Blame this on the fact that I grabbed what I thought was a fluffy regency romance this morning – fine, whatever, go ahead and giggle. I’ll be here when you’re done – because I can’t read anything that grabs me and forces me to read all of it on the morning of a day when I’m supposed to work. Otherwise I start the “Three more pages” dance and next thing you know it’s noon and not a line written.
No, not reading while cooking breakfast for the kids and having my own is not an option. If I don’t read something, how is my brain supposed to know we’re awake now? And while I usually read the news with my last cup of coffee of the morning – in front of the computer – it’s hard to drag blogs down to the kitchen table (Yes, I have a tablet but… I don’t want to splatter it.) This is the only way in which I find blogs grossly inferior to newspaper. OTOH 12 or so years ago, at the height of my newspaper addiction, we subscribed to three of them (one was the WSJ) and reading the paper took me the better part of the morning. So it all balances.
Anyway, this morning I thought I was picking up an innocuous regency about a missing heiress, the type of thing I can read a chapter on then resume whenever. Instead, I found the book – while probably still a fluffy romance – was set in Elizabethan England.
It’s not that I don’t like Elizabethan England. It’s that I spent several years of my youth and most of my thirties reading non-fiction books about Elizabethan England. I have an hyper-sensitized “this book needs flying lessons” button when it comes to Elizabethan England. (Now, this book hasn’t flown yet, which is a compliment to the author, when you consider I got about twenty five pages in. However, her habit of rendering what she thinks is Elizabethan dialect phonetically and also of assuming that every day people spoke like Shakespeare plays – yes, of course they did, in vocabulary and construction, but from bits of dialogue quoted from court dispositions and such, they didn’t in fact go out of their way to take three sentences to say what took three words. Everyday people weren’t required to use iambic pentameter or beautiful language. Yeah, I know what I did in the Shakespeare books, but for heaven sakes, that was supposed to be part of the fun. And besides, shut up – is going to make me strangle her at some future con, I swear.)
Unfortunately, too, I had time to think in the shower. This is not always the case, as I often have to hurry through shower to go run some errand or other. And I thought about the bit of the book I just read. One of the things that impressed me about it, with this writer – so far – is that she’s not swallowing the mythos. It is not assumed that if Elizabeth signed your death warrant you’re a scoundrel and a traitor. In fact, Elizabeth is shown in such a light that one wonders if the author is a Black Adder fan.
And this got me thinking about history, the factualness of history, the prevailing, dominant narrative, what we assume are/were victims. Of course, this took a side-leap into fantasy and the way we portray things and why. Normally, I would have discussed this stuff with Dan and got it out of my system. But Dan woke up late because of daylight savings. And my older son isn’t awake yet. And when I tried to discuss this stuff with Amanda Green early morning, I got the hairy eyeball – and let me tell you, friends, considering we’re texting and she’s three states away – it takes a heck of a lot to give me the hairy eyeball. But she managed it. Believe it or not, she accused me – me! – of trying to give her story ideas, so I wouldn’t have to deal with them myself. As if I’d do that… more than twice a day or so.
So you, lucky, lucky you get to listen to my musings.
It’s not (just) the fact that history was written by the victors, a maxim that we’re taught in school and which is supposed to make us doubt everything that we read in exactly the way the teachers tell us to doubt it. (Waves airily.) I’ll spare you that.
Of course the winners, particularly in Elizabethan England were few, fiercely devoted, carefully censured and terrified. Also, the documents have gone through the sieve of history, in which we can read less and less of them both through decay and through linguistic distance. Therefore OF COURSE most of us read tertiary sources at best and buy what they’re selling. (Well, you buy what they’re selling. I was born mistrusting.)
This set me to wondering. I’ve always thought we lived in a uniquely screwed up time. I.e. having acquired power, what used to be the ideological underdogs have spent the last fifty years or so screaming and claiming to be victims. Also, claiming to STILL be the ideological underdogs and becoming more an more unhinged.
It didn’t take me long after coming to the States to identify this schizophrenia in the culture. No, I’m not going to go into politics. I’m just going to mention that even when I came over in 1980, it was obvious that the people preaching a life of few possessions and helping others were the same clawing their way up the corporate ladder by hook or crook, and trying to outdo each other in the style of their houses, clothes and possessions. They talked one game and acted a completely different one.
