So....Notre Dame reopened, Assad and his regime toppled in Syria: that was some weekend. As to the former, I did watch most of the ceremony (and tried avert my eyes whenever the orange felon appeared), and wow, but looking at the cathedral now does feel a bit like time travel with the white(ish) sandstone and the colours of the paintings without any fading or tarnish. Also, the music was gorgeous. Here's Mozart's Laudate Dominum as sung by Julie Fuchs, with additional pictures of the restoration of the paintings as well as the restored cathedral:





The most moving part of the ceremony, though, was undoubtedly the applause for the firefighters and other first responders who saved the Cathedral five years ago:




And then, just to add a personal touch for this moving weekend, some kind writer used one of my prompts from last year's Yuletide to write me a Vikings: Valhalla story about Emma of Normandy and Earl Godwin:

never finish a war without starting another (1450 words) by booksoncanvas
Chapters: 1/3
Fandom: Vikings: Valhalla (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Emma of Normandy (c. 984-1052) & Godwin Earl of Wessex (d. 1053)
Characters: Emma of Normandy (c. 984-1052), Godwin Earl of Wessex (d. 1053)
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Angst, Rivalry, Season/Series 01, Yuletide New Year's Resolutions Challenge, Deception, Politics, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Female/Male Relationships
Summary:

Emma’s eyes narrowed. “Then I trust you know that instability would become inevitable should you overreach. If I sense you seeking advantage, I will not hesitate to end this agreement, regardless of what threat stands beyond our walls.”

His smile widened, a faint glint in his eye betraying a quiet amusement. “You would, would you not? And yet, my lady,” he continued, his voice lowering as he leaned slightly closer, his gaze never leaving hers, “you must know that a blow struck in haste often misses its mark. The kingdom relies on us both, now more than ever, for the stability you claim to safeguard. Were either of us to upset this...balance...well, one only need look beyond our borders to imagine what might come crawling through the gaps.”

Watched the second sason of Vikings: Valhalla, which since I enjoyed the first season I was glad to continue liking. The first two or three episodes, I was quietly grumbling there wasn't enough Emma (of Normandy), but that changed, and she and Godwin get both this season's darkest and most twisty plot line. This said, I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy Team Harald and Leif's adventures (first with the Rus and then en route to Constantinople) enormously, and am very looking foward to get a Byzantine subplot next season. Freydis' plot line was the one I was least invested in, but I still found it well executed, as she first thinks she's found pagan paradise (err, Valhalla) and then realises your fellow worshippers of the Norse gods are just as prone to screw you over and exploit refugees as a handy workforce as Christians are.

Re: the Emma and Godwin subplot, though. ( It gets seriously spoilery from here. )

I also read The Dark Queens by Shelley Puhak, a non-fictioin narrative dealing with Merovingian queens Brunhild and Fredegund in the sixth century. On the one hand, it's definitely a biographie romancee, using novelistic narrative techniques like characters pacing impatiently which the author really has no way of knowing, otoh, it's excellently sourced, and provides footnotes to every direct quotation. It also presents the primary sources, such as they are, and who and what their patrons and agendas were. And when the author disagrees witih what seems to be a standard presentation - as in the Brunhild vs Bishop Egidius conflict - , she says why and lays out her argument.

( More spoilery remarks for book and history ensue. )

Martin Scorsese and Michael Hirst want to do a tv show called THE CAESARS, about the early rulers of ancient Rome.

I, Claudius who? Rome what? Well, okay, fine, it never stopped anyone in entertainment that there are earlier versions. And given how uninspired the first half of the latest Vikings season came across to me (which is why I haven't reviewed in these very pages, gentle reader), I'm not surprised Hirst is ready to move on. Allow me some amusement, though:

He says his dramas are not documentaries but the details are rooted in history: “Just like Shakespeare’s history plays, they only start with some historical facts, then the drama takes over. You can’t have both.”

Hirst, you're not Shakespare. (Not that he's more accurate, I'll grant you.) Your shows are at their best entertaining schlock with some compelling characters. Stand by it.

Also:

The Caesars aims to give a new insight into the young Julius Caesar: “In the movies he’s usually a middle-aged guy, struggling with political complexities. But he was fantastically interesting and ambitious when he was younger.

