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selenakThis was given to me by cahn; takes place in an AU Renaissance (specifics to follow) in which Byantium never fell and instead became the last remaining superpower standing, gobling up most other countries (and is therefore the - off page - Big Bad of the story), while our heroes are a bunch of OCs - a Welsh wizard, a Greek mercenary who's really the last survivor of a previous dynasty, an Italian (female) doctor from Florence and a German science-minded weapons engineer plus mercenary who bears the hilarious-in-German-sounding designation "Fachritter", is otherwise called Gregory of Bavaria and is my favourite.
Oh, and he's also a vampire, one of the few good ones. This novel's take on vampirism is chillingly effective; basically a sickness the majority of the infected spreads around as they only look for their own survival/gratification, and also a biological weapon for the Big Bads. The whole saga culminates in our heroes ensuring Richard III. wins at Bosworth, because the way you can tell this is a novel from the Anglosphere is that England is one of the last realms not yet gobled up by Byzantium and that they want to take over, with the very briefly showing up Henry Tydder/Tudor only the last of many tools.
I can't make up my mind how I feel about this novel. On the one hand, the language is beautiful, there are many memorable phrases, the four main characters are all vividly brought to life, and the various AU takes on historical events were cleverly done. Like the Pazzi conspiracy. Because Christianity in this AU sank back into being a minor cult of many after a successful Emperor Julian (the Apostate) brought back paganism, a lot of rl elements would have been impossible (the shock moment of it taking place in the Duomo on Easter Sunday, with the Papacy involved, for starters). So instead of the Riarios and the Pope as key players in addition to the Pazzi, in this AU it's the Byzantines pulling the strings and blackmailing our heroine Cynthia Ricci and her father into poisoning Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano. The net result isn't that different (Giuliano dead, Lorenzo lives (for now), primary conspirators dead in vengeance), but because we're in Cynthia's pov throughout and the AU circumstances are different enough for the twists to come as surprises, the emotional shock remains the same. Also, the novel's explanation for the fate of the princes in the Tower ties up various major storylines and uses the primary horror of it very well.
On the other hand: the whole novel feels like it's a sketch for a longer work. Our four original main characters, after being carefully introduced, hardly spend any time together (solving a locked room mystery) before hurrying off into different plot threads again, and yet we're supposed to believe they've become close and deeply care about each other. The AU takes on various historical characters who only show up in one chapter, be they Lorenzo de' Medici, Louis XI "The Spider King" of France, Marguerite d'Anjou or Cecily Neville are for my money more interestingly drawn than the hiistorical characters who do show up for a longer page time (primarily Anthony Woodville, and Richard the later III himself) - not that the later are dull characters, that's not it, but they're written in a fanfiction way, i.e. as if the reader is expected to already know and care about them and want the OCs to get invested in them. Which means that I'm never entirely sold on Dimi(trios) becoming so deeply and intensely loyal to Richard (and vice versa), or Cynthia having an affair with Anthony Woodville. (Speaking as a kind-of-Ricardian, I also can't decide whether I'm amused or appalled that this AU killed off Richard's rl bff and right hand man Francis Lovel in its backstory as a boy. This fulfills two important plot purposes - a) it means Dimi can take his place with Richard and be at Bosworth, and b) it means Anthony Woodville - who in the AU accidentally killed young Francis in a tournament - has a reason to feel guilty vis a vis Richard and when Richard doesn't kill him at the point when rl Richard did sides with him for the remaining plot and therefore is able to show up at Bosworth and complete the day saving that Dimi started. I mean, I'm all for AUs where Richard lives, but are you saying rl sidekick Francis Lovel was somewhat lacking and not good enough for you, John Ford?) (RL Francis, who was at the battle of Bosworth, never got over Richard's death and after some time in Burgundy with Margaret of York kept it up with the anti-Tudor rebellions until it got him killed.)
Byzantium as the off page Big Bad works because the introductory chapters in which all of our heroes are shown to get traumatized by various evil deeds of the evil Empire do show, beyond a general "Empires bad", why our heroic four are against them and they therefore foiling the England takeover is good. I also appreciate that the novel doesn't simplify by declaring that without Christianity, everything would be better - this AU is as bloody and messed up as rl history was, just with different players. But while the narration is compelling enough not to make me question it while actively reading, as soon as I put the book aside I start nitpicking the entire premise. For starters: where's Islam? Based on the brief mention of Saladin (as a bff of Richard Couer de Lion, since the Crusades didn't happen and neither was Richard a Christian nor Saladin a Muslim), Islam either never happened or remained in the minor minor cult stage, too. (We see two Christians, or Jeshides, in the novel at different points. We don't see any Muslims. At all.) And I don't see how this would have been a logical fallout from the two major points where history goes AU in this universe, to wit, first by Julian being successful in changing Christianity back from the newly exclusive faith to one of many, and secondly by Justinian and Theodora living longer than they did in rl (because vampirism) and managing to consolidate the reconquest of the old Roman Empire.
