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Update 33 - De Ruyter


Nel Celestine

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One of her bells was salvaged from the wreck and is now on display at the in the Hague.

<_<

 

Have to say that I hadn't noticed before how incredible out-of-place the random non-English is in those interviews, but now that I can actually read it, yeah, it looks incredibly out of place. Also forgive me for being a cynic, but I can't help but see a connection between the humble/virtuous attitude and the lack of proper equipment.

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Well, that just gave me a surreal feeling of when I tried nudging a kanmusu in an RPG setting with HNLMS Tromp. De Ryuter just gave me that same weird 'surreal' feeling of (Dutch) partnership that it makes me curious how far this feeling shall go and if I'll ever De Ryuter or her comrades sortie in a fleet. De Ryuter is awesome, and I guess modest, as well as adorable with the one eye closed. I now hope my Dutch friend makes note of this, or if consumed by too much RNG salt and such.

 

Something I haven't really seen is a Dutch ship in combat in a game setting so this shall be interesting to note all around. Shall be interesting experiencing/witnessing Dutch Belles on the loose firing their guns hmm.

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:wub: Modest, intelligent, kind, egalitarian, dignified and (according to real world service) gutsy. Also, who doesn't like a redhead? I'm a little sad that the interview was (relatively) short.

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Lol, this was worth the wait. <3

Aaaah, I'm not sure what to say....I need to gather my thoughts.

 

<_<

 

Have to say that I hadn't noticed before how incredible out-of-place the random non-English is in those interviews, but now that I can actually read it, yeah, it looks incredibly out of place. Also forgive me for being a cynic, but I can't help but see a connection between the humble/virtuous attitude and the lack of proper equipment.

I could imagine if you have the best weapons on yourself, you might end up high-and-mighty? But when you have improper equipment because of cost-cutting, you will have to make do with that you have.

 

I do wonder if there's going to be a Belle who's just a bit bitter because someone in her ship-class got better guns or whatever.

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I enjoyed DeRuyter, but that awfully short footnote she gave for her namesake seems a little off...

 

Humble is one thing, but describing one of the greatest admirals in history (almost certainly the best dutch admiral in history) as a "nice guy" seems... just plain off.

 

Its kind of the equivalent of a British ship describing Nelson as a "wicked dude" or a Korean ship named after Yi Sun-sin calling him "a cool guy".

 

Do the Dutch have something against nationalism?

 

And just for clarification I'm referring to the footnote she gave before Mahan intervened.

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Not sure about Dutch Nationalism, yet those tending to Dutch naval military were ecstatic to hear a Canadian (myself) was being sent Dutch related history of their WW2 vessels. They wanted to share every bit of knowledge, postcard type stuff, that they were eager for me to be aware of their naval history. I wish I could ask the Dutch friends I know/knew, yet they had a bit of a temper themselves that I can't really ask them anymore that then makes me wish I could ask this naval museum in Netherlands about nationalism. Those in the museum wanted me to learn about De Ryuter & all their WW2 vessels. Even a funky pen, and such.

 

I'm going to go take a guess that the Dutch are like Canadians that they're quite shy, even willing to mock their own history and achievements from what I've noticed. Downplay our own achievements that we basically end up being almost like emos by cutting ourselves with a knife, type thing. I could be wrong, and I've been shown to be wrong.

 

If curious, feel free to poke around marinemuseum.nl if in one manner or another type of curiousity. Someone might be entertained by something there.

 

-------

 

Edit: The whole bit about upgrading weaponry is something I'm now wanting to experiment with because we could make "lower end" Belles powerful, thus making De Ryuter beastly in that hypothetical world by giving weapons which might have been standard, or late-war type weaponry. That is, if restrictions are actually in place that only certain types of weapons can be added which might make things a bit frustrating.

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You're taking it the wrong way. She's absolutely not downplaying her namesake's achievements. She is simply looking at what made him great, especially from the perspective of his crew. He earned the title of Bestevaer for a reason. He was a father to his men, and more than just a genius. I think that side of him is far more important than his undoubtedly incredible record as an Admiral. It gives you the strength of the man, the size of his character, not just a list of accomplishments.

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Do the Dutch have something against nationalism?

 

And just for clarification I'm referring to the footnote she gave before Mahan intervened.

I'm going to go take a guess that the Dutch are like Canadians that they're quite shy, even willing to mock their own history and achievements from what I've noticed. Downplay our own achievements that we basically end up being almost like emos by cutting ourselves with a knife, type thing. I could be wrong, and I've been shown to be wrong.

Nationalism isn't highly regarded because it's largely blamed for both WWI and WWII, and nothing is said about our part in WWII because school doesn't teach us that there's anything to say. What I was taught is that Nazi Germany started the whole WWII parade, swiftly crushed our larger, but inferior and under-equipped army, forced a capitulation, and...that's pretty much it. I'm honestly not sure what remnant of government declared war against Japan in December 1941, the hiding in Great Britain royal family I guess, but more importantly what non-shredded and/or carpet bombed remnant some poor fool could pretend to call an army was left to care. The only distinctly Dutch WWII thing that was mentioned post-capitulation was the whole Anne Frank scenario, but let's be honest here, that's neither unique or significant in the grand scheme of things, and if she weren't a decent writer hiding behind a literally secret bookcase history likely wouldn't remember her at all. The real focus was on stuff like how Nazi Germany mismanaged this and their own country (by modern standards), how America was pulled into the war, how Stalin prepared (and, by modern standards, subsequently mismanaged) the Soviet Union to prepare for Nazi Germany's inevitable invasion, that sort of stuff.

