In Our Time: Thucydides

Thucydides was a Greek historian who lived in the 5th Century BC, and is regarded as a “Father of History” alongside Herodotus – although I confess that before I listened to the In Our Time programme about him I had never heard of him. I think he’s been seen as more of a “historian’s historian”, whereas Herodotus is more of a “popular historian”. The programme also told me that Thucydides’s work is still important in the field of international relations. The experts who discussed him were Paul Cartledge (Cambridge University), Katherine Harloe (University of Reading) and Neville Morley (University of Bristol).

Thucydides was born around 460BC and a citizen of Athens, not much is known about his life. In fact the only details known about him at all are those found in his book on the Peleponnesian War – which includes that he was a general at a particular early point during the war, and he at least lived through the war. This gives a feel for his age as he must’ve been a mature adult at the beginning of the war yet still young enough to survive till the end. The Peleponnesian War was a conflict between Athens and Sparta, and their allies, which lasted for 27 years at the end of the 5th Century BC. Thucydides’s book clearly contains passages written after the end of the war (as he mentions who won – Sparta), but it was never finished. It also doesn’t really mention the role that the Persians played which was important later in the war, the experts speculated that if he’d finished the text he may’ve revised the existing parts to bring in that thread earlier.

Herodotus and Thucydides were writing very different sorts of history, with different purposes. I think they said that Thucydides was writing his history in reaction to the way that Herodotus wrote his – deliberating doing things the way he thought was “proper”. For instance Herodotus is the historian as a story-teller. He doesn’t necessarily believe all the stories he writes down, but he tells them because that’s what the people he’s writing about believe. Thucydides in his introductory section says that he is intending to set down the objective truth about what actually happened. This means that he also rejects supernatural explanations of events. Herodotus is also outward looking – partly by the circumstances of recent history but also because of his interests. The big war that Herodotus talks about is the Greek/Persian war of the early 5th Century BC, and his history is of the world outside Greece. By contrast Thucydides is interested in an intra-Greek conflict and in the history of the Greek world. Even, potentially, to the extent of ignoring the Persian role in the Peloponnesian War (although as I said above he may’ve revised that later if he’d finished the book).

Of course Thucydides isn’t as objective as he would like to present himself, and doesn’t stick strictly to the known facts either. In contrast to modern historians he doesn’t present his evidence, merely says he examined it and has come to the conclusion that what he writes is what happened. So his biases aren’t always clear, but in some cases they are obvious. In particular he generally approves of Pericles, and frequently editorialises about his greatness. He also editorialises about the poor decisions by “the mob” who vote for courses of action that Thucydides feels were wrong. There are also sections of the text that are clearly made up to show how something might have happened. The speeches are a good example of this – as well as Thucydides’s chronological dicussions of events there are also sections purporting to be speeches given by various people. Pericles is given many of these. In style they sound like Thucydides rather than different individuals, so they definitely aren’t accurate representations of actual speeches. Some might be paraphrases of things that Thucydides witnessed, but others are clearly invented out of whole cloth – accounts of secret meetings on the Spartan side for instance that Thucydides was obviously not present for.

In terms of his legacy and his status as a Father of History Thucydides has had a large impact in the past on how historians approach research and objectivity. But all three experts were in agreement that he wouldn’t quite fit in in a modern historical department. Modern history also has commonalities with Herodotus’s approach – looking at the history of a people as that people see it is an important aspect of approaching history. However in the field of internal relations and of war theory Thucydides is still hugely influential, and his work is still used in teaching at military academies like West Point. Which seems appropriate as that was his primary interest – how different states (cities, nations etc) interact, and what are the causes that lead to conflict between them. Not the causes they use to justify aggression but the underlying conflicts and tensions that get the relationship to the point where aggression is a next step.

“By the Mountain Bound” Elizabeth Bear

By the Mountain Bound is the second book in Elizabeth Bear’s The Edda of Burdens series. It is set before the events of All the Windracked Stars (post) so you could read them in either order, but I think it works best as I’ve done it this time (tho obviously as this is my first read of this book I haven’t tried out the other way round yet!).

The three protagonists of the story are the Wolf (Mingan), the Historian (Muire) and the Warrior (Strifbjorn) – the same three as in All the Windracked Stars, although Strifbjorn is reborn as the mortal Cathoair in that book. Muire was central in the first book, this book is the Wolf’s. Strifbjorn and Muire are both immortal Children of the Light, waelcyrge. (Immortal in the un-ageing sense – they can still be killed, for instance in battle.) The Wolf is … not quite the same as them, he is also a survivor from the world before there’s, and was already there when the Children first came into being. When the story opens superficially all is well in the world – we see where the cracks are but there’s nothing threatening about them. The opening chapters establish the world with a wedding between two waelcyrge, where we learn (amongst other things) that Strifbjorn is their war leader and they have no Cynge and no Lady despite setting chairs out for both. Into this good-enough world comes Heythe, who quickly establishes herself as the Lady returned. All is, of course, not quite what it seems and Heythe is soon manipulating the warlcyrge into their seemingly inevitable slide towards apocalypse.

