THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA - ARC III GLOSSARY EXPLANATIONS

• Wishing hazelnuts: the inspiration came from a lesser known Andersen story, Ib and Little Christine, in which the young titular characters receive them as gifts from a magical Roma (gypsy) woman. Christine picks the two first nuts, and she marries into high society (no bed of roses), while Ib makes a more modest yet luckier choice.
• Hats (Jingoists) and Caps (Enlightened): these two factions did actually exist in mid-eighteenth-century Sweden, and neutrals as well. The Hats had the support of the officer class, while the Caps were members of the gentry and clergy, bourgeois, landowners, professionals... And yes, even Gustavus III's royal parents were divided by this conflict (Adolphus was a Cap, while Louisa was a Hat).
• Was Gustavus III queer or bi? This is a rather extended opinion, that I have chosen to accept to explain his lack of offspring and the still debated hypothesis that he wasn't Gustavus IV's father...
• The Baratheons of Drottningholm: Any similarity between fictional characters and real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. So is the one between the Swedish Royal Household of Holstein-Gottorp, rulers of Sweden in the late eighteenth century, and the Royal House Baratheon (if anyone overlooked it all: Gustavus III=Robert, Charles XIII=Stannis, Frederick Adolphus=Renly, Sophia=Cersei, Gustavus IV=Joffrey, Fredrik Munck=Jaime). The most reliable explanation is that George R.R. Martin could be partially inspired by Swedish history.
• Freethought: a crime during democracy and tolerated by Gustavus III? That is historical truth, and so is the fact that he abolished the laws that hitherto forbade Catholics and Jews to reside in Sweden on religious grounds. 
• Afternoon tea, due to Sweden's trade contacts with the UK and Asia, became a popular tradition in the mid-eighteenth century amidst wealthy members of the Cap Party. The Hats preferred a more intense and Continental cup of strong black coffee.
• Lord Anson/British outpost: I took the inspiration for this character and setting from The Rose Tree by Christoph von Schmid, with reminiscences of both Othello and Alice in Wonderland. The books Kristian read during his sojourn (Gulliver, Tom Jones...), which the author has read and appreciated herself, were rather popular in those days.
• Ice cream (still called "glass", pronounced like French "glace", in Swedish) was in vogue at the royal courts of the Age of Reason. And so were other treats such as...
• Macarons, which have recently come back (due to films like The Duchess or Marie Antoinette)
• Candied chestnuts, more well-known as marrons glacés (French for "candied chestnuts")
• Eau-de-vie, fruit liquor, to rinse it all down. This kind of liquor is still called "eau-de-vie" (French for "water of life") in both French and Swedish.
• The white kerchief tied around an officer's left arm was, along with the so-called "storm hat" (a slightly conical top hat), one of the changes the new regime of Gustavus III brought to Sweden's military uniform. The kerchief, visible from afar, symbolizes loyalty to the King and noble intentions. It was introduced as a sign of allegiance to the Crown (against Parliament) during the velvet revolution.
• Catherine the Great's backstory: She was a Prussian, a foreigner forced to convert from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy to marry the would-be Peter III. And she dethroned her spouse, with the aid of the officer class, when she realized the young Czar was a grown-up child, who drank hard and cheated on her with her ladies, who even had a rat court-martialled and guillotined for gnawing at one of the toy soldiers he used to recreate battles (it was a general, the Czar stated himself). Peter the Not-So-Great. Catherine was definitely his better half. Though there is a rant given by Swedish officers on the battlefields of Karelia that may seem somewhat offensive. The one below...
• "Her son is a bastard, his father's Orlov!": What? This is most likely to be the truth! I mean, Gustavus III was a cuckold himself, and Catherine II was also unhappily married... Count Orlov was her most important ally in the coup, and her first lover. Thus, Czarevitch Paul of Russia (the would-be Paul II) is most likely to be a lovechild. Which explains one of the reasons (the other is that she's simply too busy with affairs of state) why the Czarina had sent him to live with relatives in the provinces (who neglect him in turn). Though the young heir to the Russian throne was officially legitimized and considered legitimate, like Gustavus IV.
• The Anjala officers and their peace letter: Such an event did happen on the farmstead known as Anjala in August 1788. 113 discontented Swedish officers sent a letter to Catherine the Great during that war. Most of the "conspirators" received the royal pardon... but they would later be punished for another offense (though they were innocent) in 1792.
• Charles XIII's witch hunt: due to a deathbed promise, the Regent did persecute the Anjala officers due to a connection with the discontented royal guards behind the assassination. These officers' lives were spared, and they were punished either with banishment or with lifetime imprisoment.