Secondly, I'm currently listening to a podcast about the history of Byzantium, which reminded me again how key inter Christian religious feudings (mostly, but not exclusively orthodox faith vs Monophycism) were to all the politics, and trying to imagine Byzantium without Christianity is really hard. (Would Justinian even have become Emperor? One of the reasons why his uncle Justin made it to the top job was that the previous encumbant had ticked off the orthodox majority by showing his own Monophysicst leanings.) And while we're talking monarchs, how come Louis XI is Louis XI of France in an AU where because Byzantium was able to regain control of the entire Empire during and post Justinian's reign, Charlemagne thus presumably never was crowned as Emperor in Rome by the Pope, the Carolingians never ruled, and thus presumably Hugh Capet (who was descended from two of Charlemagne's sons) didn't happen, either? (Of whom, in turn, Louis XI descended.) And let's not even start on the likelihood of the names of the historical characters remaining the same in this AU. I mean, I know why Ford did it - so the readers would know who these people are - but a lot of them were named for saints. Why the hell would Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth (Jane) Shore be named for Elizabeth the biblical cousin of the Virgin Mary and mother of John the Baptist in a world where the Christian bible has no meaning? (Same for anyone called Anne, which includes Richard's wife.) Come to think of it: John of Gaunt's second marriage to Constance of Castile evidently can't have happened in an AU where Spain remained part of the Roman Empire, there never was history of 700 years of Muslim kingdoms or a Reconquista. If John of Gaunt didn't marry Constance (and her money), does he marry Katherine Swynford directly and does he have the same children with her he did in rl with an existing Constance? Given John of Gaunt is the ancestor of Henry VI, Henry Tudor and through one of his Beaufort daughters of the Yorkist Kings as well, that's kind of an issue to the existence of basically everyone in the Wars of the Roses.
It just gets more headache inducing the more you think of it.
Like I said, this doesn't bother me while I'm reading, because the prose is really beautiful and I do want to know what happens to the main characters. It's just now that I'm bothered. :) Mind you, with all AUs, you have to accept to a degree that this just is how things are, and I'm so grateful for any that aren't the nth rerun of "what if the Nazis won?" Plus Hywel is a great take on the wily old magician archetype, Cynthia's entire introduction chapter with its Medici AU is perhaps my favourite individual chapter, and Gregory the vampire Fachritter (a term that will make me smile every time I think it ) makes me with for the AU where he and Hywel are sleuthing their way through a series of Renaissance mysteries. In terms of AU takes on Richard III, though, I'm still with Doctor Who and the blackly hilarious Big Finish adventure The King Maker. And I do wish we'd seen more of Cecily Neville, she was very memorable in the one chapter Ford gave her.
Lastly, I think if this novel had been a trilogy so we'd seen our four main characters become a team, had spent more time in each of the various locations and had gotten to see their relationships with the historical characters grow less rapidly, I think I wouldn't have even thought of wondering what the hell happened to the Prophet Mohammed. :)
cahn; takes place in an AU Renaissance (specifics to follow) in which Byantium never fell and instead became the last remaining superpower standing, gobling up most other countries (and is therefore the - off page - Big Bad of the story), while our heroes are a bunch of OCs - a Welsh wizard, a Greek mercenary who's really the last survivor of a previous dynasty, an Italian (female) doctor from Florence and a German science-minded weapons engineer plus mercenary who bears the hilarious-in-German-sounding designation "Fachritter", is otherwise called Gregory of Bavaria and is my favourite. Oh, and he's also a vampire, one of the few good ones. This novel's take on vampirism is chillingly effective; basically a sickness the majority of the infected spreads around as they only look for their own survival/gratification, and also a biological weapon for the Big Bads. The whole saga culminates in our heroes ensuring Richard III. wins at Bosworth, because the way you can tell this is a novel from the Anglosphere is that England is one of the last realms not yet gobled up by Byzantium and that they want to take over, with the very briefly showing up Henry Tydder/Tudor only the last of many tools.