 

On Admiral De Ruyter, this is the first time I've heard the name. IIRC the 17th century was the VOC era, and beyond a purely economic overview thereof the only thing of note was some guy who's "actually care about what the government does" attitude got him exiled to the far east, where he wrote a really strongly-worded book about how his superiors were mean and how he'd wish the caricatures he wrote of them would all drown in coffee because they were really mean. It was asked whether that book would have raised any significant questions in the government about the bad things he pointed out were going on where he was exiled to, and IIRC the answer was "it might have been discussed, but it wouldn't have lead to anything important". The book was significant for creating/introducing a new writing style, IIRC, not it's content. Never heard of Barbary Pirates, I've no idea what a Plymouth is, the only campaign I recall that I'd call a Northern Campaign was a Spanish/English debacle either in the 13th or 15th century (it wasn't significant, if you couldn't guess), never heard of a Four Days Battle, I'm not quite sure what the Third Anglo-Dutch War was (or, indeed, what the assumed first and second of such wars were) and I've no idea where to find Medway.

 

Incidentally, and this may be a mistaken impression, but I think there's a local tradition of not glorifying and/or romanticizing history. The fact that history is dependant on who's books you read is a fact that was quite literally a part of my history textbook, and I distinctly remember that accounts of Willem van Orange's assassination that claimed the dying man preached fanciful things like someone who didn't just get fatally shot were mocked and called untrustworthy. History as it is taught here in general has nothing glorious or romantic to it, in fact. The only time it's not about some statistic politely called two opposed armies dying in the name of some manner of cause that may or may not require an explanation as to why it was important at the time it's an aforementioned explanation or something completely dull like an update on economic policies/practices.

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That's an interesting perspective Metis, but I do believe there should be more of an emphasis on learning history there. You can forgo the nationalism, but history is important and should be remembered and studied.

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Rest assured that the many hours I've spend in History class are not lacking, especially after a government mandate increased the amount of minimal hours a student must spend in a classroom. The issue is that no aspect of it is sugar-coated, glorified or justified, and eventually students just lose interest. You can only read an endless list of mistakes for so long before you get bored of it, after all.

 

Maybe I was just a terrible student, the blanket memorization classes certainly never were my specialty, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't the worst of them.

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WW2 is more of an example of ultranationalism gone wrong. Nationalism is fine and helps create a sense of common identity amongst a vast amount of people. The problem is when people start taking advantage of people who feel that their national identity is tarnished and someone shows up to "fix the problems" and uses national frustrations to their own means. This results in ultranationalism which is very dangerous.

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The idea of loyalty to an abstract concept in general - be it political ideals from the post-enlightenment era or whatever branch of religion was relevant at the place and time being discussed - is something that my history textbooks never portrayed as a good thing. In the worst case one even went so far as to call it "insane", as I recall, both in modern and ancient context. Conversely, a grounded and mercenary attitude was attributed as the reason why some succeeded where others only failed. Mind you, the latter wasn't exactly glorified either.

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The regular military appeals to people's personal egos, which is tempered by the fact that they absolutely do not understate the difficulty of success. The navy and I think the air force, in contrast, tries to inspire people with personal stories from officers and how it's improved/given meaning to/somethingoranother their lives, and while they don't exactly make a show of the harsher side of that job they don't deny it either. For all three there's also a remnant of the old draft, which these days is entirely voluntary, but every kid that turns 18 still gets an invitation from the army. Finally, they'll occasionally just point out that they have job openings.

 

I should note, by the way, that this is the viewpoint of someone who was born and raised in the far south of the country. In the far north you can find communities where 22 year old woman will be having their third child "as God intended it", so things might work differently there.

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Thanks to both Ninja and Metis for helping to give me new perspective on this section.

 

 

You're taking it the wrong way. She's absolutely not downplaying her namesake's achievements. She is simply looking at what made him great, especially from the perspective of his crew. He earned the title of Bestevaer for a reason. He was a father to his men, and more than just a genius. I think that side of him is far more important than his undoubtedly incredible record as an Admiral. It gives you the strength of the man, the size of his character, not just a list of accomplishments.

 

I'm aware of this, but something in the footnote mentioned read strangely. I don't think my reaction would be as strong if the line was something along the lines of "he was a well-renowned admiral from the 17th century, beloved for his Christian charity and remembered for his service to the Republic". At the time, it seemed like excessive downplaying for the sake of some undeveloped characteristic of the belle herself.

 

 


Incidentally, and this may be a mistaken impression, but I think there's a local tradition of not glorifying and/or romanticizing history. The fact that history is dependant on who's books you read is a fact that was quite literally a part of my history textbook, and I distinctly remember that accounts of Willem van Orange's assassination that claimed the dying man preached fanciful things like someone who didn't just get fatally shot were mocked and called untrustworthy. History as it is taught here in general has nothing glorious or romantic to it, in fact. The only time it's not about some statistic politely called two opposed armies dying in the name of some manner of cause that may or may not require an explanation as to why it was important at the time it's an aforementioned explanation or something completely dull like an update on economic policies/practices.

 

This is a perspective I would have never known about otherwise. My heritage, upbringing, and understanding as a historian was heavily influenced by a sense of romanticism. Even the most unbiased and counter-mainstream arguments HAVE take into account the power of perception and romanticism in relation to the events of the past.

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