• Carlsten (Charlestone): This notorious fortress prison on Marstrand Island off the Swedish West Coast has actually hosted officers accused of collaborating in the Gustavus III assassination plot. The author frequents Carlsten every summer, and thence came the inspiration to have Krister imprisoned there.
• Epaulets: Finally, in the Age of Reason, the time has come for military officers across Europe to spread their wings, after having discarded their breastplates. The rest of their attire does not undergo such a radical change.
• The ending: This is a story about the Early Modern Era, meant to start with the twilight of the Dark Ages (the Protestant Reformation), and to end when the fall of the Bastille has changed the world (notice the French refugees in the finale!) This story is thus set in "fairytale times", like I often say. It's also the story of the rise, downfall, and rebirth of Sweden in those times so like ours, yet so different from ours, and that of the Ringstettens' plight and its resolution, that run parallel with the history of Sweden. Finally, it's an epic detailing all the conditions of humankind, denouncing warfare and corruption. The story ends with the Green Lady watching the Ringstetten children because they are no longer the strangers and masters they were to the fair folk one century before. The oath has been sworn, broken, avenged, and forgiven, and the progress of science brought by Positivism, a revival of the Enlightenment, hasn't disenchanted the world or driven the fair folk away yet. Yet there are those children, children stand for the future... the young saplings whose adulthood is not explored in the end. Their idyllic and carefree existence should be contrasted with that of Arc I's leading cast one century before, during the Thirty Years' War. Said conflict, in the end, brought on the secularization of the Western world, the Enlightenment, optimism, sensualism, and rejection of authorities. These children grow up, unlike their ancestors at the start of it all, with an Enlightened, less sacred and enchanted yet more open, worldview. Arc I is about, among many other things, the warning "there be dragons": we know the commandant of Ringstetten in Küstrin owes obedience to the Elector of Brandenburg in Potsdam, and the Elector owes obedience to the Kaiser in Vienna... that Magdeburg is still besieged by Tilly, that Sweden has come to the Protestants' rescue... yet we don't leave the guardhouse until the story proper starts and it's all about discovering new places and people, mapping them, and lowing out the dragons. Arc II is about regret: making an impulsive wish in hindsight, which can be rather painful. The oath with the Sidhe, the war on Russia, Katinka's elopement (and Ilse's), even the Sidhe's use of enchantment of Gustav Adolf... every single deed is questioned in hindsight upon focusing on its negative consequences. But it's also about hope and moving forward, anticipating next arc. Arc III is about carpe diem, enjoying the present like a child would do, but also about hope and the importance of the past (for instance, Krister's idealized image and field experience of war, desertion, involvement in the Anjala Plot, encounter with Gustavus III, and his final arrest, consequences of one another, all condition his life): without such a tragic past (the 30YW), the History of Ideas wouldn't have such an optimistic and future-oriented movement as the Enlightenment. The overarching themes of the whole Saga are the effects of warfare, the loss of innocence, questioning the system, showing the world one's prowess, and fulfilment, the latest one echoed in the ending of each arc.
• A Tempest of passions and redemption: Shakespeare's last drama is as influential as Othello in the creation of the Saga. A feud between powerful mortals and the magical beings whose lands they have "invaded", a test of character set up by the magical beings, and the final happy ending with an expected reconciliation and the tying up of all those loose ends that there were at the start of the cathartic story. 
• Tying back together what stern custom once did part: The final words, that echo in the end, are the moral of the whole story, a chronicle of the rise of the Enlightenment entwined with a family saga. Friedrich Schiller's poem An die Freude, which supplied the lyrics for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and anthem of the European Union (its motto: "Concord in Diversity")... They also served as replacement for the Rose Hymn in The Lady in White, a WW2-era retelling of The Snow Queen set in Lützen, Leipzig, Northern Germany, and Sweden:

Spark of joy, the gods’ fair present,

child of the Elysian fields,

now with fire intoxicated

our host into your shrine steals.

Magic that ties once more together

what once was by custom torn,

in fraternity uniting

everyone in this soft morn.

The Swedish version heard at the end of the Saga is this:

Din trolldom åter förbinder

allt vad seden strängt skilt åt.

Broderskap förenar alla,

mjuka vingar torkar gråt.

The original German verses read:

 Deine Zauber binden wieder,

Was die Mode streng geteilt,

Alle Menschen werden Brüder,

                                                  Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.