[Fanfiction] Entanglements
Title: Entanglements
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Genre(s): Historical/Smut/PWP
Character(s)|Pairing(s): Prussia/fem!England, mentions of Austria and fem!France
Rating/Warning(s): R/NC-17, language, bloody imagery, sexual content
Word Count: 2,248
Summary: Originally a kink meme fill - “Prussia/fem!England… and sex in an armchair.” Seven Years’ War and the Anglo-Prussian Alliance, with added historical relevance/educational value!
“I am not in this for war’s sake,” she said to him.
Prussia looked at her over his shoulder, where he had been examining a set of crossed swords above the fireplace (shiny metal and gilt and not much else). He grinned. “Of course you’re not,” he said, clicking his teeth together.
He raked his red-violet eyes over her body without reservation or shame as she entered the drawing room and its florid décor. England wore the highest mode of style… for a young man. The light of a setting sun dancing through the windows gleamed upon her elaborate gold buttons and the jeweled buckles of her shoes, her legs exposed in her cream knee-breeches and white stockings. Her tawny gold hair had not been powdered but instead merely contained with a black silk ribbon.
She only arched her very heavy eyebrows at him as she crossed the room, not to join him, but to instead open a bottle of very fine brandy. He watched her pour out two generous glasses and deign to give him one. They clinked glasses and swallowed, their eyes never leaving each other in some parody of romance.
“Thinking to piss off France?” asked Prussia as the alcohol settled in his belly like gold fire.
“Balancing Europe’s powers,” she retorted sternly, sounding far too defensive. Then she added, grudgingly, “Because Roderich and… Frances are making such a damn mess of it.”
Prussia snorted his amusement and took another swallow of brandy as she set her glass down and went about the room lighting the candles with a taper held to the fire in the hearth. She stood before a mirror illuminated with not just a brace of candles set in brilliantly polished reflectors but also with the last rays of the sunset. Her hand delved into her pocket and she pulled out a very small velvet pouch. Her gloved fingers extracted two gold hoops from the depths of the scarlet bag. He watched her with interest, swallowing brandy without care for bouquet or texture.
“Do not expect any military support,” she said as her fingers drew apart the sizeable, heavy hoop.
She drew the gold through the flame of the closest candle, waited a moment, and stabbed the earring through her left ear without hesitation. Her lips parted in a wintery, feral smile as she closed the hoop. A single trail of blood slowly trickled from the new piercing, glittering like faceted garnet bead. He watched the tiny, tiny drop gather and grow at the tip of her ear, a small detail that the eye fixated on without thinking.
“I’m not asking for it. The treaty was your Prime Minister’s idea,” retorted Prussia with an answering grin of his own, though his had none of her ice but instead every bit of her ferocity.
She remained silent as she turned back to the mirror, putting the remaining hoop through the same treatment and stabbing it without so much as a wince through the fleshy flap of her earlobe. Another trail of blood began along her right ear.
“I do not like you,” she announced as she turned on her heel to face him. With her new piercings, she looked even less feminine and yet… seemed even more so.
He found one of the massive, absurdly comfortable leather upholstered armchairs and flung himself into it carelessly, one leg draped over a plush arm, his fingertips barely clinging onto his half-full brandy glass. The Germanic kingdom grinned at the kingdom of Great Britain shamelessly as she arched an eyebrow in response.
“That’s practically a proposition, coming from you,” he jeered.
“I am surprised your vernacular is so developed,” she retorted.
His gaze continued to rake over her, up and down without any pretense at discretion. She knew that he did it only to irk her, just as he did it to irk nearly every other European power (Russia was the only one impervious to his gaze, a leer and sneer and contemptuous examination, so far as she could tell). The insolent and lascivious examination she brushed off with a demeanor colder than midwinter snow. He seemed like a common soldier, a common though admittedly experienced conscript despite his fine garments, though they had the impression of a uniform than any Court attire. His shoes buckles were only finely wrought silver, after all.
England approached the chair with her glass. “Are you not going to ask about the earrings?”
“Why should I? You’re trying to make a point, aren’t you?”
“So you aren’t just a dog of war.”
He grinned up at her, but it was a mirthless expression. “War isn’t for the stupid. Not for long.”
Prussia could smell the coppery brilliance of heated gold and fresh blood, a perfume that seemed to define the world these days. They all wore it, a priceless thing that not even Frances’s best chemists could replicate. Somehow on the way, she had picked up her brandy glass and she took a long sip, her gaze elsewhere. Without thinking, he reached out and upward, seizing her by her neck cloth and pulling her down.