I’ve since watched this same cohort move into power in various fields, from education to publishing, and mouthing things like “question authority” while becoming the most tight-*ssedly authoritarian educators in history (no? Do you have a kid in school now? It’s all the mindless requirements for tab a into slot b that drives me nuts. And our being told that our kids will need these “skills” in the “future” is insane, unless the future is early industrial revolution. Incidentally this is also blatant discrimination against males who around middle school aren’t developed enough to adhere to a schedule with no reminders, or to do things as precisely as girls the same age can. [Yes, girls develop faster than boys neurologically. If you don’t believe so, you’ve been listening to the “truth” of those in power.] I’m not going to go into details, but I’ll just say the level of regimentation is insane. Prussia called. They want their martinets back.) and “speak truth to power” – provided it’s power circa 1955.
What the book this morning made me wonder is – was it always that way? Is this a normal part of how human societies act?
I’d like to think our time suffers uniquely from this – to a very high degree – from being subjected to highly unified mass culture and means of communication more persuasive than mere print for about fifty years. That is now passing away, much to the chagrin of those in control. It’s too recent, though, to make much difference.
And I have no doubt that our time is unique in various ways, one of them being that we have a near-world uber culture where all the educated have the same frame of reference, even if parts of that frame of reference are completely wrong or insane.
But can this have happened to, to an extent, through history. I thought of Marie Antoinette and her rather hapless husband, who have been featured as monsters of cruelty in countless literary works, partly based on the propaganda of the time – not just while the revolutionaries were working up to toppling them, but afterwards too, to make sure their name stayed blackened. Which means the revolutionaries were hitting and screaming that they were oppressed…
And of course, Elizabethan England. We tend to think of Elizabeth and Henry VIII as being ruthless, etc, in defense of the state and of the change in religion (which it could be argued was done to concentrate ALL power in the crown, thereby creating the modern state.) But it wasn’t like that. Proportional to the population, they both killed more people than Stalin or Mao. (One wonders if some of these people went to the block murmuring “Queen Elizabeth cannot know”) and while a lot of it was dressed up in the trappings of religious dissent or even treason, I know for a fact that a vast number, probably vaster than we expect was because the Queen (or King) hated that someone had more power than she/he did. Or because she/he coveted some nobleman’s estate. Or even, of course, because she/he felt pettishly offended. And all the time, the agents of royal power drummed up the story that THEY were under attack. Jesuit conspiracies (which seems to have been a big fizzle) and traitors under every bed justified ever harsher suppression.
I won’t go into the political implications of this. The cure for this has long been established. It is to keep the state lean and small. Keeping all leadership small and dispersed is also a good idea – like in publishing. We’ll all be happier if it’s not ALL concentrated on half a dozen people in NYC. And now we can make it so. BUT that’s a theme for another time and perhaps another of my blogs.
What I was thinking, though, is that in a way – I blame Shakespeare – Elizabethan England – the soft light, Good Queen Bess, is at the back of every “good monarch” in fantasy, and the idea that the throne is and should be the source of all power.
It’s easy to disguise this in fantasy, of course, and make the reader suspend disbelief. Magic in the land and the king and all…
There have been, I know, instances of usurpers being the good guys in Fantasy (though not many. It is remarkably resistant to upending of tropes) but has there ever been an instance in which “the good king” that has just taken power is in fact a horrible, ruthless despot, constantly accusing the dark lord of the things he, himself is actually doing, as the Tudors by and large did? A king and “good knights” who are actually screaming while they hit, and a “dark lord” that is no more than the dethroned previous-power, which might have been less than good but which right now – by dang – can’t hit anyone, even if he wants to, but is still being accused and chased around?
Is there even a graceful way to write that? And is – more importantly – there a way of showing the dark Lord has in fact reformed and is willing to end this cycle of ruthless power cemented by accusations against the people who can no longer hit?
It never happened in history, but then… there’s maaaaagic. (Or the future. It could be argued I did this in A Few Good Men and am sort of trying to do it again in The Brave And The Free. Though there, the change is not permanent because… real history.)
It strikes me that it could be a fascinating novel. I don’t want to write it. I’m not even sure I could. It’s hard as heck to signal to the reader that the story is something else than it seems to be on the surface.
On the other hand it might be a story that needs to be told. At some point we need to have stories that prepare people for a less-information-concentration future, and to think critically about what they hear.
Maybe the time has come in fiction, for the dark lord to come and free us from the iron clasp of the good king.
According To Hoyt 
Sigh. Ok, ok, I know what you’re all thinking. I’ll get on it right away. ;)
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I’d argue that Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni novels attempt this. Which led Ursula LeGuin to use them as a “horrible” example of a book in which there’s all this politics and it sounds like modern politics.
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as I said, hard to do and keep “the enchantment” — and don’t get me started on horrible examples. Just don’t.