I can't make up my mind how I feel about this novel. On the one hand, the language is beautiful, there are many memorable phrases, the four main characters are all vividly brought to life, and the various AU takes on historical events were cleverly done. Like the Pazzi conspiracy. Because Christianity in this AU sank back into being a minor cult of many after a successful Emperor Julian (the Apostate) brought back paganism, a lot of rl elements would have been impossible (the shock moment of it taking place in the Duomo on Easter Sunday, with the Papacy involved, for starters). So instead of the Riarios and the Pope as key players in addition to the Pazzi, in this AU it's the Byzantines pulling the strings and blackmailing our heroine Cynthia Ricci and her father into poisoning Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano. The net result isn't that different (Giuliano dead, Lorenzo lives (for now), primary conspirators dead in vengeance), but because we're in Cynthia's pov throughout and the AU circumstances are different enough for the twists to come as surprises, the emotional shock remains the same. Also, the novel's explanation for the fate of the princes in the Tower ties up various major storylines and uses the primary horror of it very well.
On the other hand: the whole novel feels like it's a sketch for a longer work. Our four original main characters, after being carefully introduced, hardly spend any time together (solving a locked room mystery) before hurrying off into different plot threads again, and yet we're supposed to believe they've become close and deeply care about each other. The AU takes on various historical characters who only show up in one chapter, be they Lorenzo de' Medici, Louis XI "The Spider King" of France, Marguerite d'Anjou or Cecily Neville are for my money more interestingly drawn than the hiistorical characters who do show up for a longer page time (primarily Anthony Woodville, and Richard the later III himself) - not that the later are dull characters, that's not it, but they're written in a fanfiction way, i.e. as if the reader is expected to already know and care about them and want the OCs to get invested in them. Which means that I'm never entirely sold on Dimi(trios) becoming so deeply and intensely loyal to Richard (and vice versa), or Cynthia having an affair with Anthony Woodville. (Speaking as a kind-of-Ricardian, I also can't decide whether I'm amused or appalled that this AU killed off Richard's rl bff and right hand man Francis Lovel in its backstory as a boy. This fulfills two important plot purposes - a) it means Dimi can take his place with Richard and be at Bosworth, and b) it means Anthony Woodville - who in the AU accidentally killed young Francis in a tournament - has a reason to feel guilty vis a vis Richard and when Richard doesn't kill him at the point when rl Richard did sides with him for the remaining plot and therefore is able to show up at Bosworth and complete the day saving that Dimi started. I mean, I'm all for AUs where Richard lives, but are you saying rl sidekick Francis Lovel was somewhat lacking and not good enough for you, John Ford?) (RL Francis, who was at the battle of Bosworth, never got over Richard's death and after some time in Burgundy with Margaret of York kept it up with the anti-Tudor rebellions until it got him killed.)
Byzantium as the off page Big Bad works because the introductory chapters in which all of our heroes are shown to get traumatized by various evil deeds of the evil Empire do show, beyond a general "Empires bad", why our heroic four are against them and they therefore foiling the England takeover is good. I also appreciate that the novel doesn't simplify by declaring that without Christianity, everything would be better - this AU is as bloody and messed up as rl history was, just with different players. But while the narration is compelling enough not to make me question it while actively reading, as soon as I put the book aside I start nitpicking the entire premise. For starters: where's Islam? Based on the brief mention of Saladin (as a bff of Richard Couer de Lion, since the Crusades didn't happen and neither was Richard a Christian nor Saladin a Muslim), Islam either never happened or remained in the minor minor cult stage, too. (We see two Christians, or Jeshides, in the novel at different points. We don't see any Muslims. At all.) And I don't see how this would have been a logical fallout from the two major points where history goes AU in this universe, to wit, first by Julian being successful in changing Christianity back from the newly exclusive faith to one of many, and secondly by Justinian and Theodora living longer than they did in rl (because vampirism) and managing to consolidate the reconquest of the old Roman Empire.
Secondly, I'm currently listening to a podcast about the history of Byzantium, which reminded me again how key inter Christian religious feudings (mostly, but not exclusively orthodox faith vs Monophycism) were to all the politics, and trying to imagine Byzantium without Christianity is really hard. (Would Justinian even have become Emperor? One of the reasons why his uncle Justin made it to the top job was that the previous encumbant had ticked off the orthodox majority by showing his own Monophysicst leanings.) And while we're talking monarchs, how come Louis XI is Louis XI of France in an AU where because Byzantium was able to regain control of the entire Empire during and post Justinian's reign, Charlemagne thus presumably never was crowned as Emperor in Rome by the Pope, the Carolingians never ruled, and thus presumably Hugh Capet (who was descended from two of Charlemagne's sons) didn't happen, either? (Of whom, in turn, Louis XI descended.) And let's not even start on the likelihood of the names of the historical characters remaining the same in this AU. I mean, I know why Ford did it - so the readers would know who these people are - but a lot of them were named for saints. Why the hell would Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth (Jane) Shore be named for Elizabeth the biblical cousin of the Virgin Mary and mother of John the Baptist in a world where the Christian bible has no meaning? (Same for anyone called Anne, which includes Richard's wife.) Come to think of it: John of Gaunt's second marriage to Constance of Castile evidently can't have happened in an AU where Spain remained part of the Roman Empire, there never was history of 700 years of Muslim kingdoms or a Reconquista. If John of Gaunt didn't marry Constance (and her money), does he marry Katherine Swynford directly and does he have the same children with her he did in rl with an existing Constance? Given John of Gaunt is the ancestor of Henry VI, Henry Tudor and through one of his Beaufort daughters of the Yorkist Kings as well, that's kind of an issue to the existence of basically everyone in the Wars of the Roses.
