Apognophos:
The preterist goal is to treat prophecy like some weird poetry that lets people vent their woes. They do this because they reject the notion that such a thing as "prophecy" is possible. This requires that they back engineer everything to fit the time period in which it was written. It is pure speculation. Worse yet it is incoherent speculation. They encounter questions they can't answer and that never can be answered because all the facts are supposedly already on the table and a lot doesn't fit. They end up with explanations that are quite similar to Watchtower techniques. They resort to strange relationships of collectives and classes.
Think about what you wrote: "The whore and the beast are largely the same character, Rome. It's just that the woman is the city and the hills are its rulers." Sounds like the old "faithful and discreet slave are the collective body of annointed and the domestics are the individuals." Or jesus didn't show up in 1914 as predicted so he had to have come invisibly." Who writes this stuff? John Levitt (Saturday Night Live's Habitual Liar). Yeah Yeah that's the ticket.
I am not prepared to take apart the preterist interpretations. Not because it is hard but there are enough ongoing arguments among preterists themselves over the meaning of revelation. And then you have the Protestant interpretations where everything takes a crazy turn so that the apostate catholic church becomes the whore. That's where the Russelites entered the picture and as JW's came up with the idea that all religion except JW make up a world empire of false religion.
My interpretation is based on parsimony. It is simple and even though some of the events haven't happened yet it isn't hard to see where it is all going.
Babylon is described as the richest entity on earth. Who could that be?
She has committed fornication with the kings of the earth. Who could that be?
She is trying to ride the Wild Beast which is some kind of succession of empires? Who could they be?
All those who have ships at sea mourn when she is suddenly destroyed by the Wild Beast. What could that mean?
The ten horns who have never had an empire gain that status by alliance with the Wild Beast. Former soviet states all of whom are separate political entities are being wooed by Russia.
The Soviet Union appeared slaughtered to death.
It's death stroke is healed. People wonder admiringly "Who is like the wild beast? Who can do battle with it? " Is Nato going to put Ukraine back together again and pull it into the European Union? That can't be answered for sure. But the reason it can't be answered is that it remains to be seen. The preterists don't have that luxury. If they don't know something - so what - it doesn't matter because it's history not prophecy.
The Two horned Wild Beast which emerges from the earth in Rev 13:11 that looked docile and lamblike but reverted to its dragon like speech and makes the earth worship the beast that had the deathstroke that healed? Is it mere coincidence that Russia looked like you could lead it around with a shepherds commands. It was so docile under Yeltsin and for the early part of Putin's rule. Not any more. It's back to business as usual.
Somewhere in that tangled mess of symbolism the preterists try to construct a coherent picture and being unable simply write it off as a bunch of allegorical ecstatic ramblings.
Yet those symbols parallel the visions of Daniel. Where Revelation is the Wild Beast vs. The Harlot the book of Daniel the King of the North vs. the King of the South.
I'm not a prophet. But I do have eyes.