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Well, I had a story idea where the father of the “Lost Prince” was a real SOB and thus was overthrown for reasons. The usurper never called himself King, just Lord Protector. Besides worrying about Lords who were lesser SOBs, the Lord Protector was concerned about the stories that one of the SOB King’s sons had escaped. Oh, the “Lost Prince” was a good guy and really didn’t want the job of king.
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actually that’s mostly my issue with WRITING this type of story. In the end my guys tend to go “Ah, screw it. I want to be a private citizen again.”
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There is certainly a lot to be said for rethinking who the villain really is. And a lot more for stories that reveal that those who seize power are rarely good at wielding it once seized. Doesn’t matter who they are, history is littered with revolutions and rebellions against tyranny etc. that succeeded and then led to worse tyranny by the new victors. Practically every slave revolt for one.
But I do kind of question this bit.
And of course, Elizabethan England. We tend to think of Elizabeth and Henry VIII as being ruthless, etc, in defense of the state and of the change in religion (which it could be argued was done to concentrate ALL power in the crown, thereby creating the modern state.) But it wasn’t like that. Proportional to the population, they both killed more people than Stalin or Mao.
Are you sure? I mean Mao killed ~60 million out of ~1 billion == 6% of the population via the famines caused by his “great leap forward”. I don’t recall any such wholesale killing by the Tudors…
The really whole sale killing was during the wars of the roses. For ex the battle of Towton where about 1% of the entire population of England fought and about half of that number died (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/25/comment.comment for example)
(One wonders if some of these people went to the block murmuring “Queen Elizabeth cannot know”) and while a lot of it was dressed up in the trappings of religious dissent or even treason, I know for a fact that a vast number, probably vaster than we expect was because the Queen (or King) hated that someone had more power than she/he did. Or because she/he coveted some nobleman’s estate. Or even, of course, because she/he felt pettishly offended.
Now that I certainly believe. Both monarchs were capricious and always keen to get their hands on as much loot as possible.
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Francis — I saw the math in a book once upon a time. I grant you the population was estimated. I had Dan check the math — since I’m digit dyslexic — and it seemed to be right. BUT I confess I’m buying a lot of assumptions about what the population was. I’ve got to research Tudors again soon (the Marlowe Mystery and the thing with Eric whichneedstobedonealready) so when I come across it, I’ll post and/or send it to you depending on which seems appropriate at the time. Soon = PROBABLY July, but eh…
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Poul Anderson did something like that in The Corridors of Time. But doing it in a fantasy novel might be harder.
Arguably, the easiest way to do it would be to have a standard rebellion story, but with the evil rulers pretending to be good as extra color. Or have the plucky heroes help put “the true heir” on the throne, and then in the second part of the book dethrone the .
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yes, but that is not quite it. It’s not just that the evil rulers pretend to be good — of course they do. The other was never believable — but that most of the people believe it or pretend to. And THAT’s hard to tell.
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Rulers can also have a Stalin/Hitler/Saddam attitude of “let them hate, as long as they fear”. AFAIK, it is a technique pioneered by the Assyrians about 27 centuries ago. Nasty, but it works in the short term.
However, I was thinking of more than that – show a propaganda machine that actually works most of the time. The evil barons take half the peasants’ yield, and send half of what they take to the king – but the “good” king sends the peasants back enough so they won’t starve out of his charity. Or maybe a major character starts out as a propagandist (bard?).
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Evil rulers ARE good, according to their premises and values. Remember, evil is often just tho result of holding a different understanding of the world and what is required to keep it cranking.
That is where Moral Relativism gets things right. Where it gets things wrong is too long a discussion, but it starts and ends with Moral Relativists being fed to the plastic shredders by those less open-minded.
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Er. Yes.
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George R. R. Martin is exploring this in his Game of Thrones/Song of Fire & Ice series. Jaime Lannister, regicide and oath-breaker, is shown to have had just cause. Meanwhile, others who try to be enightened, noble, fair and just rulers generally suffer, and cause their people to suffer in consequence.
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There have been, I know, instances of usurpers being the good guys in Fantasy (though not many. It is remarkably resistant to upending of tropes) but has there ever been an instance in which “the good king” that has just taken power is in fact a horrible, ruthless despot, constantly accusing the dark lord of the things he, himself is actually doing, as the Tudors by and large did?
Am presently, for light reading, reading my way though the Disc World novels. I am up to Witches Abroad. To refer to Lillith — you have to recognize the power of stories.