It just gets more headache inducing the more you think of it.
Like I said, this doesn't bother me while I'm reading, because the prose is really beautiful and I do want to know what happens to the main characters. It's just now that I'm bothered. :) Mind you, with all AUs, you have to accept to a degree that this just is how things are, and I'm so grateful for any that aren't the nth rerun of "what if the Nazis won?" Plus Hywel is a great take on the wily old magician archetype, Cynthia's entire introduction chapter with its Medici AU is perhaps my favourite individual chapter, and Gregory the vampire Fachritter (a term that will make me smile every time I think it ) makes me with for the AU where he and Hywel are sleuthing their way through a series of Renaissance mysteries. In terms of AU takes on Richard III, though, I'm still with Doctor Who and the blackly hilarious Big Finish adventure The King Maker. And I do wish we'd seen more of Cecily Neville, she was very memorable in the one chapter Ford gave her.
Lastly, I think if this novel had been a trilogy so we'd seen our four main characters become a team, had spent more time in each of the various locations and had gotten to see their relationships with the historical characters grow less rapidly, I think I wouldn't have even thought of wondering what the hell happened to the Prophet Mohammed. :)
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Date: 2022-12-05 05:12 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed reading your thoughts on this (I enjoy your history thoughts in general!). Make I inquire what podcast you're listening to?
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Date: 2022-12-05 05:27 pm (UTC)Re: the novel, be warned: when I say "off page", I mean it. There is not a single scene actually set in Byzantium itself. It's talked about, and we see various Byzantine agents do evil things throughout the novel, but if you read the book for Byzantine elements, you might end up disappointed.
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Date: 2022-12-05 05:59 pm (UTC)Thank you for the warning!
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Date: 2022-12-05 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-06 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-06 09:36 am (UTC)For some reason they gave him another chance to break the franchise and, award-winning Paranoia author that he is, he made a valiant attempt to do so, before being banned from writing any more (despite their continued popularity). They are both officially considered to be alternate-reality novels.
Speaking of his rather dubious sense of humour and like of Elizabethan passion plays, I also quite enjoyed The Illusionist which is a murder mystery set within a murder mystery play in a fantasy world (the shared world of Liavek put together by The Scribblies, the Minnesota SF Writers Group).
He will be missed.
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Date: 2022-12-06 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-06 01:39 am (UTC)I know what you mean. I have also tried plotting "Christianity never took off" Renaissance AUs (without vampires, but with pagan gods), and I have gone through a very similar thought process! Including the "But what about Islam?" one.
Mine is easier because I'm not reproducing specific individuals, so I've managed to avoid the Christian names (being a historical linguist by training, you can imagine these were among the first things to be axed *g*). But I keep running into the "But why would X be the same if the conditions that created it don't exist?" and "But how many differences can I introduce before it's diverged so far that it's no longer a satisfying Renaissance AU at all?" dilemma.
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Date: 2022-12-06 07:40 am (UTC)Did you find a solution to that one?
But I keep running into the "But why would X be the same if the conditions that created it don't exist?" and "But how many differences can I introduce before it's diverged so far that it's no longer a satisfying Renaissance AU at all?" dilemma.
I hear you. It's really so interwoven that if you want to keep something that's recognizably the Renaissance in a plausible way, I think writing out Christianity doesn't work. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it! Just declare it by authorial fiat. I mean, if we accept Shakespeare's Roman plays with their chiming bells and clocks in the age of the late Roman Republic, and his take on Greek mythology that goes hand in hand with Christian nunneries existing, not to mention his geography (famously Bohemia having a sea coast)...
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Date: 2022-12-06 08:04 am (UTC)Did you find a solution to that one?