She choked most gratifyingly as he smashed their lips together. Brandy and saliva and blood flooded his mouth (his teeth had collided with her lower lip, hard enough to lacerate). England choked and coughed and spat, her cheeks flushing furious crimson from surprise and lack of oxygen. Prussia laughed, using his cuff to clean his splattered face with one rough swipe after letting her go. Miraculously, she had retained a grip on her glass. She stared at him incredulously, her fingers absentmindedly putting the cup on the small table beside him. And she punched him. He continued to laugh, even as he felt the impact crack molars, lacerate his inner cheek on his teeth.
“And is that a prelude to fucking?” he inquired with a mad grin.
Her bright eyes rolled heavenwards. “You have a singularly foul sense of humor and no manners at all,” she snapped.
“I’m not a ‘gentleman,’” he replied mockingly. “Did you expect one?”
“No, just a backwater province with some pretensions of royalty,” she responded with sweet malice.
He stared at her, true anger flooding his eyes. Then he snarled, “And where does your royal family come from?”
“The fact that they are Hanoverian is of no consequence,” she retorted with a bared fang smile.
They glared at each other, both pairs of eyes resembling maddened goshawks’ (though Prussia’s won any contest in emulation, by virtue of color). Then England laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh, a musical laugh. Her voice seemed smoke-choked, her pitches swinging to an eerie cackle. She leaned down to face him, her hands resting on the arms of the chair.
“You are a singularly fascinating little bastard,” she breathed to him.
“And you are an evil bitch,” he replied.
“Of like minds with your beloved Fritz,” she said with a cold smile. “How he hates women so.”
Prussia shrugged. “Not hate. Nothing like that.” He grinned. “He only doesn’t like women who don’t know their places. Bitches who won’t come when he calls.”
He reached out to tug at the gold hoops hanging from her ears. England hissed a little through her teeth, seizing his wrist. They both knew the pain of a torn piercing. But he didn’t yank sharply, merely drew her lobe and thus her, closer to him. His tongue darted out and he drew his tongue along the bleeding hole, tasting metal and blood.
“I won’t be coming when you call,” she hissed. She smiled then, but it was not an expression for him. “I’ll be on the seas.” And her voice shifted from its so very refined accent to something coarser but so much more melodic.
“I don’t need your help,” he sneered back at her, licking his lips and letting of her earring but not before tugging it on it with unnecessary cruelty.
She growled at him, deep in her chest, and crushed their mouths together. Blood and brandy, spittle, gold, red and yellow. Her fingers tangled in his white-blonde hair and pulled. He groped for her breast under the flattening, confining constraints of her vest and shirt; he felt a nipple harden under his palm even through his leather glove. They bit each other, snarled and met again, each successive time more violent than the last. She tossed away her coat; it hit the ground with a rattle of metal buttons. He threw aside his leather gloves atop the red heap of cloth on the floor.
The two countries continued to clash, tongues dueling, teeth tearing and colliding. Their hands yanked and scratched and throttled. Then, like lion and lioness, like two eagles, they parted after one final meeting. Their lips swollen, painted crimson black, they stared at each other with matching smiles. Wordlessly, Prussia brought his leg down from the arm of his chair, his booted foot landing heavily on the floorboards. England unfastened her waistcoat absentmindedly. Her sharp green eyes gave him the same type of stare that he had been treating her to the entire time he had been here. He only smiled at her, deliberately tracing his hand along his groin while finishing the last of his brandy.
“You are obscene,” she told him, though true disgust didn’t settle on her face. She deliberately stepped out of her fine shoes and pushed them aside with her foot. Her fingers unfastened her breeches.
“No bed?” he asked with a grin.
England sniffed derisively as the breeches also dropped to the floor, not bothering to reply. She padded back over to Prussia on stocking feet and before he could react, she had climbed into the chair, knees on either side of his lap. Wordlessly, she undid his own breeches, her rough fingers tracing along his half-hard cock.
In the late and fading light, her eyes reminded him of beryls. Spain wore an emerald ring from time to time and his eyes were green too. But Antonio’s eyes had a faintly gray, faintly brown sheen to them, a warm tint, like the sun-ripened olives he liked so much. Alana’s eyes had nothing marring their color, save a faintest trace of blue, her eyes clear and startling and cold as a frozen pond. She had the intense expression of a man before the last charge, someone giving the last priming of a musket, the last greasing of a sword. He gripped her hips in his hands, fingers digging into her naked hips enough to bruise. England hissed through her teeth at his grip, her hand moving faster and faster along the length of him, stimulating… and nothing more.
