Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread III

[ejpsan]

Other ways to put the relationship of Albrecht and Ilse with their duties as the King and Queen of Silesia are is that Ilse is the "Gatekeeper" preventing those who would waste the very limited time that Albrecht can spare as the King.
Ilse can also be compared to being the XO of the ship that Albrecht is the Captain of.
Ilse is also the one who is going to say "No" to people so when Albrecht says "Yes", it will be seen as a rare honor and thus be more appreciated by the recipients.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Six Hundred Seventy-Nine



13th May 1978

Breslau, Silesia

Niko had once heard that places like the tavern he was in were called “Towny bars” in the United States and it was where he went when he didn’t want to be bothered. The advantage was that no one in the place seemed to care who Niko was. The presence of the Headquarters of the VI Corps made it so that a Leutnant’s uniform didn’t draw too much attention. If they had figured him a student, they probably wouldn’t have been as accommodating. As for the whole Prince of Breslau business, he didn’t want to think about what their reaction would be.

This particular tavern catered mostly to the Bargemen who plied the Rivers Oder and Vistula as well as the canals of Silesia, Poland, and Galicia-Ruthenia. Niko was aware that many of the men present had gone far beyond that with some bragging that they had gone to places such as Archangel, Moscow, Paris, London, Stockholm, the Mediterranean and Black Seas. It was a reminder that there was an entire world beyond Silesia. Niko had seen as much when he had traveled to Argentina and Montreal, but that seemed like it was a million years ago now.

Recently he had talked to Monique, and she had told him about her adventures in the Arizona and New Mexico. That the Grand Canyon at sunrise was the sort thing that he had see at least once in his life. That was a reminder of how he felt like he was increasingly stuck in Silesia. He had seen that with his father who had basically seen his ambitions in the Navy end with the death of Opa. Obligation was had he had put it. Niko’s father had commanded the Naval Air Command and had been on the shortlist to be the next Grand Admiral of the High Seas Fleet. He had told Niko that his consideration had to be what was best for the people of Silesia and he couldn’t do that from Fleet Headquarters in Kiel. His resignation from the Navy had become official the instant he took the oath to become the King of Silesia. Niko’s worry was that he was getting a preview of his own future. If so, his most sincere hope was that his father enjoyed a long and prosperous tenure as King.

The parade had been bad enough and that had been little more than keeping people moving in the same direction. Soldiers, student fraternities and societies, the Fire Brigade, everyone including the local dog walkers association for all Niko knew had wanted to be involved. It seemed like all of them had been arguing with each other over precedence in the parade, which had often devolved into shoving matches and the police had been overwhelmed, where they weren’t participating in the shoving. Niko had broken up a few fistfights before they could spread into an all-out brawl, and he had discovered that the mere sight of him atop Zwei armed with a club coming onto the scene was more than enough to take the starch out of most of the combatants. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the one prior experience he had which had prepared him for that task had been herding cattle and sheep in Argentina.

“You look like you are on the other side of the planet” The waitress said as she sat down a plate of bread, apple slices, and cheese that he had ordered on Nico’s table.

“I was just thinking about when I was in Argentina a few years ago” Niko replied, “That count?”

“You seem a bit young for that.”

“I was appointed to be an aide of the Oberst of a Cavalry Regiment” Niko said, “Patrolling the frontier on a peacekeeping mission, it was interesting.”

“You ought to tell the liars at the bar about that” The waitress replied, “You might cage a free drink if you got a good story out of that.”

“No need” Niko said. The last thing he wanted to do was draw too much attention. Still, the thought of going back to Argentina held a great deal of appeal.



Zermatt, Switzerland

The sun was warm on Malcolm’s face as he stared up into an impossibly blue sky for a minute. Ignoring the bitter cold wind he sat up and looked at the handful of other climbers who had made the trip with him. They were students like Malcolm, just they had not had nearly the experience that he had because he had been into Mountaineering since he had attended the Arctic Training School high in the mountains near Bad Reichenhall.

