ThinksMarkedly wrote:Daryl wrote:Perhaps that is RFC's oblique reference to Putin acting as if he is the reincarnation of Catherine the Great?
He wouldn't have known about Putin's expansionist or mental state when he made Gustav Anderman say he believed to be the reincarnation of Frederick the Great. When that came out, Boris Yieltsin was still president of Russia, back in the 1990s.
The description of Anderman's actions in WPV are much more recent of course. So yes, he, Tom and Tim could have expanded the background based on real-life events, but even then the timeline stretches. WPV was released on Feb 2023, so the stories must have been written in 2020-2021 before being submitted to David for his final touches and then to the editors. Back then, Putin was only having cabinet meetings with the hilariously long tables, but hadn't actually launched the invasion.
Well, hadn't launched the invasion of the rest of Ukraine - but the Annexation of Crimea was 2014, so that bit of expansionism would have predated writing of this story.