Nations fucked when they made alliances; whether it was tradition or otherwise, no one could say. But they rutted with the exchanging of princesses and lands, upon the signing of elaborately written treaties and agreements. Sometimes they did it with affection, or at least mutual respect. They both thought of a past dalliance when they had rolled about on a proper bed, when he had bitten the back of her neck so hard that she had the mark for days, when she had scratched his back bloody. Right now, they had not even that.
England met Prussia’s eyes without hesitation, with level neutrality, even as she lifted her hips higher and guided him into her. Her body betrayed her seeming indifference; he could feel her wet, tight heat around his cock. He continued to grip her hips, nails digging into nearly hard enough to draw blood. She hissed again, like a riled cat, raising herself once again and bringing her body back down sharply, so sharply that both of them growled or yelped at the pain.
As she rode him, they never looked away from each other. Should one pair of eyes dart away, for however brief a moment, the owner would be branded a coward for the rest of their acquaintance. So they looked at each other, not as lovers or as friends, but as opponents. An intimacy lay in both love and hate after all, was it not said? He gripped her hips tighter, her own fingers digging into his shoulders for better leverage. Their hoarse and heavy breathing echoed obscenely in the room, the sounds of mere rutting, driven by brandy and blood and mutual dislike and perhaps, perhaps, just a little true desire for one another.
He gritted out curses, insensible ones in a flurry of slurred German as his hips bucked upwards involuntarily one last time. She spat a blasphemy in English, bringing her body to meet his, her nails digging into his shoulders. Panting and sticky with sweat, they both slumped, fingers crooked like claws and still clinging to each other’s bodies.
Prussia fixed on the sight of her still bloody ears. He traced the gleam of red upon the heavy gold hoops, glittering like a ruby in the last rays of the day. England started to laugh, a chuckle deep in her chest. She reached for her brandy glass and swallowed its contents in one gulp.
“To a worthwhile alliance,” she mocked, holding up her empty glass to him. Almost tenderly, she brushed her thumb across his bruised and bleeding lower lip. She brought the digit to her mouth and drew her tongue along it in one smooth movement, lapping up his blood almost primly.
Prussia only grinned at her, leaning into the embrace of the armchair like a king on his throne.
Notes:
Historically relevant smut!
Originally, Great Britain was Austria’s main ally through the Anglo-Austrian Alliance but with Empress Maria Theresa’s sudden decision to ally Austria with its historic enemy, France, Great Britain broke off ties with Austria. To be honest, Austria had reason to switch alliances; Great Britain wasn’t terribly supportive of Austria during the War of Austrian Succession, despite being an ally. Great Britain then formed a military alliance with Prussia and Frederick the Great, the Anglo-Prussian Alliance, which formally lasted from 1756-1762, as part of the Westminster Convention. The motion was pushed forward chiefly by William Pitt the Elder, as a number of notable politicians were supporters of Prussia.
As far as an alliance went, the Anglo-Prussian Alliance really didn’t provide that much in the way of benefits to both countries; it was really more of a matter of “I won’t get in your way if you won’t get in my way” as well as “I won’t challenge you if you don’t challenge me.” They fought two different wars on two different fronts, with Prussia facing Russia (though Russia pulled out of the war upon the death of Empress Elizabeth), France, and Austria in the European front and England facing France and Spain on the American front.
After the deaths of William and Mary, the Stuart dynasty in England ended. Thanks to a complicated array of marriages, deaths and the Act of Settlement in 1701 (in which Parliament decreed that Roman Catholics could not succeed to the throne, a law that is still in fact in effect to this day), the throne passed to the house of Hanover and thus the succession of Georges, with Queen Victoria as the last of the Hanoverian dynasty in England.
Earrings were fashionable for men and women during the 1500s in Europe but fell out of favor with the 1600s (apparently because of longer hair styles). By then, sailors mostly wore earrings (and pirates, but that remains a debate).
“bitches” - Frederick the Great was known to be something of a misogynist (and most likely homosexual). During the period of the Seven Years War, he was known to have named three of his dogs (bitches) after Empress Elizabeth of Russia, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and Madame du Pompadour of France, three of the most powerful women in Europe. He apparently took somewhat vindictive pleasure in calling those names and being obeyed.
While writing this, it occurred to me that Prussia and England would actually like each other but would never admit it aloud, being who they are (tsundere and all around asshole).
