History Literature / SixteenThirtyTwo

* MedievalMorons: The series deliberately sets out to subvert this from the start. In the very first book James Nichols has to consult with Doctor Balthazar Abrabanel, his "downtime" counterpart, and it quickly becomes clear that the "local" doctor not only doesn't use leeches and ground bat's wing, he has a medical library in nearly a dozen languages, all of which he speaks and reads fluently. Some of those books are even in English. Nichols, who is fluent in English and... English, is completely dumbfounded. The local high school history teacher, Melissa Mailey, breaks down laughing and says "You didn't actually think you were ''smarter'' than than these people, did you?" In addition, although they have their initial fears, the early modern characters are extremely quick to recognize and appreciate American technology instead of writing it off as witchcraft and even logically deduce why it cannot be magic or the work of the Devil; many downtimers become as adept as, or even better than, their uptime companions in using either the technology that was brought during the initial Ring of Fire or the subsequent tech that's developed as Grantville 'gears down'.

* MedievalMorons: The series deliberately sets out to subvert this from the start. In the very first book James Nichols has to consult with Doctor Balthazar Abrabanel, his "downtime" counterpart, and it quickly becomes clear that the "local" doctor not only doesn't use leeches and ground bat's wing, he has a medical library in nearly a dozen languages, all of which he speaks and reads fluently. Some of those books are even in English. Nichols, who is fluent in English and... English, is completely dumbfounded. The local high school history teacher, Melissa Mailey, breaks down laughing and says "You didn't actually think you were ''smarter'' than than these people, did you?" In addition, although they have their initial fears, the early modern characters are extremely quick to recognize and appreciate American technology instead of writing it off as witchcraft and even logically deduce why it cannot be magic or the work of the Devil.

* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: Mike and Rebecca's children are named Sepharad, Baruch, and Kathleen.

** In another ''Gazette'' story, a band plays Music/Sabaton 's "Lion from the North", a song written in tribute to Gustavus Adolphus; however, this is almost certainly an anachronism, as the song was released on Sabaton's album ''Carolus Rex'' in 2012, twelve years after the Ring of Fire.

“That’s because up-time they used antitampering devices. Lots of wires, and if you pulled the wrong one, the bomb went off. [...]

* RightForTheWrongReasons: In ''The Viennese Waltz'', a maid who overhears part of Sarah Wendell's conversation about fractional reserve banks assumes that [[spoiler:she's referring to the bank of Austria-Hungary and that it doesn't have enough silver to back all its currency. The rumor spreads, leading to a run on the bank]]. This turns out to be true, since [[spoiler:embezzlers who stole part of the silver reserve and printed extra paper money to line their own pockets]].

->'''Scaglia:''' Dear God, what a preposterous siege this has turned into. The chief diplomat for the besiegers setting up his domicile in the city besieged. What's that American expression? Charles V must be spinning in his grave.\\

** Eddie Cantrell, high school kid turned navy lieutenant, with the [[InsistentTerminology king's daughter]] Anne Cathrine of Denmark in ''1634: The Baltic War''. Another one with an interesting twist: [[spoiler:the two's ShotgunWedding was actually engineered by her father -- aka the king of Denmark -- because he wanted a son-in-law with knowledge of uptime technology]].

Unfortunately, the arrival of Grantville upsets the balance of power that UsefulNotes/CardinalRichelieu, First Minister to King Louis XIII of France and the ''de facto'' leader of France, has worked so hard to engineer. A brilliant strategist, Richelieu quickly realizes the importance of the event termed the Ring of Fire and the implications of the historical and technical manuals found in Grantville's library and quickly sets about seeking to block Grantville's influence and using the knowledge of the future to make France the supreme power in the world.

** Don Fernando, King in the Netherlands (formerly the Cardinal-Infante of the Spanish Netherlands) of ''The Bavarian Crisis'' flew into a battlefield to rescue his beloved Maria Anna from what could have been a three-way pile up of Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, Maximilian I of Bavaria, and the city fathers of Basel.

** Flint has admitted that he writes his [[AcceptableTargets Spaniards and French]] as StupidEvil [[MoustacheTwirlingVillain Moustache Twirling Villains]] because he thinks it funnier.