I...sort of? I managed to turn it into a different problem, if that counts. :P (Different problem: I don't have nearly enough worldbuilding of Mediterranean cultures since I decided to move the action to Italy. Italy solved the most important problems I was having, but opened up whole other cans of worms.)
It's really so interwoven that if you want to keep something that's recognizably the Renaissance in a plausible way, I think writing out Christianity doesn't work.
It's SO interwoven! I read your review here and was nodding vigorously along.
I think I've managed to reduce the number of things I actually need from the Renaissance to: 1) a German emperor who intervenes in northern Italy, 2) a Medici family counterpart (but with major differences), 3) the invention of the printing press.
The good news is, as you know from "Sir Not Appearing on AO3 Fix-it Fritz Fic", I almost never write any of my plots down, so the pressure to solve these problems is low, and it remains a lowkey exercise in fun plotting.
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Date: 2022-12-13 07:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-13 08:14 am (UTC)Is that the Mike Duncan one? If so, he's the guy who wrote the Lafayette bio I recced to you and Cahn, so if you didn't think it was terrible, I might check it out at some point.
As your fave is also the podcaster's fave
Score!
single biggest mistake Diocletian made
Huh, even over the way he handled the succession? From a realpolitik perspective (not a moral one), that's what I usually see treated as the single biggest one.
people shouldn't base their "Christianity never became more than one of many faiths in the Roman Empire" instead on an AU where Diocletian didn't let Galerius off the leash in that regard?
I unfortunately don't have enough of the details at the front of my mind to offer an informed opinion about this. I do believe that what Diocletian did was a mistake even from his perspective, in that it backfired, and I've written on that subject before...but how an AU would play out, and what you'd have to change to get the desired outcome is an interesting question that I'll keep in mind next time I'm researching this period.
I do have memories of thinking that Julian never stood a realistic chance, so making him not the focal point is sensible!
My own AU doesn't depend on any Roman emperors, as the premise is that everyone is living in a polytheistic world with gods wandering around, so monotheism is fighting even more of an uphill battle than irl. Of course, there's nothing about pagan gods that doesn't mean you couldn't come up with a religion that said, "These beings are terrible, they're just demons, you shouldn't worship them," and have Christianity or Judaism or Islam anyway. But you could at least by authorial fiat specify that no one has dared, due to the fact that the gods are right there and will smite you.
Lol, Diocletian is like Leopold for me, though: when you mentioned writing me a fic that involved family relationships, I was like, "Okay, I'm sure any fic by you would be great, but I am here for the realpolitik and the reforms!" That *is* my human interest angle. :) Ditto the reason I had to go read Peham for my own interests and I continue checking to see if a copy of Wandruszka will ever come on the market.
...Which reminds me, I haven't done my daily check yet today.
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Date: 2022-12-13 02:49 pm (UTC)Huh, even over the way he handled the succession? From a realpolitik perspective (not a moral one), that's what I usually see treated as the single biggest one.
Well, I hadn't listened to the succession handling episode yet when I wrote the earlier comment, and now I have. While Duncan doesn't say "biggest mistake" he sure as hell sees it as a fateful one, in various aspects, though he does the "one one hand/on the other hand" reasoning, for example: on the one hand, given that the one version of the Tetrarchy which really worked was the one where, all pretensions of partnership not withstanding, it was clear that ultimately, Diocletian was the big cheese, so maybe things would have worked out better if he hadn't made Maximinian retire with him and thus there'd still been one senior guy in charge? On the other hand, no, it wouldn't have worked, because Maximian didn't have Diocletians political skills and would have argued with the other three (whoever the newly appointed fourth would have been) anyway, with a similar clusterfuck resulting. On the one hand, Diocletion choosing two experienced generals for the new Caesars instead of picking the two sons (i.e. Maxentius and Constantine) of the already serving Emperors was an understandable attempt to create continuity for his non-dynastic model of the Tetrarchy, otoh, he let Galerius do the choosing for the new Caesars, thereby unbalancing the new Tetrarchy to a three against one situation, which means instability and asking for trouble from the get go even without the two padawans feeling slighted. And then, unlike Sulla, he lived long enough after retiring to see his life's work destroyed right in front of him, alas for Diocletian. On that cheerful note, promising said destruction in the next episode, the Abdication episode ended.
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Date: 2022-12-13 03:04 pm (UTC)Uh, yeah, no, that would indeed have been a clusterfuck, and I think Diocletian knew that. I think there's a reason he kept making Maximian retire.
was an understandable attempt to create continuity for his non-dynastic model of the Tetrarchy
Oh, yeah, I am totally in sympathy with him! Had he succeeded, I would have been totally behind that. Also I would totally have done the same thing. (I would, let's be realistic, probably have gone all Joseph II on my subjects, for all that he's not my favorite. I never claimed to have political acumen personally.) But, yeah, in hindsight, that was a mistake. (I feel like there had to be some way of handling this that wasn't "competent adult son automatically inherits" but also not "clusterfuck", but not that I know what it was.)
promising said destruction in the next episode, the Abdication episode ended.