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Genre(s): Historical/Smut/PWP
Character(s)|Pairing(s): Prussia/fem!England, mentions of Austria and fem!France
Rating/Warning(s): R/NC-17, language, bloody imagery, sexual content
Word Count: 2,248
Summary: Originally a kink meme fill - “Prussia/fem!England… and sex in an armchair.” Seven Years’ War and the Anglo-Prussian Alliance, with added historical relevance/educational value!
“I am not in this for war’s sake,” she said to him.
Prussia looked at her over his shoulder, where he had been examining a set of crossed swords above the fireplace (shiny metal and gilt and not much else). He grinned. “Of course you’re not,” he said, clicking his teeth together.
He raked his red-violet eyes over her body without reservation or shame as she entered the drawing room and its florid décor. England wore the highest mode of style… for a young man. The light of a setting sun dancing through the windows gleamed upon her elaborate gold buttons and the jeweled buckles of her shoes, her legs exposed in her cream knee-breeches and white stockings. Her tawny gold hair had not been powdered but instead merely contained with a black silk ribbon.
She only arched her very heavy eyebrows at him as she crossed the room, not to join him, but to instead open a bottle of very fine brandy. He watched her pour out two generous glasses and deign to give him one. They clinked glasses and swallowed, their eyes never leaving each other in some parody of romance.
“Thinking to piss off France?” asked Prussia as the alcohol settled in his belly like gold fire.
“Balancing Europe’s powers,” she retorted sternly, sounding far too defensive. Then she added, grudgingly, “Because Roderich and… Frances are making such a damn mess of it.”
Prussia snorted his amusement and took another swallow of brandy as she set her glass down and went about the room lighting the candles with a taper held to the fire in the hearth. She stood before a mirror illuminated with not just a brace of candles set in brilliantly polished reflectors but also with the last rays of the sunset. Her hand delved into her pocket and she pulled out a very small velvet pouch. Her gloved fingers extracted two gold hoops from the depths of the scarlet bag. He watched her with interest, swallowing brandy without care for bouquet or texture.
“Do not expect any military support,” she said as her fingers drew apart the sizeable, heavy hoop.
She drew the gold through the flame of the closest candle, waited a moment, and stabbed the earring through her left ear without hesitation. Her lips parted in a wintery, feral smile as she closed the hoop. A single trail of blood slowly trickled from the new piercing, glittering like faceted garnet bead. He watched the tiny, tiny drop gather and grow at the tip of her ear, a small detail that the eye fixated on without thinking.
“I’m not asking for it. The treaty was your Prime Minister’s idea,” retorted Prussia with an answering grin of his own, though his had none of her ice but instead every bit of her ferocity.
She remained silent as she turned back to the mirror, putting the remaining hoop through the same treatment and stabbing it without so much as a wince through the fleshy flap of her earlobe. Another trail of blood began along her right ear.
“I do not like you,” she announced as she turned on her heel to face him. With her new piercings, she looked even less feminine and yet… seemed even more so.
He found one of the massive, absurdly comfortable leather upholstered armchairs and flung himself into it carelessly, one leg draped over a plush arm, his fingertips barely clinging onto his half-full brandy glass. The Germanic kingdom grinned at the kingdom of Great Britain shamelessly as she arched an eyebrow in response.
“That’s practically a proposition, coming from you,” he jeered.
“I am surprised your vernacular is so developed,” she retorted.
His gaze continued to rake over her, up and down without any pretense at discretion. She knew that he did it only to irk her, just as he did it to irk nearly every other European power (Russia was the only one impervious to his gaze, a leer and sneer and contemptuous examination, so far as she could tell). The insolent and lascivious examination she brushed off with a demeanor colder than midwinter snow. He seemed like a common soldier, a common though admittedly experienced conscript despite his fine garments, though they had the impression of a uniform than any Court attire. His shoes buckles were only finely wrought silver, after all.
England approached the chair with her glass. “Are you not going to ask about the earrings?”
“Why should I? You’re trying to make a point, aren’t you?”
“So you aren’t just a dog of war.”
He grinned up at her, but it was a mirthless expression. “War isn’t for the stupid. Not for long.”
Prussia could smell the coppery brilliance of heated gold and fresh blood, a perfume that seemed to define the world these days. They all wore it, a priceless thing that not even Frances’s best chemists could replicate. Somehow on the way, she had picked up her brandy glass and she took a long sip, her gaze elsewhere. Without thinking, he reached out and upward, seizing her by her neck cloth and pulling her down.