Because clearly, a middle aged guy struggling with political complexities is dull. (So much for you, Londo Mollari, character of characters of my heart.) Btw, the idea that Caesar grew less ambitious as he grew older would amuse everyone in Rome to no end. (Or not, depending on their political pov. And state of survival.) This said, Caesar's younger years are less covered. Basically, here are young Gaius Julius Caesars I recall from the last decades:

1) The one from Xena, played by Karl Urban. Spoiler: he's a villain.
2) The one from Spartacus: War of the Damned, where he's one of main antagonist Crassus' two sidekicks. Spoiler: he's a villain.
3) The one from Colleen McCulloughs Masters of Rome book series, volume 3, Fortunes' Favourites. Meant to be a hero, but alas, she commits the dreadful mistake of Gary Stuing him into boringness, here and in subsequent volumes. (Which is why I like the first two volumes with Marius and Sulla as main characters so much better. She didn't make that mistake with those two.) (Err, Caesar is around for many more books in that series, of course, but we're talking about young Caesar specifically.
4) The one from Waltraud Lewin's YA novel about young Servilia, written in German and so my knowledge not translated into English. For my money the most interesting of the lot, though she takes some liberties as in: young Servilia and Caesar already meet when Sulla rules, Servilia just got married to Brutus and Caesar is on the run. It's a coming of age novel about Servilia, and young C. is both charming and ambigious, more of a trickster character. Also prone to fall sick with Malaria at the worst moment.

Basically, there's room for Hirst to deliver his own version to pop culture, and he's bound to use both the on-the-run-from-Sulla episode and the interlude with the pirates, but what I really want to know is whether or not he'll use the King of Bithynia as boyfriend, and not, as Colleen McCullough in her Gary Stu tale did, as a paternal friend. More Hirst talk:

A lot of the Caesars came to power when they were young, and we’ve never really seen that on screen. It’s the energy, the vitality, the excess of a young culture that’s being driven by young people.

Um, what? Octavian/Augustus was young when coming to power, granted, but Tiberius was OLD. (Part of the problem. By the time he'd finally made it to the throne, he was too bitter not to take that out on people.) Caligula was young again, whereas Uncle Claudius was old. And then Nero rounds it off with another young Caesar as the last of the Julian-Claudian dynasty. That makes three young power reachers versus three old ones (if you count Caesar himself, who most definitely was NOT young when making it to true power in Rome.

Mind you, in the most recent season of Vikings, Hirst presents an adult Alfred (who has thus the bad luck to compete with the one from The Last Kingdom, and well, that's a tough job to live up to) who gets on the throne in a decidedly ahistorical way and at an ahistorical point in his life, so I wouldn't put it beyond him to shorten the reign of Augustus so Tiberius isn't that old and sour and keeping Claudius magically young. (I mean, Lagertha looks unchanged since season 1, which means the actor playing her son Björn now looks older than she does.) And of course, this is the producer/writer who cast Jonathan Rhys Meyer as Henry VIII and kept him from gaining weight and grey hair until the very last episodes of the last season of The Tudors. What confounds me is that that Hirsts older characters are more often than not his most interesting ones. His Cardinal Wolsey was the only one I was interested in in the first season of The Tudors. To give credit where due, Hirst was the only one who really used Chapuys the Imperial Ambassador as key supporting character through the entire show, and Chapuys isn't a youngster, either, at any point. As for Vikings, Siggy was my favourite for the first two seasons (alas), and never mind Ragnar, Ekbert was the magnificent bastard for me, as played by Linus Roache and thus no spring chicken, either.

Another thing: no one would ever dispute Martin Scorsese's cinematic eye, but the combination of the two definitely makes me think "male centric saga to the nth degree". And you know, not that Rome was feminist (au contraire), but Atia and Servilia were among the most memorable characters, and I, Claudius would never have had the impact it did without Livia in the first half. In conclusion: if I were you, Michael Hirst, I'd hire some female scriptwriters to work with me.

Lastly, on an unrelated note: tomorrow I'll be busy the entire day, so I won't get to watch the Star Trek: Discovery finale until the evening, if that. Pray remember the spoiler cut is your friend, oh fellow Disco admirers, and so am I!

My battle with Darth Real Life ended with a truce, meaning I have a bit more breathing room this month, but not that much, though in a good way - there's a literary festival to attend to. Mind you, after all the horrible events of last month and the expectation of the rest of the year following suit it's good to have some events to look forward to. Other than the festival this month, I have a wonderful one in March: I'll travel to New Zealand! (With the AP.)

Back to January: my one big interruption was when I took part in the Munich edition of the Women's March on January 21st, which I hadn't planned to but couldn't do otherwise, or I might have exploded. In Munich, there were between 500 and 700 people marching, both Americans abroad and Germans, in glorious sunshine, having a break from daily horrors and expressing solidarity with the millions in the US standing up to The Orange One. (Since as John Oliver once said he gets an orgasm every time he reads his name, I'm determined to go with synonyms, just in case.)

Catching up with tv:

Call the Midwife 6.01. and 6.02: good as usual, though I question ( a spoilery plot device. )

Vikings 4.15 - 4.17: ( Spoilery comments ensue )

Black Sails 4.01: Pirates, you're back! ( Season opener talk ensues. )

More during the remaining week, I hope, but remember: it's only a truce, Darth Real Life is not yet defeated!