I vote for you to listen to it :), especially as Diocletian will come back briefly and have my favorite of his moments in the sun, even though that won't work out either long-term. (I'm just neverendlingly amazed that even retired, even sick/dying, he had enough clout that they called him up and actually did what he said, even if he couldn't make it stick.)
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Date: 2022-12-13 03:55 pm (UTC)(For their part, Duncan says that the Romans were all "we invented this bs, we're not going to treat you as semi-divine, Diocles!" and also "party time! Let's have games and orgies on the occasion of the Emperor's visit!" which apparently shocked Diocletian after two decades of being treated with due reverence and not being into parties.)
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Date: 2022-12-13 03:59 pm (UTC)Rome: Excuse me, we have senators, we like to participate in ruling?
Diocletian: Excuse you, you don't have senators, you have emperor-minions. I am the emperor and they are my minions.
Rome: *middle finger*
He doesn't quite compare them with an aged prostitute
Hahaha, well, you know, after reading about Florence under the last Medici...I started to see where Algarotti and Fritz were coming from! :P
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Date: 2022-12-14 12:21 pm (UTC)Speaking of young C, you'd like this, about young Constantine growing up at Diocletian's court: "On the one hand, the son of a Caesar certainly would benefit from close proximity to the senior Augustus; on the other, hostage is such an ugly word..." (Since Diocletian had reason to remember how Britain and Gaul as a power base could lead a general to declare independence, and not that he didn't trust Constantius, but...) Hence young Constantine buttering up Galerius as much as he could once Diocletian had retired in order to be allowed to leave. Re: the story that Galerius was drunk when permitting it, Duncan says that undoubtedly, that was the best explanation for Galerius: "Just imagine how he'd look if he'd been sober."
Still, Diocletian coming out of retirement to give everyone a stern talking to would have been the perfect final great moment for him, but alas, he lived longer. Duncan says during the last nine months of his life , he had to watch as he couldn't even help his captured wife and daughter because Maximius Daia just ignored him and his petitions, and no one else listened anymore, either. Duncan thinks that while it's possible Diocletian died of natural causes, it's just as likely he committed suicide as his old friend Maximian had done, though Maximian had been forced into it by Constantine and Diocletian, if he did, would have chosen it due to being sick of the world he'd spend so much effort into rebuilding going to hell in a handbasket.
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Date: 2022-12-15 08:55 am (UTC)Still, Diocletian coming out of retirement to give everyone a stern talking to would have been the perfect final great moment for him, but alas, he lived longer.
I know, I always felt this story had no narrative satisfaction! It's very frustrating, and I think that's part of the reason I engage with it emotionally. All my favorite fandoms are where I feel the irresistible urge to change something. (Fictionally: I am not actually all about cheering on autocrats to unlimited success in real life.)
it's just as likely he committed suicide as his old friend Maximian had done
Oof, I can see that. Though wasn't he so sick at one point he was believed dead/dying, before he recovered enough to poke his head out in public again? I'm not inclined to think it's "just" as likely, though I'm certainly willing to believe it's possible.
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Date: 2022-12-13 04:03 pm (UTC)Yes, it's the Mike Duncan one, and I hadn't had the chance yet to read the Lafayette bio.
Sorry for being a bit unclear here, I meant "if you didn't think the podcast was terrible, I might check it out." I know you haven't had a chance to read the Lafayette bio yet. ;)
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Date: 2022-12-06 06:58 am (UTC)Also, Gregory is THE BEST :D (And I seem to remember when doing a reread that someone else pointed out that "Fachritter" was hilarious, but I've forgotten why -- details?)
I can't make up my mind how I feel about this novel.