The waelcyrge are not just warriors and avengers of mortals, they are also beings with loves of their own. And this story is also about loving unwisely or too well, and the consequences of that. When waelcyrge marry they share a part of their soul with their spouse via a kiss, but of course you don’t have to be married to kiss the one you love. Yet social pressure keeps most from risking such a thing pre-marriage – after all, if something changes and then you marry someone else then that someone else will discover they are sharing their soul not just with their spouse but their spouse’s previous lover. It’s the idea of pre-marital sex “tainting” those who do it, but applied rather more even-handedly. It’s clear that this attitude is to be seen as one of the flaws of waelcyrge society which Heythe exploits rather than a good thing. Waelcyrge are not terribly fertile, so marrying and having children to replace those who die are exalted to an almost sacred duty – Strifbjorn as war leader is under a lot of pressure to do so to set a good example. And there is no shortage of waelcyrge women who would marry him – some, like Muire, because they are in love with him, some because of the prestige being his wife would bring them. But unknown to the other waelcyrge Strifbjorn and Mingan are not just lovers, but have shared the kiss. And so the world of the waelcyrge is not as robust as it looks on the surface.

This book is a tragedy, not just in the modern sense of ending with dead people but in the original Greek sense too – it’s the inevitable working out of the flaws of the characters & society. The reason I think the ordering of these books works best this way round is that right from the beginning of this book you know where it ends. It ends with the end of the world, in blood and in ice. With Muire, the Wolf and Kasimir the only survivors of an apocalyptic battle pitting waelcyrge against waelcyrge and killing nearly all of them. So even the moments of hope and partial triumph are against a backdrop of watching the world end. It’s not depressing though – in part because for all the world ends in that battle, we also know from the first book that it’s not totally over and that there is yet hope.

In a nice touch this book ends almost exactly where the first one begins. We see some of the same scenes (not word for word, I think, but close enough to resonate), interspersed (and followed) with new information. But the repeated scenes have completely different emotional weight this time. At the beginning of the first book it’s just back story & characterisation – ticking little boxes for who these people are: “Muire, waelcyrge, survivor’s guilt” etc. This time tho, these are people we know and have come to care about over the course of the book and watching them die is heartbreakingly poignant (yet tragically inevitable).

Thoroughly recommended, and at time of writing I’m halfway through the next one & trying to make it last so that my time in this world with these characters won’t be over so soon.

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 15)

Trade and Merchants

Trade, both locally and internationally, was an important part of the 13th & 14th Century English economy. Prestwich starts this chapter by talking about the types and volumes of trade during the period. The wool trade was the most significant – at its peak in the early 14th Century around 40,000 sacks of wool were exported per year, the equivalent of around 10 million sheep. This brought in large sums of money to the economy, in 1297 Edward I’s opponents were able to realistically claim that wool was half the country’s wealth. Wool was not the only commodity traded, the wine trade (of Gascony wines) was also important and other goods were traded too. These included cloth (mostly imports), dyes, timber, tin, lead, grain and many other foodstuffs. International trade was obviously affected by wars – not just because of breakdown in relations but also because the Channel crossing became more risky. Trade was also involved in causing wars, disputes between merchants (particularly at sea) could draw in governments.

Trade and the government were linked together in more than one way. Merchants could become prominent at court, and could influence politics. In part because the trade was important to the economy, so keeping merchants sweet was important. And in part because they could provide funds to the Crown, which was a role Italian merchants often filled. Trade was also subject to government regulation and interference, particularly the wool trade. At times the government would propose to seize wool and sell it themselves, so that the profit came to the Crown rather than the merchants – unsurprisingly not a popular move, and frequently the number of sacks successfully seized was far less than hoped for. Over this period customs duties became a more successful way to raise funds for the Crown, and in 1275 a permanent customs system was established. Taxing trade in this way meant that merchants were at times invited to parliament along with the knights and barons. Prestwich says that during Edward III’s reign there were attempts to negotiate customs with a separate assembly consisting just of the merchants – if these had proved successful then the shape of our government might look different today, with a third house to go along with the Lords & the Commons. However the merchant assemblies were an imposition from the King rather than a natural outgrowth of any sort of coherent merchant community. After a few experiments negotiation of customs duties was returned to Parliament.

The elite merchants of the era were Italians, they were in England primarily to trade in wool. As they could draw on the resources of their internationally trading companies they were able to take bigger risks than the English merchants. They were in a position to offer long term arrangements and even loans (often to monasteries) which would be paid back in wool over a long period of time – one such deal involved a monastery providing 140 sacks of wool over a 20 year period with the Italian company paying 20 marks per year (a good price from the Italian point of view). Although they couldn’t charge interest on loans (Christians were forbidden to do so by the Pope) they could accept “payments to cover costs incurred by making the loan”. They also profited from exchange rates – by making a loan in one currency and asking for repayments in another at a favourable rate to themselves. The larger Italian companies often got sucked into making huge loans to the Crown – these played an important role in financing the wars of the English throughout the period. And these loans played a big role in the bankruptcy of the companies who made the loans. Not always because the loans weren’t repaid in full, sometimes the changing political situation meant a company went out of favour (and lost business) because of close ties to hated previous regime.

