:-(

… now I really wish I'd thought of that when I created my account.

Ooh, I haven't seen that one either, but I always love Tchaikovsky (and, if we're being honest, all of the major Russian composers—they're great an awful lot of the time). Definitely going on the list.

Yes! Sting's song gets extra points for quoting the Romance from Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé.

Hungry for more Ottoman Empire fun facts? Large portions of Hungary were under Ottoman rule for a long time as well in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And neighboring Romania didn't become independent until 1877!

It's a pretty common one in Russia.

You stop being pretty rather quickly after dying…

I will admit that, having learned that Dvořák wrote an opera on the subject (I didn't know about it either), I am a bit intrigued to find out what his take on it was.

Well, the various regimes of the area did have a lot of their eggs in that one basket, so you could argue that they would have been considerably weakened had that battle been lost. Probably not as much as getting stabbed in the back and completely looted by the Crusaders ahead of time, but who knows what would have…

Well, to be fair, it is kind of annoying that the old Commonwealth only ever comes up when talking about the partitions, discussing the stagnant government and the liberum veto and all the rest, often in rather snide terms, while ignoring the proud history Poland-Lithuania had prior to that. Many empires rise and…

Actually, Glinka's opera itself is pretty interesting for a Russian view of these events. Poland gets portrayed the way France often does—snooty, decadent, slightly effeminate, and basically the epitome of "The West", with their introductory scene being a huge string of ballet dances—whereas the Russians are depicted…

For a Russian version, there's this little opera by Mussorgsky that if you look at my other posts on this page, you can see that I'm a bit fond of. ;-)

I had not heard of this series of novels. May need to check it out sometime!

You'll find them on Badass of the Week, though: http://www.badassoftheweek….

That's one of the things that makes their music (and operas) so great!

Yeah, if you've ever been to Vienna, it's not too hard to figure out why people would want it.

It's not certain of course, which is why I said "might." But I could just as well ask what the percentages of Muslims were in Istanbul and its environs back when that city was called Constantinople, compared to today.

That's why I used "might" instead of "would." ;-)

Poland is, apparently, considered to be grossly overpowered in Civilization V—at least, to the point that a Google search turns up numerous forum posts complaining about it.

<3