This is why I was like, "I can't exactly recommend it to you? I hope you like it? but I really want you to read it and talk to me about it?" :)
I think one of the things that is a bit weird to me is that Ford is clearly sort of playing around for the sake of playing around sometimes. Like the locked-room murder -- why? It doesn't really advance either the AU or the plot significantly. I think it's mostly there because Ford wanted to write a locked-room murder! Also, sometimes he just makes really bad jokes, like someone pointed out to me that Stella Martis = Star Wars OMG (which in the reread the resident Classics person told us didn't actually make sense in Latin, but anyway) :)
But yes, I agree that Richard and Anthony Woodville are written in a fanfic sort of way! Which puzzled me when I first read it, not actually knowing or caring about either of them at the time, and all of the emotional entanglements seemed to happen awfully quickly. I also appreciate the info about RL Francis, which I didn't know :D
I did think it was interesting how Ford's constructed it so that AU!Richard clearly doesn't conform to either Shakespearean!Richard or Ricardian!Richard -- he's drawn as a really rather nice, reasonable guy (contrary to Shakespearean!Richard), but who is fully complicit in executing Hastings and Buckingham and murdering his nephews -- but he had reasons, darn it!
Lastly, I think if this novel had been a trilogy so we'd seen our four main characters become a team, had spent more time in each of the various locations and had gotten to see their relationships with the historical characters grow less rapidly, I think I wouldn't have even thought of wondering what the hell happened to the Prophet Mohammed. :)
Yes! And I would really like either as part of that, or as a sequel to this book, to see them actually take on Byzantium. This definitely felt a bit to me like a slice of something larger -- but then perhaps that's part of the point; as Hywel says, history and magic are slow :)
On Byzantium: I read Charles Williams' Arthurian poetry years later (he was an Inkling, though I only knew of him because Ford likes to use him for epigraphs). His poetry is extraordinarily
on crackChristian-symbolic in over-the-top ways, and he equates Byzantium with the City of God, in an overtly Christianized mythology. (And the "antipodes" with, basically, Hell, which, uh, yeah. Moving right along.) I am utterly convinced that part of Ford's motivation in making Byzantium the Big Bad was to invert Williams' conception (and no less, in an AU where Christianity was a minor cult!).Random question: Do you understand what happened to Hywel during the Battle of Bosworth? (I never have totally understood it.) He was clearly having the symptoms of a heart attack. Do you think he used the dragon's power to fix his heart? For the entire rest of the book he's been going on about how using magic to do this sort of thing is against what he believes in. But he's certainly alive at the end...
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Date: 2022-12-06 08:36 am (UTC)Nothing much to contribute from me, except
he equates Byzantium with the City of God, in an overtly Christianized mythology. (And the "antipodes" with, basically, Hell
This has to be a Dante reference, right? Dante set his Purgatory at the antipodes of Jerusalem. This is one of the few things I remember from the college course where we covered Dante.
which in the reread the resident Classics person told us didn't actually make sense in Latin
Yeah, at best it's Star War if you stretch it, but really Star of War (Mars), which is not how I parse "Star Wars" at all--I always parsed that as Wars of/in the Stars!
His poetry is extraordinarily
on crackHahaha, without having read it, this is extremely what I've osmosed from my Tolkien/Inklings studies, yes. :D
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Date: 2022-12-06 04:37 pm (UTC)Yes! Williams was a huge Dante fan and even wrote a book on Dante's work, The Figure of Beatrice, which I read once upon a time but have basically forgotten, I should read it again!
Hahaha, without having read it, this is extremely what I've osmosed from my Tolkien/Inklings studies, yes. :D
Ha! I mean, I love it, it is really interesting and numinous and... also quite wacko! I wouldn't recommend his poetry to you or Selena, I think (though I have recced it in the past to at least one person whom I had reason to believe would enjoy numinous crack).
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Date: 2022-12-06 08:59 am (UTC)It's the combination of the very modern term "Fach" with the ancient "Ritter" that does it. A "Fachmann" today is an expert for trade or field of knowledge X. I mean, you'd smile too if Gregory said his official designation was "Tech Bro Knight", wouldn't you?
Francis Lovel(l): see also here. In Sharon Penman's The Sunne in Splendour, he's one of the major pov characters. (When I wrote my Yuletide story about Richard and Anne some years back, I reread the novel for the first time since years to refresh my memory and it was startling to realize how painstakingly Penman avoids giving us Richard's pown pov - most of the Richard centric chapters are from Francis' pov - , and only rarely do we get Anne's.)