Prestwich finishes the chapter by considering the English merchants of the time. Towards the end of this period the involvement of the English in large scale trade increased, although it’s not clear why this happened. Small scale trade is much harder to analyse historically – most of the records are about the wealthiest merchants, particularly those who lent money to the Crown. Tax returns can shed some light on smaller merchants in towns but even then it can be hard to tell the different between a manufacturer of goods and someone who is also selling the goods he makes. So overall not much is known about the English merchants of the time.

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Magna Carta (In Our Time Special Series)

It’s the 800th anniversary of the first issuing of Magna Carta this year, and so there are currently a flurry of programmes about the document on the BBC on both radio and TV. We been listening to the Melvyn Bragg presented radio series that was on at the beginning of the year as our Sunday breakfast listening. This was a four part series that covered the context for the document, the thing itself, and its legacy.

The first episode was looking at the context for the original “signing” of Magna Carta (it wasn’t in fact signed, as was customary at the time it was validated using the signatories’ seals). The king of England in 1215 was King John, who is a notoriously bad king – think Robin Hood, John is generally the king in those legends. It’s not without its basis in fact – John was always looking out for his own interests rather than those of the realm. He wasn’t even loyal to those who might’ve thought they were his friends – he’d turn against them if it was convenient or if that got him more money or land or power. Unsurprisingly the leading nobles of the day, the barons, weren’t terribly fond of John. Their grievances were that he acted as if he was above the law, he started taking away lands without even a figleaf of legal right to them, and importantly he also lost wars. In particular John managed to lose the bulk of the Plantagenets’ lands in modern France, which was humiliating for the crown.

An earlier crisis around 1205 that turns out to be relevant to the conflict was the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury. This was contested – John had a preferred candidate and the canons of the cathedral had a preferred candidate, and the two sides couldn’t come to agreement. Eventually the Pope intervened and appointed Stephen Langton (who was neither sides’ preference) but John refused to accept this. The Pope then placed England under interdict (which meant that priests would not perform the sacraments), a state of affairs that lasted until 1213 when John capitulated. He also sweetened the deal declaring that the Pope was now the feudal overlord of England (thus had secular power in England as well as religious). Archbishop Langton was to be the mediator in the 1215 conflict between John and the barons.

In the second episode Bragg covered the 1215 conflict, and the events surrounding the initial issuing of Magna Carta. At this time King John was still failing to do anything useful in a military sense – this is important as military prowess was an important virtue for a king to demonstrate in order to show himself a true king. Wars are also expensive, so a campaign in France that is lost is a great waste of money which will’ve been primarily raised via taxing the barons. Civil war actually broke out in the summer of 1215, and crucially the city of London joined in the conflict on the side of the barons. John was in an unwinnable situation, and was forced to meet with the barons and come to terms with them. The meeting were held in June 1215 at a place on the Thames called Runnymede – this was neutral territory that was regarded as safe by both sides as it would be difficult to set up an ambush there. The barons showed up in force, and camped there with their army. This was somewhat of a surprise to John who had expected a delegation, so instead of camping on Runnymede himself he stayed nearby and visited during the day to negotiate.

The treaty that was eventually negotiated and sealed at Runnymede is the first iteration of the Magna Carta (although it wasn’t called that at the time). It is both sweeping and curiously specific. So there are the well known clauses that place the king under the law and guarantee the right of no imprisonment save by trial by one’s peers or due course of law. And there are also many clauses about particular grievances, for instance prohibiting fishweirs on the Thames which was of paramount interest to the merchants of the City of London (as the fishweirs impeded progress of shipping on the Thames). John wasn’t actually happy with the treaty, in particular a crucial clause that appointed a council of 25 barons to oversee the King’s actions. However he signed it because there wasn’t much other option, and was even forced to start instituting it before the two sides left Runnymede.

The third episode of this series looked at the immediate aftermath of the issuing of Magna Carta. The first thing John did after the dust had settled was to try to overturn the treaty. As I said in the last paragraph he was particularly unhappy with the clauses granting a council of barons power to enforce the treaty, and the situation was not helped by them treating the King disrespectfully. There were clauses in Magna Carta that were intended to prevent John wriggling out of it, but he made use of his new good relations with the Pope. Having given the Pope feudal overlordship of England meant that the Pope had legal standing to declare the treaty invalid, which he did at John’s request.

Unsurprisingly this did not go down well with the barons – the political situation returned to how it had been before Runnymede, and civil war broke out again. The Pope was now firmly on John’s side and directed Langton to excommunicate the barons who are in rebellion. Langton, however, resisted this (and incurred the Pope’s displeasure) because if he was to be an effective mediator then he couldn’t been seen to be on one side or the other. The French got involved in the civil war, coming in on the side of the barons and by 1216 the south of England is mostly ruled by the son of the French King. If John had not died at this point then the history of England would’ve been quite different!

However John did die, and his 9 year old son Henry took the throne. One of the first things that Henry III’s regents did was to reissue Magna Carta. This was intended to woo the disaffected barons back to the side of the English monarchy, and it was successful. With the barons back on their side Henry III’s forces were able to retake the south of England and drive out the French prince.

