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.                                                                   

THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA XIX: THE FATE OF KRISTIAN

Previously on The Ringstetten Saga:
In late springtime, when the birch trees are in bloom, the Ringstettens get a visit from a van der Heide friend, a lecturer at Uppsala University itself. He doesn't hesitate to take after Kristian (in an innocent way, that is), though the young boy is paying attention to a frog until startled with a pat in the back. They discover passions they have in common, and soon they are showing each other plants and bugs. The next day, the Count and Countess do not hesitate to accept an offer without any equal: Kristian will study at Uppsala and live with one Lindelius, a colleague of the Walloon's, as a son in the Lindelius household.
The next day, Kristian leaves the estate in the scientist's carriage.
There's a little estate on the outskirts of Uppsala, and it can be easily recognized by its winter garden, or greenhouse. Confident freshman Kristian von Ringstetten arrives to meet his lecturer and guardian, Karl Johan Lindelius (who looks slightly like a bespectacled Elrond in eighteenth-century bourgeois clothes), and his reserved only daughter Erika, a violet-eyed, spirited brunette, three years younger than Kristian, who loves reading and natural science. The young girl, who has learned everything she knows through reading, is as shy as her new companion, who has to share a bedroom with her, in spite of the guest-room, which already houses a couple of students.
It takes a couple of weeks, being bullied at university, and picking flowers with Erika for the drawing of her late mother Astrid in the living room to break the ice between her and Kristian. And discuss life forms and myths, and find friends or surrogate siblings in each other.
At this point, one may recognize Erika as an intellectual and auburn-haired Liselotte.
The Lindeliuses support the pacifist and Enlightened Cap Party, one of two factions at the Swedish Parliament, their opponents being the warlike and jingoist Hats.
For a while, every Sunday afternoon, the Lindeliuses and their ward treat each other to buttered scones and Ceylon tea on the flower-studded meadows, following the English tradition, instead of going to church.
Soon, after the Midsummer celebrations, Herr Lindelius has a pair of secrets to tell his ward at the dinner table:

• One: Kristian is betrothed to Erika, to unite the wealth of both families. They merely see each other as good friends and surrogate siblings, neither of them has ever fallen in love, and they are both reluctant towards marriage. They will marry within six years in Uppsala Cathedral, also to make up for Karl Johan's habit of not going to church, because...
• Two: The Lindeliuses are freethinkers, id est, Enlightened atheists. Karl Johan, once a reverend's son and student, fell for his widowed landlady's daughter Astrid and married her... but Astrid died of a fever when Erika was five years old, and this event plunged Herr Lindelius into a faith crisis. The fact that they're freethinkers must never be revealed in public, or they would be arrested by the military itself and subsequently imprisoned: in mid-eighteenth-century Sweden, freethought is a crime that leads to persecution and prosecution by state authorities.

