Diplomatic passport? She is a member of the Kaiser's "household" staff
Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread II
- Thread starter Peabody-Martini
- Start date
Diplomatic passport? She is a member of the Kaiser's "household" staff
She crossed paths with Paul?
Face palm moment for SlideRuleJockey. Nancy Pelosi. It took me long enough. Well done PM.
No, it was a phone call with her college roommate turned brood mare Beatrice, who got married right after graduation.
It shows how much more opportunities there are for women in Germany then in the United States ITTL.
Like I posted before, Nancy should give Kat a great big hug and thank you when she returns for giving her the opportunity to use her talents and ambition.
I think that Nancy and Beatrice have come to the realization how badly her idiot friend destroyed her life, and how little Nancy can do to help her.
I wonder if there was something that prompted Nancy's invitation for a year in German Uni other than stupid luck and happenstance. Her correspondence with Kat, perhaps?
One of the great things about this timeline for me is how richly and realistic the characters are written so that even a minor background character like Beatrice who is basically just there to give us a contrast to Nancy can have their own stories.
I can imagine a desperate Beatrice going to some back ally to have a procedure that is illegal at this time both ITTL and IOTL.
I can also imagine a Beatrice that is so fed up with her husband Ross that she throws him out of the house only to find that she has gone out of pan and into a fire that she is ill prepared to deal with.
Even through we won't hear about Beatrice in a long while and only if necessary to advance the timeline, I can just think of all the different scenarios that can happen to her.
I can imagine a desperate Beatrice going to some back ally to have a procedure that is illegal at this time both ITTL and IOTL.
I can also imagine a Beatrice that is so fed up with her husband Ross that she throws him out of the house only to find that she has gone out of pan and into a fire that she is ill prepared to deal with.
Even through we won't hear about Beatrice in a long while and only if necessary to advance the timeline, I can just think of all the different scenarios that can happen to her.
Either that, or a Beatrice that takes the harsher choice....to simply leave, knowing that given all the odds against her, the only sane option its to not play her husband's game, even if it torments her to abandon her children.
I don't think she'd leave the children, but she's in New York, so a full tank of petrol sees her over the border into Canada and a new life.
@Peabody-Martini will correct me if I'm wrong, but socially, Canada seems to be a wierd hybrid of Britain, (sense of fair play), Germany, (some of its political and socially liberal ideas), countered by the conservative influences of it's southern neighbour.
So while they won't be as liberated as Germany, they will be more liberated than the US and this could lead to a political mess between the two.
Beatrice crosses the border and is surprised at how less stacked the odds are against single mothers in Canada. New York Police issue a warrant for Kidnap of the children. RCMP investigate, and decide Beatrice is the victim of DV and as the mother is entitled to leave with the children. She then gets settled status. US government complains, Canadian government, politely, tells them to do one. Husband tries to take things into his own hands and is arrested in Canada, charged with assault and is PNG'd out of Canada.
At this point, Beatrice would be in a strange position, could a Canadian court grant a divorce that would be recognised in America? Or, if Beatrice divorces in Canada and remarries a Canadian, would she be legally married in Canada, but bigamously married in America and Schrödinger's bigamist in the rest of the world?
BT would have a field day, but it would set US/German relations back a few years.
Part 86, Chapter 1330
Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Thirty
6th June 1959
Potsdam
Antonia Marie Zita Cecilie Louise had been born on the 2nd of June, a couple weeks earlier than had been expected, but she seemed healthy enough. What should have been completely expected that the French were furious and saw her name as an unnecessary provocation. This had come just when life for Kiki had been returning to normal after traveling to the United States. She had been expecting to take a hit as far as her course work was concerned. However, it turned out that her father had appointed her as his aide during the trip, so not only were the days she had missed excused, she now had in her service file that she had been the aide to the Emperor on an overseas mission. It was exactly the sort of abuse of her family connections that Kiki was trying to avoid, but it was too late to do anything about that now.
Kiki had found herself playing an unexpectedly large role in the whole matter in the birth announcement of her half-sister. It had everything to do with those stupid tabloid newspapers again. After her recent trip to the United States they had become a nuisance by continuing to run with the story that Kiki was feuding with her stepmother. There was no basis in fact in that. Still, it had fueled the interest that the world had in her. The previous Wednesday morning, Kiki had been photographed holding her newborn sister and as she had found out, it was pure catnip to seemingly every Press outlet in the world. If they had really been paying attention, they would have realized that if Kiki and Charlotte really didn’t get along then the photograph would have never been taken.