Aka the one with travelling, reunions and the wheel of fate spinning some more.

( Read more... )

Went from Munich to Bamberg, signed about a hundred Christmas letters with no end in sight, rewarded self with 45 minutes of fiction. The second half of Vikings season 4 has started, Amazon Prime puts up an episode a week, which means for the first time I could watch it when broadcast. More or less.

( Read more... )

Hm. I was captivated while watching, but the more I think about it, the more problems I have with this season.

( Spoilers aren't talking about a Gothic cathedral in 9th Century Paris )

The dvds for the first season (consisting of nine episodes) just were released here in Germany, I heard some positive murmurings, and so I decided to go for it. Overall verdict, based on the first season? I liked it, and it improved my opinion of Michael Hirst's writing abilities for historical subjects, hitherto something of a mixed affair. (I will never, ever, forgive him for the line "my queen rules with her heart, not with her head", spoken about Elizabeth Tudor of all the queens. And The Tudors were, well, mixed, and for every Natalie Dormer rendering Anne Boleyn's actual last words, there was a howler like the miraculously thin staying Henry.)  Of course, he's got the advantage of working in a time where myths and history are mixed in favour of the myths anyway in Vikings, and Ragnar Lodbrok, while a saga hero, is far less known than any of the Tudors on a global level, which means no preconceptions on the part of the audience.

But it's more than that which endeared this first season to me. Basically the only thing I knew in advance about the show was that there was a Saxon monk named Athelstan in it who got captured by the Vikings, and I had assumed Hirst would go for the obvious and make him the pov character. But no. Athelstan only shows up in the second episode, at a point where all the other main characters are already established, and while he sticks around for the rest of the season, he's only one of several supporting characters, and about the only occasions where I'd say the narrative uses him as the pov character is when human sacrifices become a plot point. Instead of using Athelstan as the audience pov, the show emerges its audience into the world of the Vikings (who are never called that on-show, which is accurate as far as I know; the term was invented much later) from the get go, focusing on its central family, young-farmer-to-become-legend Ragnar, his wife Lagertha, who is also a shield maiden, their children Björn and Gyda and Ragnar's brother Rollo.  Also important to the ongoing plot: Ragnar's friend Floki, a ship builder (guess who his favourite deity is), his liege lord Jarl Haraldson, and Haraldson's wife Siggy. 

Now several of the plot twists are to be expected - i.e. you know from the get go the Jarl sees Ragnar as a younger rival and therefore is going to be a main antagonist, or that Rollo plays the classic jealous brother role (the only question is how long his affection for his brother will fight with his jealousy, not which will win) -, but the way they're told doesn't feel stale or clichéd but organic. Helped by the fact that a lot of the other storytelling choices are (still) unusual. Lagertha is the main female character, and she's already a married woman and the mother of two children when we meet her. (BTW, thankfully the actress has a figure that makes it believable she's a warrior who can defeat male warriors. She gets some great action scenes, and there are in larger battle scenes some female warriors depicted to make it clear Lagertha isn't the only shield maiden around.)  Instead of using "will they or won't they?" type of romances, the show gives us two married couples with history behind them in terms of male/female relationships.  Mind you, Siggy doesn't really get fleshed out until episode 5, but from that point on she's fascinating, and NOT the "mate of evil overlord"  cliché the first look at her and the coal lines on her eyes in the pilot might lead you to assume. She's also at least in her early 40s (Lagertha is in her early to mid 30s, I'd say), so both the main and the most important supporting female characters are adult women well into their lives. Who, btw, as opposed to their menfolk don't have an antagonistic relationship with each other. (If they do in later seasons, don't tell me yet.) And, btw, are a great demonstration that no, the interest a story takes in you doesn't have to end the moment you get married and reproduce. That can just as well be only the beginning.  

It also doesn't take the easy way out when it comes to the Viking raids. By which I mean: after a pilot detailing the humanity of all the Viking main characters and inviting the audience to share their pov, you get to see them pillage and plunder in the second episode, and their victims aren't characters previously made unsympathetic so the audience doesn't mind that much. They're also unarmed and thus utterly helpless. This does not sway Our Heroes to mercy, au contraire. They're delighted everything is so easy for the taking and cut down unarmed people without a flicker of hesitation and remorse, taking those whom they don't kill as slaves to be sold. And the show never pretends this isn't what they're doing.

Not every choice works. For example, ( a spoilerly detail ensues )

. Incidentally, and speaking of sex, for the first six episodes, everyone keeps their clothes on when having it due to the climate. Then you get female nudity, but male (frontal) nudity as well.

Lastly, a minor frustration: this show has some great visuals of Viking ships, in fjords, on the open sea, and ominously sailing up the British river Tyne. I just went on the lookout whether any of these were made into icons, but no. What icons of the show exist solely features the actors. Which, fine, they deserve it, but - Viking ships!