It had been a hard climb from the mountaineer’s hut he had set out from early that morning before the sun had come up. Despite the end of the academic term looming and the constant demands of the Luftwaffe, he had taken a few days off to climb the Dufourspitze of Monte Rosa. Like everyone else in his party, Malcolm was tired and needed to rest for a few minutes after he had reached the summit.

It was the sort of thing that he had been doing more often lately as he had reached something of a professional impasse. He had tried to get in on every Artic and Antarctic expedition for the last few years but had been stymied by the same issues. He had discovered that various German Exploration and Research societies were cliquish and rather selective about just who they allowed to join them. Unless you had a skillset they deemed absolutely necessary. The few times that Malcolm had gotten an interview with the Leader of an Expedition the conversation had basically ended when the conversation had gotten around to him being a Computer Specialist and Luftwaffe Reserve Officer who worked for the Satellite Intelligence Section of the Military High Command in Potsdam while he was attending the University of Berlin as a Doctoral Student. It was at that point that Malcolm had seen their eyes glaze over. The paradox of the situation was that to gain entry Malcolm was required to have the right sort of introductions and reputation, yet to gain the sort of reputation to get those introductions he needed to gain entry…

“No more lying about you lot!” Gerhard, the leader of this particular climb yelled as he reached the summit with entirely too much enthusiasm. Gerhard, and his wife Hannelore organized these things and oddly they seemed to have more endurance than the students they recruited who were half their age.

 

[Othala]

Zermatt, Switzerland

Never a good sign if anyone is exhausted on ascent - getting down takes a lot of stamina.

May seemed early for an ascent on a mountain of that height. Then again, after a couple minutes of franticly consulting google, it seems that the most common route runs over the glacier anyway. So they might just be early enough in the year to avoid the snow melting and crevices opening up on the glacier during early summer, making it treacherous even for the guides. And the ridge up to the summit shouldn't make too much of a difference.
So probably on skies from the hut, and only the last part up the ridge without them. (Well, carrying them.) And then of course a descent on skies again from the ridge. Might take less strength than walking, but not without it's own difficulties - especially if someone is exhausted and the tour is supposed to end in Zermatt itself.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Never a good sign if anyone is exhausted on ascent - getting down takes a lot of stamina.

May seemed early for an ascent on a mountain of that height. Then again, after a couple minutes of franticly consulting google, it seems that the most common route runs over the glacier anyway. So they might just be early enough in the year to avoid the snow melting and crevices opening up on the glacier during early summer, making it treacherous even for the guides. And the ridge up to the summit shouldn't make too much of a difference.

I was basing this on my own experiences. You get to the top of the mountain and expect that everyone is admiring the view, but instead you find that they are taking a break as the altitude and weather conditions have taken a toll. While you obviously wouldn't want to do that in the Himalayas, the Swiss Alps are not quite as unforgiving. In researching this particular climb I discovered that the best times to make the assent are in spring and autumn for the very reasons you mentioned. It is also regarded as not being particularly technical, with the main challenges being altitude and unpredictable weather.

 

[jlckansas]

Is Tibet independent or not ITTL? If it is independent there might be anthropological and non mountaineering expeditions going out that way to take a little look around and would need experienced people with them.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Six Hundred Eighty



15th May 1978

Tempelhof, Berlin

Like always, Kat was torn between being proud of her children and wanting to strangle them. The main problem as far as Kat was concerned was that her children were no longer children. They had grown up, physically anyway, much to her complete annoyance. Even Marie Alexandra, her baby, was now twenty-two and was going to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts Degree at the end of the month.

Kat’s agent in McGill University had managed to get his hands on a copy of Marie’s Senior Thesis and it was every bit as brilliant as Kat had been led to believe as well as a brutal blow aimed directly at the public image that Margot Blackwood presented to the world. Kat had her own reasons for disliking her mother-in-law, she worried that Marie had acted in a way that she might eventually come to regret. Hopping on a plane home after firing a broadside at her grandmother had the potential to be exactly that, no matter how much Margot had in coming.

