#hetalia things

As for your questions!  Hm.  Like I mentioned in the post my BA was in history & classics so I’ve pretty proficient in a very wide array of time periods, and it’s really hard to pick specifics because I love so much about all of them.  I’m a classicist at heart even though I’m not doing my MA in it and even though I don’t write any Hetalia fics re: ancient history, but one of my favourite time periods from Late Antiquity onward would have to be the 15th and 16th centuries?  I love the transition from medieval to early modern a lot, and a lot of my fics (esp my recent ones) derive from these periods, because I love how everything shifts and reforms?  It was in many ways the dawn of a new era, so to speak, and from a character standpoint it’s lovely to explore and delve into.  As for what made me love them that’s Hard because literally all my life I’ve loved history, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of a family (and an elementary school) that encouraged that from a very, very young age (I was in love with history by the time I was six years old at least, because once I learned to read I was hoarding history books in my desk--no joke).  I’ve branched out to a lot of different time periods in my life and am lucky enough to be someone who can sit down and hold her own in discussions about multiple time periods, because I never believed in focusing on just one thing, because I never had just one interest.  And I’m proud of this because it gives me a background and perspective a lot of my peers don’t have.  I love them because I just... do.  It’s fascinating, and I think history is very important and wish it was valued more by people.

I think it translates into my writing quite a bit.  You’d never know because I write very few fics focusing in on England, but one of my best time periods is actually Tudor England, which is how I branched into the Habsburgs, because even though scholarship tends to ignore England’s antagonistic relationship with Spain in the 16th century, it played a major part in their development.  I think it also helps me build atmosphere when I write?  Because this was very much an era of Kings and Emperors but because of the transition from medieval to early modern it was so very different than what it was before.  The world was changing and new powers and laws were coming into play (ex. England’s entire political and aristocratic system was changed under the reign of Henry VII and, to a lesser extent, Henry VIII) and the networks of alliances could be very complex (and v/ controversial, like when France allied themselves with the Ottomans because they hated and feared the Habsburgs and their hegemony more than the prospect of allying with--[16th century European gasp]--Muslims).  You also had the religious conflicts, which I haven’t touched explicitly but there are references to it.  A lot of my earlier Hetalia fics were more 18th century, for sure, and I do know quite a bit about the 17th and 18th centuries as well, but I love the 15th and 16th centuries.  I love the politics of it all, the shifts, the emergences.  I tend to view history as a giant spiderweb, and I love following the strings to see how everything is attached.  Plus this was before nationalism was really a thing.

(And okay I do hate writing about nationalism.  So much.  I also hate early modern philosophy.)