It is interesting that you referred to the French Revolution. Good grief, but that was the start of a cascade of troubles for that nation, and much of the world. There was the Terror, which finally ended when, weary and exhausted, what was left of the French embraced an Emperor. It is said that Napoleon invented the state police…
I suspect that once you get past subsistence living you will always see that these similar patterns emerge. Ultimately some people are going to try to make other people ‘behave’ for the good of … whatever. An ‘Evil Emperor’ who overthrows the ‘Good King’ and turned to good? I am sure that at one point this was a tale told in France … at least before General Winter and Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley entered the story.
But I would like to see it done in fiction. Fiction allows the story to end before things go wrong again.
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Conjoining this post with one you recently wrote on “villains” There is a story I always wanted to write/read/see done. Left hand side of the page the story of the true prince, hidden by cottagers as an infant etc. The right hand side of the page the story of the rightful heir whose kingdom is threatened by someone claiming royal blood lies super ceding his but really out for loot and not caring what sort of waste he lay to the kingdom.
After all, villain or hero all depend on your point of view and we are also all the heroes of our own stories. I doubt that anyone with historic power has done things with intentional evil in mind. I could even, as devils advocate, argue that old Adolph himself was a good guy. and have good reasons to back it up.
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I recall reading that Stalin made sure ample goodies were provided his subjects, up until about the time they turned six. Those goodies were always accompanied by warm notes identifying their provenance, to ensure that his subjects would always remember that Uncle Joe loved them and wanted good things for them and was deeply aggrieved that circumstances … I don’t recall reading how welt it worked, though.
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Good way to get yourself pilloried. Or burned at the stake.
The effect goes clear back to the beginning — quite literally: Prometheus gave fire (back, in some versions) to Mankind and established that it was possible to trick the Gods; he was punished as a usurper, later on became Lucifer, identified with Ba’al-zav’ov, and we all know how the rest of it worked out. Parallel with that (and perhaps a modification of it) we also have the rebellious angel who gave A-Dam (“First Man”) and Eve (“Morning” or “Dawn”) Reason, which had to be quashed immediately “…lest they become as we are.”
The Enlightenment took some of the sting out of that, but let’s face it: the Enlightenment was the result of Europeans killing one another in ever more vicious ways for ever more idiotic reasons for roughly a millenium, from approximately Charles Martel to Gustavus Adolphus, and eventually figuring out that that wasn’t the way to do it. Unfortunately the Enlightenment is an intellectual construct that doesn’t mesh with emotional reality, and is being discarded because it isn’t faaaaaaaaaaaair. “A boot on a human face, forever” is the future, and the people who wanted and tried to change that are already in the process of getting the same treatment in History that the Light-Carrier did.
Regards,
Ric
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The Enlightenment was a lie, a slander of the prior ages by the new regime. A very successful lie, but a lie all the same. I mean really – The EN-EFFINGLIGHTENMENT???? Slapping on a fresh coat of whitewash doesn’t make you enlightened (except, of course, when you change all the dictionaries and encyclopeias so that when people look up “enlightened” all they see is your picture. Who controls Wikipedia controls reality.
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Sigh. encyclope-D-ias. My keyboard is haunted tonight by the ghosts of words past, and if only you could see what I’ve caught in the proofing stages you would think me mad, mad, MAD I tell you!!! Bwah-hah-hah. I, the Joker, plan to invade Disneyworld, infecting all the workers with my serum to force them to smile unremittingly, their visages the embodiment of good cheer.
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My problem is that I’m entering changes into Darkship Renegades and my fingers add fresh mistakes…
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Heh. Reformed bad guys are so _fun_ to write. I mean, when someone ticks them off, there’s no learning curve on how to fight back. There’s just reflexes. And the angst afterwards is limited to, “Drat, hope that doesn’t get to be a habit, again” as they sweep up the ashes and hope the wife doesn’t notice the burned meat odor.
Mind you, I’ve never tried for historic realism.
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Terry Pratchett had a good play on the “rightful Prince” theme. His character Carrot Ironfoundersson (of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch) is the rightful King of Ankh-Morpork. While he likely would be a good king, he doesn’t want the job (he’s happy at his job with the City Watch).
The current Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Havelock Vetinari, knows who he is but isn’t worried about him because Vetinari *knows* that Carrot doesn’t want to be King.
Mind you, there’s evidence that Vetinari might love Carrot taking the throne after his (Vetinari) death.
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Nah. He’d be more likely to leave it to Vimes, who would hate it. :)
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Oh yes.
Vimes, while he would hate it, would recognize it as a job that had to be done. As he would not see anyone else to whom he could feel comfortable to handing the job over to, he would miserably submit. Then he would probably do the worst thing possible, he would try and do a good job. (because, unlike the Watch, it is not a job that can be largely ignored … not in a place like Ankh-Morpork.)