Everything going on with Malcolm was just a continuation of everything that had been going on with him his entire life. When he had been a child, the discovery that he enjoyed the books about exploration and adventure had been a godsend. Even if his dyslexia had made it difficult for him to learn to read, the photographs had been enough to keep him engaged. The trouble was that as an adult, Malcolm still wanted to be like the heroes of his childhood. That created a problem in that they looked askance at his field of study and there had been some who had even considered him a spy or worse, a voyeur of sorts, because of what he did for the Luftwaffe.

The prior week, Malcolm had gone on a mountaineering trip to the Monte Rosa Massif in the Pennine Alps on the Italo-Swiss border. Malcolm had told Kat that it had been the first big climb of the season and that there were other, more ambitious climbs planned for the Summer and Autumn. Kat was worried that her son was trying to gain the respect of the same organizations who had rejected him by engaging in behavior that could be described as risky. It didn’t help that he seemed to have fallen in with a crowd that included people who while experienced, were known to engage in exactly the same sort of behavior. Kat had no idea where that would lead Malcolm, she just hoped with all of her heart that he would be whole at the other side having learned that he had nothing to prove. She just understood that failing to look before you took the jump was something that most of her family was infamous for.

Tatiana, oddly the only one of her children who she had planned to have, was still being the same pain in the ass that she had been since she was thirteen. Kat had pulled a lot of strings to get her daughter into the Foreign Office, still she feared that they would send her some place where she would pursue her worst impulses, there was also whatever Asia had Tatiana doing which couldn’t possibly as innocent as the two of them had tried to make it sound.

Aunt Marcella had told Kat about the conversation she’d had with Tatiana. How it felt exactly the same as talking to another stubborn, yet completely clueless girl she had known thirty years ago. Marcella also said that she had encouraged Tatiana to finally make peace with Kat. When Marcella had said that it occurred to Kat that she and her oldest daughter had been at odds for far longer than not.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps it was because they had been inseparable for the first decade of their lives, or some other aspect of their personalities, but Malcolm and Tatiana had never been able to keep secrets from each other. This time, Tatiana had known that her brother was up to something. It had taken a considerable amount on badgering on her part, but she had gotten him tell her what he was doing. And it was the sort of thing that could get him into a staggering amount of trouble on many different levels if anyone else found out.

“If you go ahead with this and Momma learns about it she is going to kill you” Tatiana said to Malcolm as she looked at the satellite photographs. “That is if this stupidity doesn’t get you killed first.”

“Then do not tell her” Malcolm replied.

This apparently nameless mountain in the Karakoram Range had never been successfully climbed, but not for lack of trying. It seemed that every single expedition that had attempted it had suffered some sort of misfortune. Infighting, jealousy, ambition, and what could only be described as bad luck had always combined in a remote location with unpredictable weather to stymy even the best efforts. Then the area had come to be controlled by militant rebels during the series of insurgencies and finally the civil war in India that had dragged on for the better part of three decades. So there had been expeditions that had never actually made it to the mountain in the first place. Many had concluded that the mountain was cursed, looking at the vast pyramid of rock and ice in the photographs, Tatiana thought that they might have been on to something. Even from orbit, it looked ominous.

Of course, Malcolm saw things differently. This was an expedition that was only in the planning stages and even if it went ahead it wouldn’t be until the summer of 1980. These photographs were needed to create highly accurate maps and would be priceless. It was a way for him to buy his way in. Tatiana would have been worried, except there was no way that her brother could keep a secret like this for the next two years.

 

[ejpsan]

K2

 

[Dan]

If ego has been a problem with previous parties, then Malcolm needs to build his own team.
People who think like him, not the "best" in the field, but the second best. The ones who know their stuff but without the vanity of the "best".
A group of mountaineers who understand Why Malc is doing this and share the same motivation.
Not to be the "First" to do it, just to prove they can do it, and ALL return.