This was only the first reissuing of the Magna Carta, the next time was when Henry came of age in 1225. This was in part a symbolic act intended to convey that he would (unlike his father) rule in accordance with the law. The version of Magna Carta issued at this point was partly rewritten (by Langton amongst others), taking out some of the unpalatable clauses (like the council of the barons). This version is the definitive one that is meant when we refer to Magna Carta, and it was reissued several times over the next 100 years.

In the fourth episode Bragg talked about how Magna Carta has become enshrined in global consciousness as a totemic symbol of democracy. Often by people who don’t know exactly what is in it, just that it guarantees the rights of the people to just treatment under the law. I was aware before of the sort of place it occupies in British culture, but I hadn’t realised just how important it is to US culture. Bragg talked to some US historians who explained that the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution is deliberately based on clauses from the Magna Carta. And it still has enormous importance as a precursor document for US democratic principles. The monument in Runnymede commemorating the signing of Magna Carta was erected by US lawyers.

The end of the programme was about whether or not Magna Carta still has relevance today – particularly as the actual clauses in the document are mostly no longer law (I believe there are only 2 left on the statute books out of the original 60-something). Bragg’s conclusion was that it’s not the details that are important, and it hasn’t been for several hundred years. But that Magna Carta is the start of a paradigm shift that we pretty much take for granted today. That people have the right to be dealt with in accordance with the law rather than at the whim of the ruler.

February 2015 in Review

This is an index and summary of the things I’ve talked about over the last month. Links for multi-post subjects go to the first post (even if it’s before this month), you can follow the internal navigation links from there.

Books

Fiction

“Chill” Elizabeth Bear – generation ship, arthurian science fiction, part of the Jacob’s Ladder series. Part of Read All the Fiction, kept.

“Grail” Elizabeth Bear – generation ship, arthurian science fiction, part of the Jacob’s Ladder series. Part of Read All the Fiction, kept.

Eternal Sky Trilogy, Elizabeth Bear – secondary world epic fantasy in a world based on Asian history. New.

“All the Windwracked Stars” Elizabeth Bear – fantasy heavily influenced by Norse mythology. Part of Read All the Fiction, kept but replaced with an ebook.

Total: 4

Non-Fiction

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich. Part of the New Oxford History of England.

Total: 1

Films

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

Total: 1

Talks

“Uncovering the Quarry Workers at Gebel Silsila” Sarah K Doherty – February EEG meeting talk.

Total: 1

Television

Non-Fiction

Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty” – Dan Jones giving us biographies of 4 of the Plantagenet Kings.

Total: 1

Trip

Egypt Holiday 2014: Temples and Tombs (Overview: 18th-20th November).

Egypt Holiday 2014: Temples and Tombs (Overview: 21st-24th November).

Egypt Holiday 2014: Cairo Museum.

Egypt Holiday 2014: Giza Plateau.

Total: 4

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 14)

The Towns

Having covered the landowners and the rural populace in previous chapters Prestwich now moves on to the urban population of England at this time. He starts by considering how to define a town, which as with so many things in historical research isn’t as easy as it might sound. At first sight one might think it easiest to just use whatever designations the contemporary population used – only they weren’t particularly consistent and places are referred to differently in different documents and at different times. One possible criterion is which places sent representatives to parliament – but this varies from parliament to parliament. Or perhaps use taxation status – but then there’s the example of Boston in Lincolnshire which was still taxed as a village even when it was the fifth wealthiest place in England and the second largest port for wool exports. Legal definitions can include looking at the sort of tenure that the land was held by – but some places used burgage tenure when they weren’t actually towns by any other definition. A possible economic definition is that in a town most people should be involved in trade and manufacturing, rather than agriculture – again this works much better in theory than it does when you look at specific examples.

Taking the various criteria together and applying some judgement to the results Prestwich arrives at an approximation of 100-150 towns in England in this period, with a further 500 places that had some urban characteristics. This wasn’t a static figure, and in fact the 13th Century was a period where many new towns were established (not all of which were successful). Turning a village into a town, or starting one de novo, was good for a landlord as the revenue from a town in terms of tolls and taxes was much higher than for a rural community. New Salisbury is an example of a successful town foundation from this time. Later in the period this book covers there were fewer new town foundations – the potential urban population was already living in towns, so it was harder to attract settlers to a new one. The economy was also in a poorer state in the early 14th Century so there wasn’t as much fervour for new costly projects.

Prestwich moves on to discuss the townspeople themselves. If it’s hard to count towns, it’s even harder to count their population. The evidence for the people who lived in towns is even more scarce than for their rural contemporaries. By modern standards they were pretty small – London was the largest and the only one that was comparable to the great Continental cities of the time. It probably had a population of somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 in 1300, Prestwich says 70,000 seems a reasonable estimate. For reference and comparison the populations of some towns I’ve lived in are (according to wikipedia, in 2011): Oxford – 150,200; Cambridge – 122,700; Ipswich – 133,400. I don’t think of any of those as “all that big” and yet even the highest estimates for London in 1300 are far short of those three towns today.