Ventinari was written for the, oops, made for the job.
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Too dangerous. Carrot would make a great king, but his great grandson would be a tyrant. Vimes, without the leash of a legal framework, would be even worse.
I think the person being groomed to be the next patrician is Moist von Lipwig. He has a lot of the skills, and he is learning to be moral enough.
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Ori, I agree with your conclusion, but the picture of somebody learning to be moral enough to succeed Havelock Vetinari makes me giggle. Vetinari has no ideals, least of all any trace of morality. What he knows, and is teaching Moist (rather successfully, I might add), is that what we call “moral behavior” is the set of behaviors most likely to lead to success in the long term. Vetinari is a pragmatist, but not in the modern sense, which is sullied by the assumption that violence always works. He is perfectly willing to use violence when it will work, not to mention immoral and/or unethical tactics like universal spying, blackmail, extortion in all its many varieties, and egregious cheating. What he is teaching Moist is that moral behavior can be, usually is, the best approach, and when immorality is called for it requires a clear-eyed assessment of the inevitable side effects, and measures to minimize them.
He has an apt pupil. It’s fun to watch. I don’t know that it would be all that much fun to live in Ankh-Morpork and get to watch from closer range.
Regards,
Ric
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I don’t know Ric, it appears that Vetinari’s one “moral question” is “what’s best for Ankh-Morpork”.
I could see Vetinari being really nasty but never for personal gain.
It’s fortunate for Ankh-Morpork and its people that Vetinari is smart enough to see that it’s best for Ankn-Morpock for him to act in a more moral manner.
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Vetinari is like a civilian version of Tom Kratman’s Carrera without the self control issues. He’s ruthless and nasty, but he does a ruthless and nasty job. There are glimmers of unnecessary niceness, for example, in the way Vetinari treated the orcs and goblins.
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Vetinari has an annotated copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince, heavily high-lighted and copiously underlined. He thinks auld Nick was a bit naive.
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As a reader of monarchy histories and revolutions – and contemplating the possible parallels with current and more recent revolutions that try to establish democracies – I just wanted to say that I enjoyed reading your musings. You might enjoy Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn fantasy series as an example of a dark lord who is overthrown who was found by the revolutionaries/heroes to have some reasons for what he did, as they question what they come to do themselves all in the name of the better good.
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And I always thought I was weird for preferring Claudius to Hamlet. You *know* Hamlet would have been a disastrous king. He would have shipped both his girlfriend and his mother off to some convent on some soggy, wind-swept Baltic island, alienated all his feudal vassals with his cowardice, and at the end, still lose the kingdom to the Norwegians.
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YES. He would also be a royal prick, but that’s something else.
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I’ve always thought you could treat the play Hamlet as a kind of Richard III apologia for King Fortinbras’s takeover.
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Recently read a biography of Richard III that was sympathetic toward him and painted the Tudors in an un-shakespearean light.
Found myself thinking Glenn Cook could have fun with this guy. Or, maybe has.
M
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Everything I know about Richard III comes from Josephine Tey, _The Daughter of Time_
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The bio I read was
Kendall’s
I can recommend it as readable. Not knowledgeable enough to say whether it’s accurate or fair, though it seems to be both.
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I love The Daughter of Time. One of my favorite mysteries.
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At least you it is does not come from Peter Cook’s portrayal in The Black Adder.
BTW: for those who may not be aware of it, Tony Robinson wrote The Hutchinson Book of Kings & Queens. Yes, he of the cunning plan … and British reader of the abridged Disc World novels … and the ‘stunt Pratchett’ when he gave the better part of Pratchett’s BBC Richard Dimbleby Lecture in 2010.
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The Tudors were ENTIRELY usurpers. Henry 7’s claim to the throne was that his grandmother’s first husband was King of England. That’s it. All the Tudors had to be constantly paranoid about opposition because they had pretty much no right to rule whatsoever.
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“The Tudors were ENTIRELY usurpers. ”
What are you talking about? Henry Tudor found that crown in a hawthorn bush fair and square.
Finder’s keepers works in dynasties as well as marbles ;)
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government is force. Repeat after me. They had the force, so they governed. Myths are something else entirely. :)
BTW has anyone thought carefully through the authority of the people and the fact government is force? Oh, wait. I should have some coffee and shut up.
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Poul Anderson once described government as a person/group that can say “do what I want or I’ll kill you”.
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Government is the legitimization of force. Whether the King as divinely appointed representative of the sacred or the legislature as representative of the duly expressed will of the people. Effort is made to exercise suasion and intimidation, but ultimately government says: Don’t make me have to come up there.