 

[ejpsan]

Malcolm is going to prove himself to be more valuable to this expedition then realized.
He is going to provide the latest satellite mapping images that will show what are the best routes to take to the summit.
Malcolm, with his analytic skills is going to help plan out the logistics and timetables to cut down the number of unexpected problems that always crop up in every attempt to conquer K2.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Chapter Two Thousand Six Hundred Eighty-One



30th May 1978

Montreal

They did nothing like this in Germany. There you were told that you had earned your degree and to go get on with your life. The Convocation ceremony was huge deal at McGill and Marie Alexandra was one of hundreds who were graduating. She had been worried that this entire thing would be overshadowed by her Senior Thesis, which had ballooned to hundreds of pages by the time she had turned in a pared version of it. Her Professor had been surprised by the Thesis and the stir that it had caused when Marie had been featured in the Montreal Gazette. The headline had been German Princess traces family history from Paris to Montreal through Louisiana and Canadian Prairies and it had mentioned most of the things that Marie had discovered.

Marie had tried to explain to the Newspaper’s Editor that she held no title, so she wasn’t a princess and like always had been brushed off. This time though the Editor had asked if she was aware of who her guests to the Convocation were? Marie realized that included her mother, the Prefect of Berlin, and her father. Uncle Albrecht and Aunt Ilse, who were the King and Queen of Silesia, Uncle Hans, one of the most recognizable men in the world, who was traveling on to Argentina from Montreal for his job as a commentator for the FIFA World Cup and Aunt Helene who loved to travel with Hans because they always got four-star accommodation when they went to major FIFA events. Finally, Marie’s Godfather Louis Ferdinand, the Emperor Emeritus of Germany, his wife Charlotte were present. If Marie wasn’t a Princess, then who was?

The article in the Gazette had also mentioned that Marie was the first public figure to have ever claimed to be descended from one of the Correction Girls and then there was the whole Métis connection that Marie had uncovered. Sir Malcolm had informed Marie that her grandmother had ended up in the hospital with cardiac issues after reading that. Knowing that she had apparently given her grandmother a heart attack didn’t make Marie happy, nor did seeing just how many people seemed to feel differently. Marie was left wondering if her grandmother had ever had any real friends.

Despite everything that had happened over the last few months, her grandparents had still come to the Convocation. Marie suspected that it had been at her grandfather’s insistence, though it was just as likely that her grandmother knew that she needed to come to keep up appearances. She couldn’t have people believing that Marie had won?

At least the event was being held in a large tent, wearing the academic regalia in direct sunlight would have been stifling. Because Marie was graduating with a Bachelor in Arts, she was wearing the hood bordered with white fur border and light blue silk lining. That was in addition to the black robe and mortarboard cap. The whole thing lasted for more than two hours. Because Marie had done well academically her name had come up several times with achievement awards and she was on the Dean’s Honor List, she read through that multiple times in the program as she had waited for the Conformation of the Degrees. By the time that the closing remarks and the singing of the National Anthem were complete, Marie had been wanting to leave for a considerable amount of time. The University made a big show of having the graduates file out first while the audience remained seated.

Marie knew that Post-Graduate Orientation at Trinity College would be on the 4th of September. That meant that she would be free until then to do whatever she wanted. At the moment, that was to basically go home and sleep for a week. Everything in her apartment that she wanted to keep was already packed up and in the process shipped back to Berlin. The rest had been sold or given away. So all that was left was getting on the plane. It had been a pleasant surprise to learn that because Ireland was in the European Customs Union, she was considered a resident student even with her mixed Canadian/German citizenship. That made things easier and most certainly less expensive. The Treaty of Basel which had come into force while Marie had been in Canada made it so that she could travel freely between Ireland and the rest of Europe with the odd exception of the United Kingdom…

“A picture of you with us Marie?” Marie heard her father ask. He was wearing a pin that declared that he was McGill Alumni, Class of 1942. That seemed a bit tacky, but he was not the only one wearing a pin like that. Marie’s mother was happy today, though she knew that her mother was somewhat ragged around the edges. Her mother had suffered a severe back injury during the Soviet War, and it didn’t take much to aggravate that condition. Long flights on airliners did that like few other things. Tatiana and Malcolm were there too, with Tatiana seeming to enjoy the dirty looks that she was receiving from Margot a bit too much. So Marie took a series of photographs with her family while wearing the academic regalia and holding the vinyl covered cardboard folder that held the parchment diploma she had received. They had to do that quickly because it was only minutes later when Louis Ferdinand came along with dozens of the press in tow and that disrupted things.