The population of a town of the period probably wasn’t self-sustaining – conditions were less healthy than in the country, and people tended to die off more quickly. So towns effectively had a catchment area where new immigrants moved from, the size of which depended on the size and prestige of the town. The makeup of the urban population wasn’t the same as the rural population – the higher levels of society didn’t live in towns (although barons might have a town house in London). There were no villeins or unfree people in towns, either – in fact living in a town for a year and a day conferred freedom regardless of your previous status. The townspeople weren’t homogenous, however. They thought of themselves as divided into 3 sorts – the great men, those of middling status and the poor. The great men might be very wealthy merchants, trading internationally. The artisans and smaller traders would be the middling sort. There was a greater variety of occupations in a town than in a village, a lot of which were to do with production and sale of food and drink. Prior to their expulsion from the country in 1290 the Jews were also a significant feature of towns. They were among the wealthier inhabitants, due to their ability to lend money at interest (which was forbidden to Christians). And even prior to the worst persecution they were poorly treated by the rest of the community and kept themselves to themselves as not really a part of the town community.

Towns were frequently self-governing and separate from the county system. This was more likely to be the case if the landlord was the King – if the landlord was a lord he was more likely to want the increased prestige & authority that came with direct control. Relations between town (self-governing or not) and landlord weren’t always smooth with records of rebellions and of court cases. Conflict also occurred within the town community (unsurprisingly), sometimes arising from class conflicts and other times from more personal quarrels. Often the wealthy elite of the town would come into conflict with the rest of the townspeople by using their wealth and social/political status to ensure they got the best trading opportunities etc.

Towns were important in the medieval economy. In spite of being separate in some legal senses they were a critical part of the overall economy of the country. One way in which they were important for the rural economy was in consuming food. This need to feed the urban population had a significant effect on the viability of agriculture as a way for the rural population to support themselves (beyond subsistence). Towns also provided opportunities for people to specialise in particular manufacturing trades – providing a place to sell your goods as well as support yourself while doing so (like having more places to buy food etc). Towns also hosted markets and annual trading fairs, both of which made them into trading hubs for a wider area.

Guilds and fraternities were an important part of urban organisation & economy, but there’s not that much evidence left about them. They mostly appear to’ve been formed during the 13th Century (Prestwich says 14th but then contradicts himself so I think that was a mistake) – at the beginning of the 13th Century most towns had a guild merchant and a weaver’s guild, by the early 14th Century there are records of more diverse guilds. London guilds were formed earlier, and also suppressed at various times due to being a threat to the pre-existing power structure of the city. Guilds in general protected trades and crafts, while also providing a social focus.

Towns had lots of regulations and laws – due to being crowded places. Prestwich gives several examples of rules about sanitation and building regulations. Pest control also was important – although not always how you might think. For instance there were regulations against shooting pigeons in London in the 1320s, because the arrows and stones used tended to break windows or injure people. Public order needed to be maintained, too – including many attempts to drive out prostitutes, a particularly urban problem.

Religious life in towns was also important – with many parish churches, fraternities and friaries in towns. Friars were generally an urban phenomenon as basing themselves in towns meant they could preach to the greatest numbers of people.

Prestwich finishes the chapter by considering the impact of war on towns during this time period. For inland towns there’s not much effect but ports were more significantly impacted. Both by the requirements of the Crown for shipping, and by raids by the French.

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“All the Windwracked Stars” Elizabeth Bear

The next book in my project of re-reading all the fiction I own (that is still on the shelves) is All the Windwracked Stars, by Elizabeth Bear. I actually replaced it with a Kindle version before re-reading it, along with buying the next two in the series (the series as a whole is called The Edda of Burdens). I know I’ve read this before, as I at least recognised the names of the protagonists and something of the world it is set in, but I remembered very little of the actual story so I might as well’ve been reading it for the first time.

We open with the end of the world in the aftermath of an apocalyptic battle, with the survivors – Kasimir, valraven steed of a slain waelcyrge; Muire, child of the Light, one of the wardens of Valdyrgard, poet, historian, metalworker; the Wolf, older than the world itself and has played his part in the ending of it. And after a chapter that establishes the characters (particularly Muire) the story jumps forward nearly two & a half thousand years to the aftermath of another apocalypse. As the book puts it:

Worlds, like gods, are a long time dying, and the deathblow dealt the children of the Light did not stop a civilization of mortal men from rising in their place, inventing medicine and philosophy, metallurgy and space flight.

Until they in turn fell, two-hundred-odd years ago, in a Desolation that left all Valdyrgard a salted garden. All of it, that is, except the two cities – Freimarc and Eiledon – that lingered. Life is tenacious. Even on the brink of death, it holds the battlements and snarls.

And in this end of the world, Muire, Kasimir and the Wolf still live among the shattered remnants of the human civilisation. It’s a world of both technology and magic – where at one moment there are recognisable computing devices, and at another we’re meeting a modified catwoman created from a cat, sorcery and a relic of the past or a modified ratman mage-engineer. The story is primarily Muire’s, although parts are from other points of view. But she’s the central figure, and we follow her from grief-stricken survivor’s guilt through to a realisation that perhaps the world can be reborn (albeit at great cost to herself).

