Thank you so much for the questions!!9: How does your character feel about religion?Oh boy there’s a lot to unpack here First tho I must preface this by saying, just make sure that nobody walks away with the wrong impression here, while yes Stefina is an atheist Stefina has No Problem Whatsoever with people who are religious or with other people being religious provided they’re not pushing/imposing their beliefs on others or if a person is in a position authority that has nothing to do with religion (like say a judge a lawyer a government official something like that) as long as it doesn’t affect how they do their job she has no issues At All Now when she was much younger she was religious but several things happened that kinda planted seeds of doubt in her mind like well getting older thinking for herself and questioning things but also later on stuff like the reformation, hearing about The religious wars in France, the inquisition, etc But then the 30 years war happened and that experience more than anything else shredded any belief in a god that Stefina had left at that point living through and witnessing that war, the senseless brutal violence, pillage, rape, starvation, the horrific decimation of the population (about half to 2/3rds of the population in some areas), the intense and abject human suffering and for what?? Having had to witness and go through all That* shattered the idea for Stefina that there could be a god But it wasn’t just that it was also having read the writings of (at that point fellow) skeptics and such and witnessing the advance of science and the enlightenment those have definitely played a role as well and it was not a minor one* I’m going to add a couple quotes here that do much better job than me at summing up what Stefina would’ve seen/gone through with this war Now I want to warn you guys these quotes mention/describe some pretty heinous and awful shit so reader discretion is advised
“Then there was naught but beating and burning, plundering, torture, and murder. Most especially was everyone of the enemy bent on securing much booty… What with blows and threats of shooting, stabbing, or hanging, the poor people were so terrified that if they had had anything left they would have brought it forth if it had been… hidden away in a thousand castles. In this frenzied rage the great and splendid city that had stood like a fair princess in the land was now… given over to the flames, and thousands of innocent men, women, and children, in the midst of a horrible din of heart-rending shrieks and cries, were tortured and put to death in so cruel and shameful a manner that no words would suffice to describe, nor tears to bewail it.” - a contemporary describing the taking of Magdeburg “There were not two armies but six-German, Danish, Swedish, Bohemian, Spanish, French; armies manned largely by mercenaries and foreigners having no attachment to the German people or soil or history, and led by military adventures fighting for any faith for a fee; armies fed by appropriating the grains and fruits and cattle of the fields, quartered and wintering in the homes of people, and recompensed with the right to plunder and the ecstasy of killing and rape. To massacre any garrison that had refused to surrender, after surrender had become inevitable, was a principal excepted by all combatants. Soldiers felt that civilians were legitimate prey; they shot at their feet in the streets, conscripted them as servants, kidnapped their children for ransom, fired their haystacks and burned their churches for fun. They cut off the hands and feet of a protestant pastor who resisted the wrecking of his church; they tied priests under wagons, forcing them to crawl on all fours till they fainted with exhaustion. The right of a soldier to rape was taken for granted; when a father asked for justice against a soldier who had raped and killed his daughter, he was informed by the commanding officer that if the girl had not been so stingy with her virginity she would still be alive.” “Thousands of fertile acres were left untilled for lack of men, draft animals, or seed, or because peasants had no assurance that they could reap where they had sown. Crops were used to feed armies, and what remained was burned to prevent the feeding of foes. Peasants in many localities were reduced to eating the hidden remnants of dogs, cats, rats, acorns, grass;… Men and women competed with ravens and dogs for the flesh of dead horses..… [Many] towns were reduced to half their former population. Great cities were in ruins.… taxation impoverished everybody but the generals, tax collectors, prelates, and kings.…The fatalism of despair invited the cynicism of brutality. All the ideals of religion and patriotism disappeared after a generation of violence; simple men now fought for food or drink or hate, while their masters mobilized their passions in the competition for taxable lands and political power.”
39: What would be your character’s niche on Tumblr?Antique German and Prussian weapons and uniforms, sewing/needlework, historical cooking, and hema/fencing (tho there would also be a lot of cute pictures and videos of dogs on her blog as well)