Thing is, the world has many people whose use of force is only restrained by their fear of force being used against them. I’ve no issue with the idea of government as force, merely how its use of force is authorized.
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and the purposes to which it’s put, which is part of it. I mean, it’s all very well to think of “government providing for every one” if you think of government as sort of daddy. But — having got stuck on a board not so far back, where welfare recipients were justifying using their food stamps to buy lobster and cake and saying things like “Just because we’re broke, why can’t we have good things every once in a while?” — it is totally different if you think of it as force.
I’ve been at the “just before falling on welfare” broke level — mind you, we probably qualified for welfare, but we’d have gone to the soup kitchen before that. And considered it, but even that was too much for our pride. So we lived on rice for a year, and saved money to buy meat and veggies for the just-starting-to-eat kid. We were still paying taxes (part of the reason for the situation was paying on two houses and a move across country. The other part was paying on complicated birth on COBRA) because we made enough for that. So, here we were, scraping by on rice and in season some greens. A $5 dollar book had to be saved for somehow. BUT our taxes paid for food stamps for people who “deserve a little lobster now and then.” Of course if we didn’t pay, we’d have gone to jail. So, ultimately, the money we couldn’t afford to pay was being taken from us to pay for occasional luxuries for others. Because of this we couldn’t have even above bare necessities ourselves. (And it’s no use saying we’d brought ourselves to that pass by our own devices. Yeah, we did, by a couple of disastrous mistakes, and then by a gambit — which paid off ultimately but cost more up front — to get out of an untenable position. I’m sure most of the people on welfare are there by the same sort of thing. Some of those gambits don’t pay off.) Again, if you think of the government as a benevolent father — yeah, he should provide little treats for all his “children” (This is how kings are usually conceived of) but if you think of government as force, then taking from the poor to give to the less poor is monstrous. And evaluating things on “reported income only” is insane. That’s what I meant by we should remember more often that government IS force — and follow through on the implications of that. Maintaining of order (to an extent — enough to allow society to function) and mutual defense are aims I can get behind in the force model. Giving everyone a cuddle and making sure they have treats is NOT. I’m sorry. Decaffeinated, mid novel and hormonal is no way to get in a discussion that will quickly slide to politics. Sorry.
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In spite of the claims some make (“Unemployment benefits stimulate the economy.” “Well, goody – let’s put EVERYBODY on unemployment and stimulate the h*ll out of the economy.”) gummint don’t create wealth. At best it fosters circumstances conducive to the creation of wealth (property rights, e.g.,)
The problem of government is that it attracts people (many who are well-intentioned) who see problems and think gov’t can fix them. To quote a former Secretary of State, “What’s the point of having such a huge military if you aren’t going to use them?” People who don’t see problems with activist government are naturally going to accrete in the chambers of power, and will seek to expand their influence.
Really, treat yourself to a viewing of Yes, Minister and give thanks that we have bureaucrats more interested in surfing the ‘net for porn than in regulating us.
I agree that its basis in force is a reason governments should be limited. And it is important to keep in mind what government is actually about. For example, Justice is not a proper function of, nor is it generally attainable by government — but as inJustice tends to be disruptive of social order, it is useful for government to have the appearance of supporting Justice.
Yes, I am cynical, yes my view of government is utilitarian. Being weaned on Heinlein will have that effect.
Does discussing political philosophy constitute talking politics? If so, my apologies. The government forced me to do it.
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“I grabbed what I thought was a fluffy regency romance this morning – fine, whatever, go ahead and giggle. . . ”
I’m not giggling–I’m always on the lookout for historical romances with even the slightest chunk of historicity bobbing about in a broth of passion. If the spirit moves you, share the author …
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Sarah, cross-reference those musings with the movie “The Good Son”. McCauley Culkin plays the character you’re describing (*terrifyingly* well). But he isn’t in charge of anything.
I have to confess that my knowledge of the subject matter is spotty at best, but I seem to remember the “new management” getting away with a heckuva lot by invoking the bogeyman of Bonapartist loyalists.
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Get out of my mind, dammit. That last paragraph describes the story of Dark Lord’s Daughter.
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I wasn’t in your mind. You can’t prove I was.
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What?? Your brain thinks you’re awake just because you’re reading???? Funny brain. For at least 2 of 3 people in my household reading no more indicates wakefulness than does breathing.
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well, it used to be trained to wake with the newspaper. When our newspaper was missing, it was a HUGE upset. it would be like now — forfend — sitting down with cup of coffee and finding instapundit is down. How AM I supposed to know the world is still out there. SURELY you don’t want me to look out the window that early, do you?