Then there was the French reaction, it seemed that they remembered another Princess Antonia from almost two centuries earlier, Maria Antonia being the birth name of Marie Antoinette. Kiki didn’t say so, but she thought that it was just ahistorical nonsense. When she had been younger, Kiki had been both horrified and fascinated by the revolutions that had upended France and Russia. One of the things that she had discovered was that many of the popular narratives that surrounded those events were not the whole truth. The hated French Queen was every bit of the decadent, out of touch Monarch that history remembered. That didn’t make her an oddity in that era. What history seemed to have forgotten though was how she was tried on charges that struck Kiki as being spurious and was suffering from cancer at the time of her execution.
What did the killing a woman who probably only had months to live prove? It certainly did nothing to further validate the position of the Jacobins, the very forces that they had unleashed soon turned on them. It was hardly a surprise. Russian agents tracked the family of her cousin Gia to the ends of the Earth. They had done their best to kill all of them and Gia had barely escaped with her life. Gia was one of the kindest people who Kiki knew, what was gained for the revolution by shooting her as she fled the house her family had lived in? And as Kiki had learned from following world events, it seemed like there was always a Stalin or Napoléon waiting in the wings.
“I’m sorry that the world is a bit of mess” Kiki said to Antonina who was in her arms and looking up at her with unfocused eyes, “You’ll find that everyone is just muddling through as best they can.”
It would be some time before Antonia would able to reply. Who knew if she would still be interested in listening by then?
“She isn’t ready for that yet” Charlotte said from her seat on the comfortable recliner that she had moved into the extensive chambers set aside for the Empress, echoing Kiki’s thoughts. “For the next few years all Antonia needs to worry about learning to be herself.”
“Antonia?” Kiki asked, “That will not do, too much of a mouthful and it is a bit old fashioned.”
“I assume that you along with the rest of her brothers and sisters will cook up a pet name soon enough, Kiki” Charlotte said. She said that last part with a smile.
“We’ll think of something” Kiki replied, though she already had been thinking about it. Mostly it was a matter of getting the others to go along with what she had found.
Supposedly when she had been an infant, it had been Fritz Schafer who told Freddy that he had a cousin named Kristina who everyone called Kiki. That was how that had happened. The rest were just various spins on their actual names. Antonia had been a bit of a challenge. Kiki had handled it the same way that she had in other similar times in the past by looking it up in the library. The book on the history of various names had said that there were a couple of diminutives, Tonia and Nella. Kiki had no idea how they arrived at Nella from Antonia and that was the one she had liked. Then again, she had she had no idea how Kiki was derived from Kristina either. If Antonia was truly going to one of them then it was what would be expected.
With that, Antonia, or Nella as Kiki decided to start thinking of her, started fussing.
“I think she wants you to take her back” Kiki said before they began the process of handing Nella back over to Charlotte.
“Thank you for already being a good big sister to her” Charlotte said.
“It’s the least I could do” Kiki replied, “And in my opinion the French can go fuck themselves if they have a problem with her name.”
“Language” Charlotte exclaimed, “You’re supposed to be setting a good example for your younger sisters.”
“Rea and Vicky are sort of a lost cause at this point” Kiki replied, “And the occasional four-letter word won’t hurt Nella at all. Getting familiar with the taste of soap when she gets older will help develop her character.”
“Who?” Charlotte asked.
Kiki didn’t answer, instead she just smiled.
6th June 1959
Potsdam
Antonia Marie Zita Cecilie Louise had been born on the 2nd of June, a couple weeks earlier than had been expected, but she seemed healthy enough. What should have been completely expected that the French were furious and saw her name as an unnecessary provocation. This had come just when life for Kiki had been returning to normal after traveling to the United States. She had been expecting to take a hit as far as her course work was concerned. However, it turned out that her father had appointed her as his aide during the trip, so not only were the days she had missed excused, she now had in her service file that she had been the aide to the Emperor on an overseas mission. It was exactly the sort of abuse of her family connections that Kiki was trying to avoid, but it was too late to do anything about that now.
Kiki had found herself playing an unexpectedly large role in the whole matter in the birth announcement of her half-sister. It had everything to do with those stupid tabloid newspapers again. After her recent trip to the United States they had become a nuisance by continuing to run with the story that Kiki was feuding with her stepmother. There was no basis in fact in that. Still, it had fueled the interest that the world had in her. The previous Wednesday morning, Kiki had been photographed holding her newborn sister and as she had found out, it was pure catnip to seemingly every Press outlet in the world. If they had really been paying attention, they would have realized that if Kiki and Charlotte really didn’t get along then the photograph would have never been taken.