Muire is the linchpin round which the story turns, but I think there are two other legs the plot rests on – the Grey Wolf and Cathoair. The Wolf I’ve already mentioned, he starts in the position of an antagonist – and where Muire feels she should not have survived but somehow can’t help but keep surviving, the Wolf is looking for death and not finding it. He’s been drawn to Eiledon by a sense that a piece of his past is being misused by the mortal ruler of the city, and although he’s no longer part of the company of the children of the Light he’s still not willing to let such things be misused.

Cathoair is a different sort of character – at first sight less mythic, more everyday survivor. He’s one of the mortal inhabitants of Eiledon, living in the slums and making a living in the fighting ring and as a prostitute. But his soul is that of one of Muire’s brothers, returned to life at another ending of the world (although Cathoair never knows about his past life). He gets caught up in the conflict between Muire and the Grey Wolf, as they’re both irresistibly drawn to the presence of someone they had both loved in the past. But he quickly becomes important in his own right, as even ordinary people can make a difference particularly when the world is ending.

The story takes place in a secondary world that is thoroughly steeped in Scandinavian mythology – as is presumably obvious just from the names of people and of things that I’ve mentioned in this review so far. The prose style also has something of that feel to it – recognising the subject matter as Norse in origin predisposes me to think this, but it often feels like some other language’s poetry translated into English prose. Not all of it by any means, but bits like this do:

The song still burns through his mind, scourging, polishing. Stripping him clean.

Madness is nothing. Madness is an old friend, a comfort to him. He is the son of a god and a giantess. He is a god-monster. He is the Sun-eater. He was born to destruction, to mayhem, to wrath. The world is full of things that want destroying, and also full of those who do not covet destruction. So he was chained to the end of the world. There was a poem that was also a prophecy, and he lived it. The wolf, till world’s end.

And now he is a wolf driven by the goad and the hunt, crazed by the cage and the chain. He is the wolf run mad —

One thing I particularly like about the world it’s set in is that magic and technology aren’t mutually exclusive. The bulk of the story is set in the remnants of a world that’s at least as technologically advanced as ours, if not more so. But it also has working magic, and some of (all of?) the technology is magic based – magic doesn’t replace the need for tech, nor vice versa. Which I think grows out of the Norse underpinnings of the world building – magic here is based on the word (runes, poetry, song) and also on metalworking. Muire as poet, historian, smith is also a mage, in a way that seems to go without saying. Some workings require music, some require working at the forge.

Having forgotten most of the story, I’d also forgotten how much I liked this book. I’m not sure why I didn’t get round to buying the other two in the series till now, but at halfway through the next one I’m pleased I finally got round to it 🙂

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Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty

Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty was a Channel 5 series about the Plantagenets, presented by Dan Jones. I’ve been vaguely aware of Jones as an author for a while and I’ve heard good things about him, but not read any of his books. So despite my dubiousness about a Channel 5 documentary series I took a chance on recording it – it did turn out to be a pretty fun watch, even if nothing earth shatteringly new. It was part Jones walking around significant sites, and part re-enactment. I rather liked the fact that they had the characters all speak French for most of it – as, after all, they would’ve. Of course, I suspect it wasn’t the right French, but I’ve no idea how that language has changed over the last 700 or so years to be able to tell. I’ve seen comment elsewhere that the clothing was also inaccurate, I’m not up enough on the details of fashion of that era to tell that either.

The four programmes of the series each covered a different Plantagenet monarch – Henry II, Henry III, Edward II and Richard II. This was very much history as soap opera, each programme covered the life of the king in question with an emphasis on personality, relationships and how he screwed things up (or had things screwed up for him). Whilst politics or war were touched on it was more in terms of the personal interactions involved rather than any nitty-gritty detail. The reasons for choosing each king seemed to be about who would give the best story – I imagine the only difficult choice was whether it should be John or Henry III. Henry II starts the dynasty, and has the most dysfunctional family ever with not only 4 sons but also his wife rebelling against him. Henry III has the crisis & civil war with Simon de Montfort – his brother-in-law and once his best mate. Edward II – well, you can’t miss out the “buggered with a red hot poker” murder story, even if it wasn’t true (and Jones was quite clear about that being untrue on the programme). And Richard II ends the dynasty with a headlong rush of a life from Golden Boy King to Tyrant Who Gets Deposed. Fun to watch, and without (as far as I could tell) playing fast and loose with the facts. The Henry III and Edward II programmes overlapped with the current non-fiction book I’m reading which is a much more sober look at the history of England between 1225 & 1360. So particularly with those episodes I could see the gaps where Jones had missed things out, but there wasn’t anything that made me wince and disagree with him.

I said in the last paragraph this was history as soap opera, I think it’s actually accurate to say that this was a direct response to the popularity of Games of Thrones. This was Jones showing us how real history can be as exciting, brutal and bloody as anything from GRRM’s series (which Jones pretty much says outright in the intro without naming the series). And so the programme did dwell a bit too gleefully on the torture scenes for my tastes. The thing that I found particularly irritating, however, was Jones’s script was heavily larded with Upworthy headline-esque phrasing. By that I mean lots of things like “and what happened next was incredible”. It came across as a bit too heavy handedly trying to be down with the kids. But who knows, perhaps I’m just not enough down with the kids to know that that’s how the kids speak these days? 😉

Overall, as I said at the start: a fun series, but if you already have an idea of the history of this dynasty you won’t learn anything new from it.

