DOUBLE-TIME. MULTI-DUEL. BLERNS, BLERNS!

[randomhouses]

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 20
Interview with a Vampire

Comments

[stillbrainfried]

It was quite all right for young women to jump off cliffs, but she shouldn’t because all the time her parents had spent educating her would go to waste. And don't forget the money - they definitely should have mentioned that ;-)

Baron - funny thing to name the son of a count (the von Lahnsteins are counts, aren't they?) "Baron". Oh, well. To be honest, "Schmetterling" is even more weird... Butterfly? Seriously? And you named one of your OCs after my neighbour (slight difference in the first name but basically the same) ;-)

Thankfully, the chain reaction had stopped there because Ula’s grandfather was five years dead, and corpses hadn’t found a way to express their desire for a duel yet. We're not going to see zombies duelling, are we?

“There are clear rules in the Schneider-Lahnstein code duello that require the families to forgive all offenses in the event of the arrival of new family members or distant relations in order to celebrate the enlargement of our feud.” LOL. If that isn't a reason to cancel a duel I haven't heard of one ;-)

Why does Baron remind me of Lars Schneider? Or am I reading to much into this?

So, when is someone going to mention the strange addition to the Schneider familiy to Ten? Ten and Adric - I'm really looking forward to that...

Uh, one tiny remark: We don't really have Goldilocks in Germany but as long as you go with the Brothers Grimm you're just fine...

[randomhouses]

LOL, I was trying to make her parents somewhat sympathetic :)

I have no clue how the ranks amongst the aristocracy works, though now that you've mentioned it, I think the von Lahnsteins are counts in the show. To be honest, though, we just Googled "German names" and grabbed ones that sounded fun. I think being named butterfly is awesome (except for the obvious Madame Butterfly comments). If I ever get input on naming someone's daughter, I'm totally going to pull for Schmetterling. Dare I ask which character is named after your neighbor? (feel free not to answer for privacy reasons)

Nope, no dueling zombies in this storyline. I'd imagine it's possible in the future zombie arc, but I have no particular obsession with duels in Victorian England.

I had fun with the duel rules. The problem is going to be coming up with more ridiculous ones each time.

LOL, I don't think so... Lars was leaving the show by the time I started watching, so I'm not familiar with him. However, I don't think their arcs are going to resemble each other (and he certainly doesn't end up in Munich, though if you're going to blame anyone for all the Bavaria jokes, it's definitely because of the discussion surrounding Lars' departure).

Heh, yeah, I'm glad you asked because I spent way too much time coming up with purposefully stupid reasons for keeping Adric away from Ten. I'm not sure if I did justice to their reunion.

That's good to know! I love learning about things like that. Also, please feel free to chime in on any inaccuracies or mistakes you find, whether related to German culture or not. I may have trouble with Brothers Grimm though considering how disturbing I find some of their stories (I will never, ever, overcome the trauma of "The Mouse, The Bird, and The Sausage")

[stillbrainfried]

To put it mathematically ;-): Baron < Graf (Count) < Herzog (Duke)
Everything else I simply don't know (like "Freiherr" - this is what our secretary of defense would be), but I'm sure it's less than a duke.

That would be Rosa Schneider (and I've got the feeling the name is fairly common - with Schneider meaning tailor - which makes it even more fun that you made the Schneiders aristocracy ;-))

We go to Victorian England next?

You could always throw in some astronomy or astrology - along the lines of 'There can't be any duels if the moon is in the second house of Sagittarius' (I don't even know if that makes sense but it definitely fulfils the criterion of sounding ridiculous ;-))

Never heard of that tale before - honestly. So, if you take the Brother's Grimm tales that became Disney films you should be fine - although those mostly lack the necessary wild animals. Hmmm, that's a problem...

[randomhouses]

Cool. I'm glad the United States doesn't have aristocracy considering most people can't even figure out the difference between the two houses of our legislature (or the concept of a third party). But haha, that is indeed pretty funny that they named their kid a lower rank than they are.

Well, the Schneiders are supposed to be "new" aristocracy. They started as merchants and got rich and titled that way, so the Lahnsteins look down on them. I totally don't know if that's historically accurate.

There's a mini-Sherlock Holmes arc coming (based on the movie) after Pirates and Discworld wraps up, but it's not related to Ten and Four. It's more like the Interludes of Arc 1.

Hahaha... interesting idea...

The bedroom probably won't show up again, so I hopefully won't need to make any more Grimm references anyway. Hopefully.

[stillbrainfried]

We actually got rid of the titles after WWI. Nowadays the title is just part of the surname (e.g. Marion Countess Dönhoff instead of Countess Marion Dönhoff before the war). Although they get it wrong on TV most of the time...

I never thought your political system was complicated (okay, I mostly distinguish between the two houses by the number of members and the time between elections and I don't know if every act has to pass both houses or not) but I'm not sure if I like the whole "the winner takes it all" thing. It makes everything seem very easy at first glance but the outcome might not necessarily be what the majority of the voters actually wanted (depending on how constituencies are set)...

The Schneiders getting titled that way could have happened. At the moment I'm lacking historical examples but it is possible. Although to set the whole thing in the 1700s in the Rhineland is rather complicated. I'm not sure if you're aware of the fact that Germany hasn't been a united country before 1871 (okay, there's the Holy Roman Empire but that's more like putting a sticker on them, there wasn't even free trade) and there were lots of independent countries around (e.g. Prussia, Hessia, free cities like Cologne)...

[randomhouses]

Haha, yeah, I had a hard time with the titles when creating the families (I didn't even realize "von" wasn't officially part of their last name until I looked it up).

That was kinda the point... our political system isn't complicated, and no one bothers to understand it anyway. So one would think the introduction of keeping track of aristocracy would either make people's heads explode or distract them even further due to our celebrity worship culture.

The numbers and years between election are the big distinctions, yeah. There's significant procedural differences (the Senate has a lot more rules in place to slow things down) and divisions of power, for example, only the Senate can approve treaties and presidential nominees for major government and judicial positions, only the House can move to impeach the President but then it's the Senate that votes whether to convict and remove him from power. Both houses must approve identical wordings of a bill before it becomes law, but the bills must be sponsored independently in the two houses, which means they usually approve different versions first (assuming both are even taken up) and then reconcile them in negotiation and re-vote to approve the final version.

The story takes place somewhere in the 1740-1760 time frame (the exact decade changes every time I think about it). I actually am trying to work Rainart's political activities into the historical storyline (to a certain extent... until then I just start screwing with history altogether) but Wikipedia's pretty much my main source.

If you were around a year ago, you might've caught the nightmare that was my timeline when I accidentally thought it was set in the 1850s instead of 1750s and had Rainart going on a whole spiel about German reunification after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire or something. It took me about two months of trying to make that work before just rewriting the whole thing and retconning this chapter, which we usually don't do but that was just a huge gaping plot hole. I think there's some minor references to the lack of unification though, and there's a few forthcoming family members who travel from other "countries" of Germany who'll probably mention that somewhat (I think the Lahnsteins have someone coming from Prussia).