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People in Elizabethan England didn’t all talk like characters in Shakespeare plays, any more than people today all speak like characters in David Mamet plays.
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What the f*** do you mean we don’t f***ing talk like f***ing David F***ing Mamet characters?
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INDEED. I f**ing do. All the f***ing time. :) (I swear. Early and often!)
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As we in the South say, I stand corrected. Well, sh**************************************************************************************t.
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It has seemed to me that most revolutions fail for rather simple reasons. Generally, those replacing the former ruler don’t know how to govern. Usurpers tend to have as a model of governance the previous system, which they tend to replicate at least subconsciously. Orwell’s Animal Farm is, among other things, a demonstration of this principle. The stream of Culture has a very powerful current and is not easily diverted.
Also affecting the usurpers, as Heinlein foreshadowed in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, is that humans desire to control their environments, even when those environments are social. Laws will be passed, regulations enacted, all “for the common good.” And wherever there are laws and regulatons there will be those seeking to influence them in the favor of their clients, their friends, themselves. Remember from the discussion of eeeeeeeevil, mostly it is just a matter of somebody lacking a sense of proportion. There is a class of murderer who are defined by the fact they believe their actions entirely reasonable, if you only understood the provocation.
Finally, it is the inevitable nature of power that it attracts those most onclined to its abuse.
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All of the above, but all I can think of is the parliament scene in TMIAHM “Hoors, hundreds of Hoors, I marry them, I betcha” — or something to that effect. I was listening to the audio book while walking and hit that line and started giggling insanely, to the discomfiture of passerbyes.
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The Lloyd James reading? Delightful, isn’t it? I am particularly fond of his Citizen of the Galaxy reading, with his hint of Sean Connery in Baslim’s voice.
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Ah sweares I posted this comment afore, but it isn’t showing up, so ah repeats myself:
I presume you were listening to the Lloyd James reading of Moon. Have you heard his rendition of Citizen of the Galaxy? Delightful, especially his hint of Sean Connery in Baslim’s voice.
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Another factor to weigh when reviewing the past is that, as the saying goes, it is a different country. Our ancestors were not as enlightened and wise are we today (snicker) and allowances must be made for our ignorance.
In the first place the values of the past differ from our own. (N.B., “different” does not mean inferior or superior, it means different.) Ellis Peters exploited this wonderfully in her Brother Cadfael stories, in which motivations of characters were often hidden in plain sight by our modern value system. Contemporary writers of Historical Fiction, like Bernard Cornwell and Lars Walker exploit these changes in values to call attention to our own contemporary values.
Works of art are products of a particular time and circumstance, although some do attain universality (based on the continuity of basic human drives coupled with the many ways societies find to direct those drives.) An example can be found in the film Gone with the Wind, in the scene where Scarlett swears “As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again.” It is helpful to remember that when the movie was released in 1939 the US was still in the Great Depression, meaning that scene would have had a resonance with its audience that modern viewers likely don’t appreciate.
America’s revolutionaries were acting at a time when most educated people were fluent in Greek and Latin, when Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, David Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature, John Locke’s writings and Gibbons’ Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire comprised the “cocktail party” conversations of the colonies. These created the intellectual yeast with which revolutionary beer was brewed and determined the types of brew which would result. The intellectual ferment of the 19th Century, with its scientific revolution and Darwin’s theories yielded a very different beverage, inflected with the idea that “scientific management” and eugenics could yield a superior society.
It is foolish to judge Henry VIII without recognizing his reign followed closely upon the Wars of the Roses, thirty years of dynastic war which did much to devestate England. Such events would certainly determine Henry VIII to take extreme measures to avoid a repeat, thus his avidity for a male heir and ruthless suppression of potential challengers. And of course, to Medieval lords the peasants didn’t really qualify as human, thus they could scarcely be held to modern standards of treatment of “inferiors.”
The art of writing about such cultures lies in bringing out the cultural values which determine people’s behavior, whether their goals are honor, fame, celebrity, material wealth, whatever. Render the actors recognizable in their motivations yet reveal how their culture directs those motivations.
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Weren’t all “feudal rulers” sociopaths? For that matter aren’t all politicians sociopaths? Religious leaders too.
Look at what is required to stay in power. If you aren’t a sociopath, you’ll be out on your ear in no time.
And as RES has pointed out, a large portion of the population wasn’t considered human by the “Upper Classes”, or even what passed for a “Middle Class” in those times.
So a King could be a perfect gentlemen to his peers, and still treat the freemen like serfs, and the serfs like barnyard animals. It would have been unnatural to do anything else.