She choked most gratifyingly as he smashed their lips together. Brandy and saliva and blood flooded his mouth (his teeth had collided with her lower lip, hard enough to lacerate). England choked and coughed and spat, her cheeks flushing furious crimson from surprise and lack of oxygen. Prussia laughed, using his cuff to clean his splattered face with one rough swipe after letting her go. Miraculously, she had retained a grip on her glass. She stared at him incredulously, her fingers absentmindedly putting the cup on the small table beside him. And she punched him. He continued to laugh, even as he felt the impact crack molars, lacerate his inner cheek on his teeth.
“And is that a prelude to fucking?” he inquired with a mad grin.
Her bright eyes rolled heavenwards. “You have a singularly foul sense of humor and no manners at all,” she snapped.
“I’m not a ‘gentleman,’” he replied mockingly. “Did you expect one?”
“No, just a backwater province with some pretensions of royalty,” she responded with sweet malice.
He stared at her, true anger flooding his eyes. Then he snarled, “And where does your royal family come from?”
“The fact that they are Hanoverian is of no consequence,” she retorted with a bared fang smile.
They glared at each other, both pairs of eyes resembling maddened goshawks’ (though Prussia’s won any contest in emulation, by virtue of color). Then England laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh, a musical laugh. Her voice seemed smoke-choked, her pitches swinging to an eerie cackle. She leaned down to face him, her hands resting on the arms of the chair.
“You are a singularly fascinating little bastard,” she breathed to him.
“And you are an evil bitch,” he replied.
“Of like minds with your beloved Fritz,” she said with a cold smile. “How he hates women so.”
Prussia shrugged. “Not hate. Nothing like that.” He grinned. “He only doesn’t like women who don’t know their places. Bitches who won’t come when he calls.”
He reached out to tug at the gold hoops hanging from her ears. England hissed a little through her teeth, seizing his wrist. They both knew the pain of a torn piercing. But he didn’t yank sharply, merely drew her lobe and thus her, closer to him. His tongue darted out and he drew his tongue along the bleeding hole, tasting metal and blood.
“I won’t be coming when you call,” she hissed. She smiled then, but it was not an expression for him. “I’ll be on the seas.” And her voice shifted from its so very refined accent to something coarser but so much more melodic.
“I don’t need your help,” he sneered back at her, licking his lips and letting of her earring but not before tugging it on it with unnecessary cruelty.
She growled at him, deep in her chest, and crushed their mouths together. Blood and brandy, spittle, gold, red and yellow. Her fingers tangled in his white-blonde hair and pulled. He groped for her breast under the flattening, confining constraints of her vest and shirt; he felt a nipple harden under his palm even through his leather glove. They bit each other, snarled and met again, each successive time more violent than the last. She tossed away her coat; it hit the ground with a rattle of metal buttons. He threw aside his leather gloves atop the red heap of cloth on the floor.
The two countries continued to clash, tongues dueling, teeth tearing and colliding. Their hands yanked and scratched and throttled. Then, like lion and lioness, like two eagles, they parted after one final meeting. Their lips swollen, painted crimson black, they stared at each other with matching smiles. Wordlessly, Prussia brought his leg down from the arm of his chair, his booted foot landing heavily on the floorboards. England unfastened her waistcoat absentmindedly. Her sharp green eyes gave him the same type of stare that he had been treating her to the entire time he had been here. He only smiled at her, deliberately tracing his hand along his groin while finishing the last of his brandy.
“You are obscene,” she told him, though true disgust didn’t settle on her face. She deliberately stepped out of her fine shoes and pushed them aside with her foot. Her fingers unfastened her breeches.
“No bed?” he asked with a grin.
England sniffed derisively as the breeches also dropped to the floor, not bothering to reply. She padded back over to Prussia on stocking feet and before he could react, she had climbed into the chair, knees on either side of his lap. Wordlessly, she undid his own breeches, her rough fingers tracing along his half-hard cock.
In the late and fading light, her eyes reminded him of beryls. Spain wore an emerald ring from time to time and his eyes were green too. But Antonio’s eyes had a faintly gray, faintly brown sheen to them, a warm tint, like the sun-ripened olives he liked so much. Alana’s eyes had nothing marring their color, save a faintest trace of blue, her eyes clear and startling and cold as a frozen pond. She had the intense expression of a man before the last charge, someone giving the last priming of a musket, the last greasing of a sword. He gripped her hips in his hands, fingers digging into her naked hips enough to bruise. England hissed through her teeth at his grip, her hand moving faster and faster along the length of him, stimulating… and nothing more.
