HOME | DD

Description
"Она сказала: пойти пойду с тобою; только не тебе уже будет слава на сем пути, в который ты идешь; но в руки женщины предаст Господь Сисару." - Книга Судей, 4:9

"She said to him: I will go indeed with thee, but at this time the victory shall not be attributed to thee, because Sisara shall be delivered into the hand of a woman." - Judges, 4:9

History often seems capricious. Frederick II of Prussia is only remembered as "the Great" because Elizabeth of Russia died at an inopportune moment and her heir proceeded to be more enthused with Prussia than the Prussian king, throwing away the results of Russia's tens of thousands of casualties and switching sides in the war out of admiration for Frederick and Prussia. (Frederick maintained even after this rescue - only scarcely more plausible than a flock of alien spacebats intervening to save him - that there were no such things as miracles.) This "miracle" not only saved Frederick's legacy, but also ruined those of not one, but two empresses.

So what if Elizabeth had lived longer, long enough for victory to be delivered into the hands of three women, and the world had gone on without ever knowing the fear of Germany's ambitions? What if Maria Theresa had been able to go down in history as the woman who stitched her empire back together, rather than the unlucky monarch who saw the beginnings of its irreparable decline?

Description
"Она сказала: пойти пойду с тобою; только не тебе уже будет слава на сем пути, в который ты идешь; но в руки женщины предаст Господь Сисару." - Книга Судей, 4:9

"She said to him: I will go indeed with thee, but at this time the victory shall not be attributed to thee, because Sisara shall be delivered into the hand of a woman." - Judges, 4:9

History often seems capricious. Frederick II of Prussia is only remembered as "the Great" because Elizabeth of Russia died at an inopportune moment and her heir proceeded to be more enthused with Prussia than the Prussian king, throwing away the results of Russia's tens of thousands of casualties and switching sides in the war out of admiration for Frederick and Prussia. (Frederick maintained even after this rescue - only scarcely more plausible than a flock of alien spacebats intervening to save him - that there were no such things as miracles.) This "miracle" not only saved Frederick's legacy, but also ruined those of not one, but two empresses.

So what if Elizabeth had lived longer, long enough for victory to be delivered into the hands of three women, and the world had gone on without ever knowing the fear of Germany's ambitions? What if Maria Theresa had been able to go down in history as the woman who stitched her empire back together, rather than the unlucky monarch who saw the beginnings of its irreparable decline?