country? One website I found claims the No.1. hit in the US was "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", and another that for Germany, it was Once upon a time in the West, so let's go with either.

The other part of the meme, if I understood it correctly, consists of putting the main character of said movie into the first film you yourself remember watching. Hmmmm. Not completely sure, but it probably was Drei Nüsse für Aschenbrödel (Tři oříšky pro Popelku/Three Gifts for Cinderella), still my fave Cinderella version bar none. Which means we're either due for Three Hazel Nuts for Harmonica or Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid and Cinderella. The later clearly is the reveal that when Butch and Sundance went into freeze frame and made cinematic history, to be imitated forever more, they didn't die, they went through a Narnia-type portal spitting them out in the snowy realm of fairy tale Bohemia. Once they've seen what a great shoot and rider Cinderella is, they try to recruit her.

Otoh, Harmonica spends tiime in fairy tale Bohemia during his missing years between his horrible childhood origin story and his later mysterious adult stranger appearance. He's clearly one of the kids running around in the estate, and Cinderella teaches him how to use the crossbow. Since he's an observant kid, he gets Vinzek to tell him where the later has come across the magical hazelnuts and does indeed find them in an hitherto undisclosed subplot of the movie. Only his hazelnuts contain 1.) a white Stetson hat, 2) a mustache who'll always be the perfect length, and c) "Best harmonica tunes of the multiverse" scorebook.

***

On a far more serious note, the author of the excellent Elizabeth (Tudor)/Philip (of Spain) AU* has written an intense and wrenching story about what one can call euphemistically the Thomas Seymour interlude in young Elizabeth's life after her father's death. For once, this isn't presented as a romance or as teen Elizabeth "seducing" her stepfather (ugh, Philippa Gregory), but as creepy grooming, and it's Elizabeth's pov throughout: The daughter of Chelsea.


*Disclaimer now necessary to make it clear this was neither The Americans nor The Crown fanfiction but 16th century RPF.

More silliness brought to you by having read far too much about the 18th century in the last two years. Now actually, marrying anyone in that century is something I'd do everything to avoid, and so should you, but if you had to....

The following silliness is the inevitable result of more than a year of intense reading of 18th century memoirs, correspondences and biographies, I'm afraid. Trust me, all these options were actually used in rl.

On a lighter note: in ye olde 1990s, there used to be this party game, which became a stage play: "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". Meaning you could connect anyone in the world to Kevin Bacon in six steps, maximum.

Well, after one year of 18th century source reading with my comrades in armys mildred_of_midgard and cahn, I have concluded that the Age of Enlightenment equivalent clearly is "Six Degrees of Francesco Algarotti". Meaning not only that you can connect anyone to Francesco Algarotti in six steps, maximum, but some of these steps probably include people who have had sex with Algarotti, or tried to habe sex with Algarotti, or wrote about other people having sex with Algarotti.

If you don't know who Francesco Algarotti was, never mind. A year ago, neither did I. But believe me: six steps. Maximum. Try me. (Or the above mentioned ladies.)