Lietukr - Blog Posts

edelweissko

1 month ago

What are your favorite things about branpru and lietukr?

briefly speaking — through trial and error I figured I like my ships having historical backing; it just makes stuff much more fun and bloody. Here, this is the case for both — even though the reasons I like one are almost directly opposite to those why I like the other.

I like LietUkr because it’s fucking chill for both; and both actually find comfort and peace in one another, which both Ukraine and Lithuania much deserve after all they’ve been through. Comfort ship🤗

I like BranPru because it’s fucking miserable. How they grapple at eachother’s throats but neither is actually able to let go of another because of the reasons that make both of them sick to their guts from even thinking of it. For what actually brings them closer is a near-obliteration of one and the sheer question of remaining on the political map. The way the power dynamic between them shifts and they way they get attached and get to influence each other so intrinsically neither comes out of it his former self. And neither is able to separate himself from another. It’s not a ship I ship for a healthy stable relationship, neither is capable of that — if it is love, it is amour-propre at best, the enlightment’s violent self-love that stemms out of desire for reckognition from others, desire to be better then them. Brandenburg and Prussia are doomed by the narrative, the narrative existing inside my head but oh well. they also fucking deserve this.

hope that answers

LOOK, LIETUKR HOLDING HANDS!!

Now that I have your attention, here’s a really cool historical event🫶🏼

Battle of Ula happened as a part of broader Livonian war that started when Muscovy (later: Russia) under Ivan the Terrible attacked the weakening state of Livonian Order. One small problem – that gradually dragged all its neighbours in. Initially, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ruthenia and Samogitia suffered losses, notably the city of Polatsk.

Then enter 1564. Muscovy’s army of ≈24 000 is rapidly advancing. So those ≈12 000 of Lithuanians and Ruthenians (self-identification term for Ukrainians and Belaruthians back then) figured that (early) modern problems require (early) modern solutions.

The battle destroyed all stereotyped ideas about military art of the early modern era. It happened not in a warm season, but in winter. It started neither in the morning nor in the afternoon, but in the evening, that is, it happened in the dark hours of the day. And it ended up a crushing defeat for Muscovy, partly due to sheer well cooperation between Lithuanians and Ruthenians, and overall their tactics, like a surprise attack of both army flanks on the forested Ula river.

Also even though they won, they didn’t manage to re-take Polatsk and some other vital terrirories to the East of the Grand Duchy from Muscovy YET (hence Belarus is not there). And this became one of the reasons the Grand Duchy completely united with Poland in 1569 (Unia Lubelska).