 

[jlckansas]

It is Canada which is the Great White North, so that means "Revenge is a Dish Served Cold" and Margot ends up getting hers.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

I mentioned the academic regalia of McGill University. The mortarboard cap and black robe would be instantly familiar, the hood is different and the silk lining is dependent on the academic discipline of the graduate. As an Arts Student, Marie's would be light blue.

Academic dress of McGill University - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Tamarind77]

Wait, a Thesis for her Bachelors? Is it supposed to be Masters, or are they that academically rigorous in Ireland?

Also, the post is missing a threadmark.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

Wait, a Thesis for her Bachelors? Is it supposed to be Masters, or are they that academically rigorous in Ireland?

It is called a Senior Thesis, and it is a requirement for graduation at many universities. It also depends on the the institution and academic program. To put in perspective, I did one in an AP English course in High School.

 

[Grey Eminence]

It is called a Senior Thesis, and it is a requirement for graduation at many elite universities. It depends on the the institution and academic program. To put in perspective, I did one in an AP English course in High School.

It is common enough in Canada. It is part of engineering degrees for instance. It is usually not original research (in engineering at any rate) and amounts to the equivalent of one class for one term in credit weighting. A glorified book report if you will. Mine was on active and passive mass damping for high rises in earthquake zones. Never did anything with it since I ended up doing geotechnical rather than structural engineering.

 

[ejpsan]

I think that Marie will like her time in Dublin as she will be a little bit more anonymous with her red hair, allowing her to blend in a little bit better with the people of Dublin.
Jack Kennedy will still keep an eye out for her, but otherwise Marie will have more freedom living on her own (hopefully not in a crappy place that the female characters in this timeline tend to slum in).
Jack's daughter Jacqulene, should soon be attending University College Dublin, part of the National University of Ireland system, which will lead Jack a graduate of Trinity College Law School to remark that in Gallic Football, that he will "Cheer for Trinity, and Pray for National",

 

[Tamarind77]

It is called a Senior Thesis, and it is a requirement for graduation at many universities. It also depends on the the institution and academic program. To put in perspective, I did one in an AP English course in High School.

I think I did similar in my Bachelors/Masters?

Then again, I did History then Teaching... and there were a lot of research assignments so I might have just gone 'right, another essay/report' and just submitted it as usual.

 

[LinkedTortoise]

Wait, a Thesis for her Bachelors? Is it supposed to be Masters, or are they that academically rigorous in Ireland?

It is common enough in Canada. It is part of engineering degrees for instance. It is usually not original research (in engineering at any rate) and amounts to the equivalent of one class for one term in credit weighting.

It's common. Non-STEM majors would get a thing like this in their final year. My Software Engineering Capstone, pretty much the same thing as a Senior Thesis, was making a self-driving RC car that avoided obstacles.

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

Wait, a Thesis for her Bachelors? Is it supposed to be Masters, or are they that academically rigorous in Ireland?

I had to do one for my history Bachelor’s (well, ‘Dissertation’ but thesis is what it was). It wasn’t as long as something for post-grad but still fairly long, about 10,000+ words.

 

[Darth_Kiryan]

I had to do one for my history Bachelor’s (well, ‘Dissertation’ but thesis is what it was). It wasn’t as long as something for post-grad but still fairly long, about 10,000+ words.

Yeah, same here. Did a "War Crimes committed during the American Civil War"
5000-10000 words, +/- 10%.

I think I did around 11500 words in the end.