FYI, since Shakespeare got mentioned, Time Team did a special on a dig at his house in Stratford on Avon. Don’t know what American channels carry Time Team, we’re lucky, our local non-profit educational channel runs it. Right after Midsomer Murders :)
Wayne
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Two stories come to mind:
There was an English officer posted in India in the early nineteenth century. On a certain day, shortly after he had arrived, he was standing with a local when he witnessed a man throw a woman on her husband’s funeral pyre. The English officer was horrified and wanted to intervene. The Indian explained that the Englishman would have to understand, Sati was the custom here. The officer replied the Indian needed to understand, it was the custom where he came from to hang chaps who did such.
It is said that at one point in the dealings with the American Indians an disagreement arose between two men over a treaty that had been made with the local natives. The first said it certainly did not have to be kept as the natives were savages after all. The second said that this was exactly why they had to abide by the treaty, for they were gentlemen – a gentleman is required to set a good example and a gentleman kept his word.
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I ‘think’ David Gemmel started a series a series I read where a guy who’s a murderer in the first couple of chapters becomes the hero of the series.
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If we’re stealing from history, I think Stephen I is great source material. (A good man, a horrible king, and the traits that made him one, largely also made him the other.) Sharon Kay Penman does a pretty decent historical fiction account of his reign in “When Christ and His Saints Slept”.
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Oh yes.
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By Stephen do we mean Stephen of Blois, the French usurper of Matilda (sometimes called Maud), who was the daughter of Henry I and his only heir?
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Yes.
If Stephen I was an usurper, then so was Henry I. (Not to mention Henry I’s father.)
Stephen had the backing of the general populace (of London, anyway), the church, the Lord Chancellor, and the barons.
Hugh Bigod was Henry I’s royal steward and claimed Henry I had renounced Maude and blessed Stephen’s claim from his deathbed.
Not to mention that Maude was inconveniently in armed rebellion against Henry I’s authority at the time of his death, which *did* lend quite a bit of credibility to Bigod’s claim of a deathbed renunciation. (As well as a certain amount of hostility from men who had lost members of their family putting down the rebellion, her marriage to a traditional enemy of the Normans, not to mention the whole “female” thing.)
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Not historical, but fiction of the time can show values and what people considered right and wrong. For a Victorian example, I was very troubled reading the original Prisoner of Zenda, where the hero helps the crown prince gain the throne. Except that the crown prince is an irresponsible lush and is hated by the people, was even hated by his own father. The people want the younger brother, Michael, who’d proved himself to be a good ruler already, and who had come up with a pretty clever strategy to banish his brother with no bloodshed. But our hero is going to assist the “rightful ruler” and apparently, readers back then didn’t have a problem with that – I’ve met people who’ve read the books today who didn’t have a problem with it. But I came away thinking Michael was the real hero and wished he’d won.
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YES!!!!! Films & novels are generally TERRIBLE at the actual history but superb at revealing hidden presumptions of their cultures. And that is also why a novel (e.g., Uncle Tom’s Cabin) can change the entire paradigm of a culture. Call it The Power Of The Story or call it The importance Of Framing, it is why authors such as Dickens and Zola and even Heinlein can have such powerful influence.
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On the down side, people too often believe the fiction even when it’s completely contradicted by the facts (even today :-P). As far as history goes, I look to the comedies to give me a better sense of the reality of the times than the straight fiction – yes, there will be stereotypes, but there will usually be a sense of the real beneath them. People laugh at things they’ve seen and people they know – so you’ll have clever servants and strong women, things you don’t see as much in other kinds of stories.
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of course the stories are more believed. They mimic experience, and, in a way, create “false memories” — even mildly competent stories create the illusion of having lived through it.
BTW BEST research on the thirties and forties? Disney comics of the time. There’s a wealth of detail there. Of course also in mysteries of the time. Just the wealth of daily life detail.
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BTW BEST research on the thirties and forties? Disney comics of the time. There’s a wealth of detail there. Of course also in mysteries of the time. Just the wealth of daily life detail.
I would not know about Disney comics, but have at various times jonesed on mysteries.
I prefer the kind of mystery where the reader can, if attentive, try and solve the puzzle. If that kind of mystery is written to take place in the reader’s present, and in a setting readers might have some knowledge of, the details of the time have to be more or less correct. Otherwise those off details would have gotten in the way of the mystery itself.
I have a certain sense of awe for the person who can write a proper puzzle mystery set in an alternate or fantasy world. They have to create a world that is strongly and clearly set, so that you can know what the rules of this place are. All this information, as well as the clues to the mystery, have to revealed in the process of a readable story. Wow!
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Yes! I aspire to this, some day…
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