Eternal Sky Trilogy, Elizabeth Bear

My main present this Christmas was a Kindle – I’ve finally entered the 21st Century 😉 And as part of the present I got three new ebooks to start me off, I chose Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky trilogy which I’ve had on my to-buy list for a while. The three books are Range of Ghosts, Shattered Pillars and Steles of the Sky and they are fantasy, set in a world that is not our own with a strong Asian flavour.

The series opens in the aftermath of a battle. Temur, who is one of the protagonists of the story, is one of the defeated side and lucky to be alive – surviving mostly because he looked dead already. The battle was part of a civil war: Temur’s people are very Mongol-like and this is a succession war that breaks out after the Khagan has died between his successors (much like after Genghis Khan’s death in the real world). Temur is now one of the few claimants left alive. At first he’s not concerned with that, he joins with some of the refugees and seems almost content to settle into anonymity. But it becomes clear that there is more going on than first meets the eye. Edene, the girl Temur is falling in love with, is stolen away from the refugee camp by blood ghosts called up from the dead of the battle by a sorcerer allied with the other side of the civil war. He sets off to rescue her and along the way discovers the sorcerer’s schemes will have a wider impact than just on his own family and his own country, and resolves to stop him.

And so far, that sounds very bog standard epic fantasy – chosen one (male) goes off to rescue girl, take back throne and stop the evil sorcerer. But that’s really not what this series is like. For starters, it’s much more of an ensemble cast than the paragraph above makes it sound and a lot of the ensemble are women. For instance rescuing Edene might be Temur’s initial motivation to set off – but Edene isn’t just a pretty damsel in distress who waits in the fortress for Temur’s arrival. She takes action herself to escape, and she’s very definitely the hero of her own story – even tho at first she is playing into the antagonist’s schemes. Another member of the cast is Hrahima, a female Cho-tse – a sentient tiger (which is a bit like calling a human a sentient monkey). The antagonist is also not just one evil man with minions although I suspect he’d like to think he is – but the “minions” are people who again are the heroes of their own stories.

The other primary protagonist (alongside Temur & Edene) is the wizard Samarkar – she is a Once-Princess of Rasa who has chosen to become part of an order of wizards where the price for power is sterilisation. For men this is a relatively easy operation, but for women it’s at the limits of the medical technology of the day – so we first meet Samarkar as she is discovering she will live and recover from the operation. And it’s only after you pay the price that you discover if you will gain power – one of the other supporting cast is a wizard who never gained her power (but nonetheless she’s still respected as one of the best theoreticians of the order). She meets (and rescues) Temur near the beginning of his journey to find Edene. The wizards are very curious about the world in a scientific way – knowledge is power, knowing how things work lets you figure out how to manipulate them. When Temur swears a blood-vow Samarkar realises no-one has recorded the progress of one of these through from the very start, and so she decides to travel with Temur. Quickly she moves to be a participant rather than merely an observer, as she & Temur become first friends and then more.

As I said at the beginning of this review this is Asian flavoured fantasy. By that I mean it uses the cultures and mythology of various parts of Asia as the underpinnings of the story in the same way that a lot of fantasy uses a sort of medieval European “lords, ladies, castles, knights, damsels” bedrock as its foundation. But it’s not an indistinct mishmash of pseudo-Asian culture – there are several countries in the world and they have distinct cultures which are recognisably riffing off distinct cultures in our world. For instance as I’ve already mentioned Temur’s people are akin to the Mongols – I recognised a China analogue (of the right era) and a very obvious analogue of the Islamic Caliphate (in the same way that pseudo-Euro fantasy often has a religion that is Christianity-in-all-but-name here we have an Islam). I think the Rasa might be Tibetan analogues but I don’t know enough about Tibet’s history to be sure.

The world, however, is not just a thinly veiled version of our own. It’s not just that magic works, the sky is also very different. What sky you see reflects the ruler of the land you’re in. When a regime changes so does the sky, when you cross a country’s borders the sky changes, Although there are mentions of this being over-ruled sometime by the ideology of the people (rather than their ruler) if it’s deep-seated enough. It’s not necessarily just a change in colour or something petty like that – the sun might rise in a different direction, or be much much brighter. And the night sky will also change. In the land ruled by the Khagan of Temur’s people you see a moon for every potential heir to the throne – as each is born a new moon is also born. As any of them die then their moon dies with them. Which means in the first part of the first book Temur is able to track the progress of the civil war even after he’s left for dead on the battlefield – by counting moons. And obviously so can the other side …

I’ve often read defences of the lack of women with agency in epic fantasy that boil down to “well, it’s a medieval world, women aren’t able to do anything in that sort of society”. And this series demonstrates very well just how much bollocks that is. The vast majority of the societies in the world of the Eternal Sky are patriarchal and the roles women are permitted to fulfil are limited and mostly decorative. In theory. But in practice the women in this story drive a lot of the plot along whether they act openly in their own interests or more indirectly. Even the slave-poetess who is literally inside a box for large chunks of the time she’s present in the story is not just sitting there waiting to be done to, she’s doing.