Nations fucked when they made alliances; whether it was tradition or otherwise, no one could say. But they rutted with the exchanging of princesses and lands, upon the signing of elaborately written treaties and agreements. Sometimes they did it with affection, or at least mutual respect. They both thought of a past dalliance when they had rolled about on a proper bed, when he had bitten the back of her neck so hard that she had the mark for days, when she had scratched his back bloody. Right now, they had not even that.
England met Prussia’s eyes without hesitation, with level neutrality, even as she lifted her hips higher and guided him into her. Her body betrayed her seeming indifference; he could feel her wet, tight heat around his cock. He continued to grip her hips, nails digging into nearly hard enough to draw blood. She hissed again, like a riled cat, raising herself once again and bringing her body back down sharply, so sharply that both of them growled or yelped at the pain.
As she rode him, they never looked away from each other. Should one pair of eyes dart away, for however brief a moment, the owner would be branded a coward for the rest of their acquaintance. So they looked at each other, not as lovers or as friends, but as opponents. An intimacy lay in both love and hate after all, was it not said? He gripped her hips tighter, her own fingers digging into his shoulders for better leverage. Their hoarse and heavy breathing echoed obscenely in the room, the sounds of mere rutting, driven by brandy and blood and mutual dislike and perhaps, perhaps, just a little true desire for one another.
He gritted out curses, insensible ones in a flurry of slurred German as his hips bucked upwards involuntarily one last time. She spat a blasphemy in English, bringing her body to meet his, her nails digging into his shoulders. Panting and sticky with sweat, they both slumped, fingers crooked like claws and still clinging to each other’s bodies.
Prussia fixed on the sight of her still bloody ears. He traced the gleam of red upon the heavy gold hoops, glittering like a ruby in the last rays of the day. England started to laugh, a chuckle deep in her chest. She reached for her brandy glass and swallowed its contents in one gulp.
“To a worthwhile alliance,” she mocked, holding up her empty glass to him. Almost tenderly, she brushed her thumb across his bruised and bleeding lower lip. She brought the digit to her mouth and drew her tongue along it in one smooth movement, lapping up his blood almost primly.
Prussia only grinned at her, leaning into the embrace of the armchair like a king on his throne.
Notes:
Historically relevant smut!
Originally, Great Britain was Austria’s main ally through the Anglo-Austrian Alliance but with Empress Maria Theresa’s sudden decision to ally Austria with its historic enemy, France, Great Britain broke off ties with Austria. To be honest, Austria had reason to switch alliances; Great Britain wasn’t terribly supportive of Austria during the War of Austrian Succession, despite being an ally. Great Britain then formed a military alliance with Prussia and Frederick the Great, the Anglo-Prussian Alliance, which formally lasted from 1756-1762, as part of the Westminster Convention. The motion was pushed forward chiefly by William Pitt the Elder, as a number of notable politicians were supporters of Prussia.
As far as an alliance went, the Anglo-Prussian Alliance really didn’t provide that much in the way of benefits to both countries; it was really more of a matter of “I won’t get in your way if you won’t get in my way” as well as “I won’t challenge you if you don’t challenge me.” They fought two different wars on two different fronts, with Prussia facing Russia (though Russia pulled out of the war upon the death of Empress Elizabeth), France, and Austria in the European front and England facing France and Spain on the American front.
After the deaths of William and Mary, the Stuart dynasty in England ended. Thanks to a complicated array of marriages, deaths and the Act of Settlement in 1701 (in which Parliament decreed that Roman Catholics could not succeed to the throne, a law that is still in fact in effect to this day), the throne passed to the house of Hanover and thus the succession of Georges, with Queen Victoria as the last of the Hanoverian dynasty in England.
Earrings were fashionable for men and women during the 1500s in Europe but fell out of favor with the 1600s (apparently because of longer hair styles). By then, sailors mostly wore earrings (and pirates, but that remains a debate).
“bitches” - Frederick the Great was known to be something of a misogynist (and most likely homosexual). During the period of the Seven Years War, he was known to have named three of his dogs (bitches) after Empress Elizabeth of Russia, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and Madame du Pompadour of France, three of the most powerful women in Europe. He apparently took somewhat vindictive pleasure in calling those names and being obeyed.
While writing this, it occurred to me that Prussia and England would actually like each other but would never admit it aloud, being who they are (tsundere and all around asshole).