Then there was the French reaction, it seemed that they remembered another Princess Antonia from almost two centuries earlier, Maria Antonia being the birth name of Marie Antoinette. Kiki didn’t say so, but she thought that it was just ahistorical nonsense. When she had been younger, Kiki had been both horrified and fascinated by the revolutions that had upended France and Russia. One of the things that she had discovered was that many of the popular narratives that surrounded those events were not the whole truth. The hated French Queen was every bit of the decadent, out of touch Monarch that history remembered. That didn’t make her an oddity in that era. What history seemed to have forgotten though was how she was tried on charges that struck Kiki as being spurious and was suffering from cancer at the time of her execution.
What did the killing a woman who probably only had months to live prove? It certainly did nothing to further validate the position of the Jacobins, the very forces that they had unleashed soon turned on them. It was hardly a surprise. Russian agents tracked the family of her cousin Gia to the ends of the Earth. They had done their best to kill all of them and Gia had barely escaped with her life. Gia was one of the kindest people who Kiki knew, what was gained for the revolution by shooting her as she fled the house her family had lived in? And as Kiki had learned from following world events, it seemed like there was always a Stalin or Napoléon waiting in the wings.
“I’m sorry that the world is a bit of mess” Kiki said to Antonina who was in her arms and looking up at her with unfocused eyes, “You’ll find that everyone is just muddling through as best they can.”
It would be some time before Antonia would able to reply. Who knew if she would still be interested in listening by then?
“She isn’t ready for that yet” Charlotte said from her seat on the comfortable recliner that she had moved into the extensive chambers set aside for the Empress, echoing Kiki’s thoughts. “For the next few years all Antonia needs to worry about learning to be herself.”
“Antonia?” Kiki asked, “That will not do, too much of a mouthful and it is a bit old fashioned.”
“I assume that you along with the rest of her brothers and sisters will cook up a pet name soon enough, Kiki” Charlotte said. She said that last part with a smile.
“We’ll think of something” Kiki replied, though she already had been thinking about it. Mostly it was a matter of getting the others to go along with what she had found.
Supposedly when she had been an infant, it had been Fritz Schafer who told Freddy that he had a cousin named Kristina who everyone called Kiki. That was how that had happened. The rest were just various spins on their actual names. Antonia had been a bit of a challenge. Kiki had handled it the same way that she had in other similar times in the past by looking it up in the library. The book on the history of various names had said that there were a couple of diminutives, Tonia and Nella. Kiki had no idea how they arrived at Nella from Antonia and that was the one she had liked. Then again, she had she had no idea how Kiki was derived from Kristina either. If Antonia was truly going to one of them then it was what would be expected.
With that, Antonia, or Nella as Kiki decided to start thinking of her, started fussing.
“I think she wants you to take her back” Kiki said before they began the process of handing Nella back over to Charlotte.
“Thank you for already being a good big sister to her” Charlotte said.
“It’s the least I could do” Kiki replied, “And in my opinion the French can go fuck themselves if they have a problem with her name.”
“Language” Charlotte exclaimed, “You’re supposed to be setting a good example for your younger sisters.”
“Rea and Vicky are sort of a lost cause at this point” Kiki replied, “And the occasional four-letter word won’t hurt Nella at all. Getting familiar with the taste of soap when she gets older will help develop her character.”
“Who?” Charlotte asked.
Kiki didn’t answer, instead she just smiled.
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Yes the French should go *bleep* themselves and the name is appropriate as Marie Antoinette was an Austrian.
What would be funny is if France goes thru one it's periodic crisis where the people take to the streets and the government collapses.
This could lead to the realization that European countries that have Constitutional Monarchies are more stable and more importantly it brings in the tourist dollars, that could lead to the restoration of the Orleans branch of the House of Bourbon.
What would be funny is if France goes thru one it's periodic crisis where the people take to the streets and the government collapses.
This could lead to the realization that European countries that have Constitutional Monarchies are more stable and more importantly it brings in the tourist dollars, that could lead to the restoration of the Orleans branch of the House of Bourbon.
....My most sincere condolences. Reminds me of the first time that i had the unfortunate luck of tasting anchovies as a child. Still i shudder to the damn taste even more than 30 years after it.
A younger brother as a toddler grabbed and shotgunned a shot of whiskey (Dad would occasionally indulge, especially when not feeling well.) I believe my brother enjoyed that as much going down as coming up.
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Coming Up, or Coming backwards with extra stuff, followed for a banshee-like howling?