A criticism I’d make is that the antagonists are from the Islamic analogue culture, and that doesn’t sit well with me. I think I can see why it ended up like that – the whole set up is a sort of mirror of the standard Euro-fantasy with the Asian cultures occupying the role that Western cultures normally do. There’s even mentions in passing of exotic white skinned people from the West in the same way one might find mentions of exotic people from the East. And if you reflect around the centre then the Caliphate will end up playing the same role in both cases. I just don’t like that it plays into the current political demonisation of the Muslim world.

I thoroughly recommend the books (other than that one criticism) – I’ve talked about them all at once because I read them back to back and finished all three within four days, they were very engrossing 🙂 I think they’ll also reward re-reading, and there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t mention in this review about themes & patterns that might well be even clearer on a re-read.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (Film)

The third and final part of the film adaptation of The Hobbit was out over Christmas and we managed to get to the last 3D showing in Ipswich before it went 2D only. Normally I’m a fan of watching films in 3D where possible (not that I see many films …) but in this case I think I might rather’ve seen it in 2D. There were several scenes (including some right near the beginning) where the action seemed to be moving too fast for the projection to keep up – particularly apparent when there were close-up shots panning across lots of people rushing around. And some of the subtitles felt out of focus. So that was a shame. I’m not sure if that was Ipswich Cineworld being crap or a fault of the film itself though.

I’m not going to put a spoiler cut – I think it’s been out for long enough by the time I’m writing, and I suspect by the time this post goes live it won’t even be on at the cinema any more. So this is your warning not to read on if you want to avoid spoilers. The rest of this post is not so much a review but a collection of thoughts about the film.

I continue to think they’ve done a pretty good job with these adaptations. I suspect I might not be quite so in favour if I’d read the book more recently, or more often when I was a kid, but to me it feels like they have the overall plot that I remember plus a flavour of the Lord of the Rings films and so it works for me even when they’ve made changes. The most obvious change that even I notice are that there are some speaking parts for female characters. It’s a shame that Tauriel was mostly there to be the love interest, but at least she also got to kick ass 🙂 In fact there was a bit of a sub-theme of “never piss off an elfwoman” in this film, when you think about Tauriel & Galadriel’s scenes.

I really liked the way they portrayed Thorin’s slide into gold-sickness and madness, particularly the reusing of lines that Smaug had also used. And the way the other dwarves are so visibly caught between knowing he’s off his rocker, but still feeling loyalty and duty towards him as both King and friend. Also good were the few quieter moments where you felt like Bilbo might almost be able to talk him out of it – which means his epiphany about his behaviour later doesn’t come out of nowhere. All those scenes also showed how much Bilbo had changed – whilst he always had a moral compass, you can’t quite imagine the fussy, somewhat prissy hobbit we first met would put himself in danger like that for the sake of doing the right thing. I mean, he’d still’ve known what the right thing was but he’d’ve had some rationale for why someone else needed to do it.

I really liked the way they did the compare and contrast between the dwarves and the elves, I thought there was a real sense that despite their differences there are a lot of similarities between the two races. Like the two juxtaposed scenes of the leaders losing their mount and attacking the surrounding orcs, where there’s a lot of similarity except that Thranduil moves like he’s dancing and Dain headbutts his opponents. (I’d forgotten Billy Connolly was cast as Dain so that was an entertaining surprise.) The film also emphasises that their differences complement each other making them a good team if only either side would see it. Like when the orcs first attack and the dwarves form their shield wall and the elves come charging over to take the orcs by surprise.

I guess the elves/dwarves at loggerheads thing is part of a general theme running through all the films (and perhaps the books too, it’s been a while since I’ve read them): true evil works together towards the common goal (presumably because of coercion) but those who oppose it not. Free will means not everyone is going to choose to do the right thing, but it wouldn’t mean so much if it wasn’t something one had to choose? Not sure I’m articulating that well, but hopefully the idea comes across 🙂

On that sort of note – I saw pointed out elsewhere that one of the threads running through this film is people standing up to their (respected) leaders when they were doing the wrong thing. In stories it’s easy to show people as heroic by making them face off against “the bad guy doing the bad things”, but several of the moments of heroism here are someone going to someone they like and respect and saying “no, this time I think you’ve got it wrong” instead of giving them a pass because they’re normally right.

For the ending – I knew Thorin died from my memory of the book, but I wonder how many people who hadn’t read the book (recently enough) got faked out by the bit where the orc is under the ice? I’d forgotten Fili & Kili died though, so that took me by surprise. I felt a bit sorry for Fili – the other two got a proper death scene with at least one person mourning, Fili just gets chucked off the tower & forgotten.

Kinda sad there’s not going to be any more films (or at least I’m assuming that’s extremely unlikely!). But then again, there’s going to be new Star Wars films soon, so that probably fills in my “one film a year” slot 😉