But this issue is soon solved, as Gustavus III's coup d'état and storming of a subsequently dissolved Parliament, one year later, signals the dawn of a new regime that tolerates freethought as well as other banned religions (Catholicism, Judaism, Saami animism) within the Kingdom of Sweden.
Kristian has even been "converted" to freethought, and he starts to open up and "preach this religion" at class.
The tradition of having afternoon tea outdoors or in the winter garden depending on the season, and that of celebrating a pagan Yule feast in the winter garden, behind frosty panes and among colourful flowers, have become a staple of the Lindelius clan's everyday life. Erika and Kristian start to fall in love, though they are both too shy to admit the truth about their feelings. They have gradually developed an intellectual relationship, not unlike that of the Clever Princess and her equal in the Fourth Story of "The Snow Queen".
In mid-summer, a week after the modest wedding, and five years before an unexpected war between Sweden and Russia, Karl Johan Lindelius and his son-in-law set sail for the warm latitudes of the vast oceans, to discover the wonders of the New World, while Erika waits at home and tends to the few servants (and winter garden). Pretty soon, she realizes that she is with child. And she receives a letter from the other side of the world, from her father and husband.
Meanwhile, Herr Lindelius and Kristian have entered a British outpost where native villagers act as servants to the landowners and the fort's garrison. They are staying within the white-washed fort, in the Governor's residence, in a spacious apartment with a view of Coral Bay. The Governor, Lord Anson, is a kindly and merry old bachelor not unlike the gentlemen in Dickens's novels (Fezziwig, for instance).
The colony is covered with interminable plantations of sugar cane and coffee, in which a considerate number of dark-skinned "indentured servants" are busily employed, and magnificent Neoclassical estates here and there. The rich and highly cultivated plains are encircled with rocks and rainforests which reach almost to the clouds.
When the rainy season sets in, the Governor being engaged on duty from dawn to dusk, the Swedes have to sit for whole days in their apartment, through the window of which they can see nothing but heavy clouds and a stormy ocean. To beguile tedium, they play chess against each other, and read books in English: Gulliver, Tom Jones, and the complete works of Shakespeare from the Governor's library.
When the mild and clear weather of the dry season returns, Lord Anson usually comes home at dusk, and he usually brings the Swedes with him to explore the woods, all three spending much time, while they range through fields and forests, over hill and valley, searching for endemic plants. And, whenever the Governor discovers some hitherto unknown new plant, he bursts out into exclamations of wonder.
Thus, the Swedes' studies and collection of plants increase gradually. Sometimes, they play croquet with Lord Anson in lush estate gardens. Their letter exchange with Erika increases, and soon she has even better news to tell: her healthy twin girls have been christened Linnéa and Tradescantia. They are not being breastfed by any nanny, but by Erika herself.
After three years of field studies abroad, Kristian and his father-in-law return to Sweden, to their usual routine and to make up for the effect of their absence on the children. As soon as they have reached their hometown and the Lindelius estate, Karl Johan and Kristian receive a warm welcome from all of their acquaintances, but most notably, from the female half of their family. The war is finally over, and the King and Czarina have luckily made peace after a draw.
However, three years after their reunion, tragedy strikes the Lindelius household.
One autumn day, while giving his first lecture on the orchids he has discovered, Kristian collapses before the class. Soon he starts to feel increasingly dizzy and thirsty, finally compelled to stay at home. His wife and children, friends and father-in-law, even Lord Anson himself, are all consternated. By November, Kristian has come down with a blazing fever, and he is finally bedridden due to his weakness. Karl Johan and Erika are soon compelled to watch him write his own will.
On Gustavus Adolphus's death day, the struggle for life Kristian is fighting comes finally to a close. He says farewell to the loved ones by his bed, then mentions there is no better life beyond this one, because the afterlife is still uncharted, wishes his wife, daughters, and father-in-law good luck while kissing them... and falls unconscious, ceasing to breathe.
A grief-stricken Erika is soon reading the will: her husband wishes to be buried in the Ringstetten estate garden in Värmland, he has appointed his twin brother Krister (who survived the war, as he has stated in a letter sent to Kristian) his heir, consoled his own parents in another previous letter, and there is even an arrangement of a levirate marriage between the widowed Erika and the still unmarried Krister. Yet the young mother is somewhat stirred by the idea of marrying a stranger so unlike, yet so like, her late husband!
The promise has nevertheless to be fulfilled. A modest gentleman, his daughter, and her twin children soon arrive at Vänersvik, all dressed in black and having travelled in a black-draped carriage with the lifeless form of a young scholar across a cold, snowy landscape. At the funeral, in a French garden covered in a blanket of snow, they encounter a young man with Kristian's exact appearance, dressed in an officer's uniform. The next day, as Karl Johan returns to Uppsala, Erika and the twins stay on the estate and prepare a second wedding while getting to know Krister. He has become a reserved and cold veteran, at first indifferent to Erika yet compelled to marry her, but soon he feels sorry for her and opens up to his new relatives, though he is at first reluctant to make love and produce an heir, as Linnéa and Tradescantia gradually start to accept him.