This past weekend I attended an intensive three-day workshop on the apparently much debated, highly-regarded Germaine de Stael. I audited this because Stael (pronounced, according to these folks, Stahl) is going to be a central figure in my alternate history.
Well, not “going to be”, she is, but so far she’s been mostly in the background. In the second book, she will be onstage, although in slightly bizarre, nonhistorical form (this is SF after all), but in the third book she will be central—my protagonist will be in her entourage from 1797 until her death in 1817.
Germaine de Stael nee Necker was at one time one of the most popular and well known intellectuals in Europe. …