I did think it was interesting how Ford's constructed it so that AU!Richard clearly doesn't conform to either Shakespearean!Richard or Ricardian!Richard -
Well, yes and no, because there's no single unified Ricardian!Richard, there's actually a whole big variety of theories, and contrary to the cliché (and the hilarious Horrible Histories song), the main arguments re: the Princes in the Tower isn't "he was too nice a guy to do it", but:
a) It would not have made pragmatic sense for him to do it in this way - if he wanted to prevent any further attempted invasions and/or rebellions on their behalf, he'd have done it the way brother Edward IV ordered Henry VI to be killed - give it out they died of natural causes, a sudden illness (child sickness is so a thing), very publically stage a wake and display the bodies before burying them, thus making it clear once and for all they're dead, and can't be put on the throne. This still would not have prevented accusations and rumors, of course, but as with Henry VI, it would have done the intended job. A mysterious disappearance, otoh, is the worst of all possible worlds - anyone who wants to believe they're alive to be put on the throne still can, anyone who wants to believe Richard is a nephew killer can, and he can't even publically deny it (by either saying they're dead or presenting them alive). To kill them in this particular way would have been very stupid, and whatever Richard III was like, stupid he was not; he'd been fighting as a soldier since he was a teenager and been a very competent and popular administrator in the North, i.e., he could strategize and plan head.
b) All of Richard's other nephews and nieces, notably George of Clarence's son Edward and his sister Anne's son John de La Pole, i.e. alternate York heirs, made it out of his reign alive and well, in noted contrast to how Henry VII. treated them. In fact, Henry VII's treatment of the young Earl of Warwick (lock the child up, then, once he's an adult, execute him under a flimsy pretense) would have been another solution of the "what to do about the princes?" problem from a purely pragmatic pov. This is getting close to the "too nice for infanticide" argument, I know, but I prefer to see it as the psychological explanation: as his siblings' children, several (though not all) of whom he actually knew, they had a meaning for Richard which even in a brutal age would have heightened the scruples to kill them.
Anyway, Ford is actually steering pretty close to one of the favoured Ricardian theories (used by Penman among others). No, not the vampire thing, of course. But the theory of Morton as the overall evil mastermind, and of Buckingham as the one ultimately responsible for the Princes' fates because he - who is descended from Edward III and if the Lancasters and the Yorks would have wiped each other out completely would have been a plausible claimant to the throne - would as Richard's trusted official have the access to carry out the deed. (Now in Ford's version, he doesn't kill them, he has them turned into vampires, therefore forcing Richard to have them killed, but same diff.) The theory goes that if Buckingham did it, it would explain why neither Richard III nor Henry VII later ever provided an official explanation as to what the hell happened. Richard because he would not have been believed, and Henry VII because he honestly did not know whether or not they died. (Note: this is just one theory. Josephine Tey of course thought that Henry VII did it himself, as she was of the "the Princes outlived Richard" school. Personally, I think if Henry VII did know for sure what had happened because he was responsible himself, he'd have confidently declared they were dead and blamed it on Richard once he'd taken the throne, thus sparing himself various pretenders.) That Richard had Buckingham executed on what would have been Edward V's (i.e. the older of the boys) birthday might have been a coincidence, but it's handy for fiction as a symbolic gesture.
Charles Williams: some years ago there was an article about him and his works which hilariously called him the George Harrison of the Inklings (with Tolkien & Lewis as Lennon & McCartney, respectively). I seem to recall Lewis was friends with ihm and Tolkien was extraordinarily irritated, but it might also have been the other way around. Though I have to say, making Byzantium the City of God is actually more subversive in his contemporary context than making it the City of Evil, because Byzantium had such a bad press especially in the 19th and early 20th century (byword for decadence, seen as the inferior Rome, and what not) - seeing Byzantium and Byzantine culture as something positive in English speaking publications is something that strikes me as more recent.
Hywel at Bosworth: I thought Ford left that deliberately ambiguous, but I did think he used the dragon's power to survive. It would fit with Gregory eating Mancini, and Cynthia tricked into killing an ally - with the arguable exception of Dimi, they all are guilty of in dire circumstances doing something they'd sworn not to do.
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Date: 2022-12-06 05:19 pm (UTC)Heh, after I read Dragon Waiting I went straight to Daughter of Time, do not pass go, do not get any more nuanced version of Ricardiana in between :) So that has greatly influenced what I thought Ricardians thought :) This is great, thanks!
I seem to recall Lewis was friends with ihm and Tolkien was extraordinarily irritated
I think that's right. I read a biography of Williams a while back and he did sound like the kind of person who could be very interesting but also could be highly irritating in a number of ways. (If I remember correctly, part of this was that he was one of those people who had totally avoidable ~drama~ in his life.)
Though I have to say, making Byzantium the City of God is actually more subversive in his contemporary context than making it the City of Evil, because Byzantium had such a bad press especially in the 19th and early 20th century
Ah! This had actually never occurred to me, that is awesome :D
It would fit with Gregory eating Mancini, and Cynthia tricked into killing an ally - with the arguable exception of Dimi, they all are guilty of in dire circumstances doing something they'd sworn not to do.
Oh... this makes a lot of sense! And Dimi also certainly has his own brush with dishonor (in the Scots plot).