skygiants | (no subject)

I got Elizabeth Wein's The Winter Prince out of the library a few weeks ago, because I had acquired all four of its sequels for ebook and I wanted to be able to read them on my travels (which, as it turned out, I didn't, but never mind, this fall contains MANY MORE travels.)

For the record, I DID read The Winter Prince some years ago but even with my distant thoughts helpfully documented it turned out I had forgotten quite ... a lot of it ......

... it's the incest, the thing I forgot was the incest.

I notice that in my old review I explained the Arthuriana plot and described it as "the main sell" for anyone who would want to read it. This is patently not true. The main sell for most people who would probably want to read this book is the intensely tropey Blonde Boy And Dark-Haired Boy Attempt Highly Fraught Emotional Dominance Games, Also They're Half Siblings, Also I Guess They're Both Heirs To The Arthurian Throne But Honestly At This Point Who Cares.

I had a conversation last week with

shati about how it's carefully explained several times in canon that Medraut (older, tragic, sinister) is the blonde one and Lleu ("Bright One," younger, refuses to kill things) is the dark-haired one, because Elizabeth Wein Is Trying TO Write Against Tropes, and I've only just now realized that it's not writing against tropes at all; Medraut has to be blonde. The Lymond always is! Julie Beaufort-Stuart in Code Name Verity remains Elizabeth Wein's best Lymond, but she had to get her training wheels in somehow.

I do still love how she handles the poor Orkneys.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

rymenhild

I think I discussed with you my delight that there is only one member of his immediate family with whom Medraut does _not_ have sexual tension, and it is Guinevere (Gwenhwyfar? Can't remember Wein's spelling.)

From:

skygiants

SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT ELIZABETH WEIN, she picked a theme and she COMMITTED to it.

(She's actually named GINEVRA, astonishingly and straightforwardly enough.)

Looking back at my old post, it shocks me that in 2008 you had not yet read this book! It seems a constant, like the sea.

From:

sovay

... it's the incest, the thing I forgot was the incest.

I am impressed, because The Winter Prince has even more incest than your average Arthurian retelling, and those canonically have quite a lot.

I like the second-person narration; it may have been my first sustained encounter with the form and it's still one of my benchmarks. I like Goewin. I like that she manages to weave Arthurian myth into British solstitial myth in such a way that the mummers' play shadows but does not predetermine the plot; it's a story the characters would know, just as they would know the story of Lleu Llaw Gyffes, so the meta is not annoying (and years later I was not surprised to learn that Wein loves Alan Garner's The Owl Service). I like all three of Artos' children. I like Artos and Ginevra. I find Morgause chillingly believable and I respect Wein for writing a short story in her voice (and then making it erotica with Medraut which comes with all the warnings). It's one of my favorite Arthurian books, full stop. I like the sequels which are total changes of scene, although not complexity of emotional landscape, and someday I really would like her to publish The Sword Dance.

From:

rachelmanija

What's that?

From:

sovay

What's that?

The long-delayed sequel to The Winter Prince from which I heard her read a chapter at Readercon in 2007 and have been waiting ever since. She said at the time that the Aksumite books were all written because she needed to write her characters from The Winter Prince to The Sword Dance and she thought it would take an intermediary novel and instead it was four whole novels which formed a sequence of their own. Then she got into World War II and SOE and I don't know if she ever will get back to The Sword Dance, but it was a really good chapter, it had the white red-eared hounds of the underworld, I keep hoping.

From:

skygiants

I had a vague recollection that incest was a thing that was associated with the book, but I thought, 'right, it's a book fandom thing.' No; Wein just throws down the gauntlet, like, "look, I knew people would go there, so I just did it myself and saved you the trouble. All right? ALL RIGHT."

I was not aware of the short story about Morgause! I don't know that I actually want to read it -- a whole story in Morgause's head would likely be too much for me -- but it's interesting to know it exists. I might have known The Sword Dance was hypothetically a thing, but if so I'd forgotten about it! I also hope very much she does write it someday, I'm extremely curious.

From:

sovay

No; Wein just throws down the gauntlet, like, "look, I knew people would go there, so I just did it myself and saved you the trouble. All right? ALL RIGHT."

The sheer density of incest in The Winter Prince is one of the reasons it does not bother me when Medraut reminds Goewin that he could offer her sexual violence. Everybody in this book has inflammably dubious chemistry with everyone else. You could ship any of these people and it would be an emotionally terrible idea, but not textually unsupported.

I was not aware of the short story about Morgause! I don't know that I actually want to read it -- a whole story in Morgause's head would likely be too much for me -- but it's interesting to know it exists.

It's called "No Human Hands to Touch." It was published in Datlow and Windling's Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers (1998); it's beautifully written, as emotionally razor-sharp as any of her novels, and very much the sort of thing you will not be able to remove from your memory once read. The short story "Fire" also belongs to this continuity, although it does not require warnings for anything other than potential later book spoilers. A couple of Wein's other short stories have always looked potentially relevant by title ("The Ethiopian Knight," "A Dear Gazelle"), but since I have never seen either of them in print, I don't know for sure.

I might have known The Sword Dance was hypothetically a thing, but if so I'd forgotten about it! I also hope very much she does write it someday, I'm extremely curious.

Fingers crossed!

From:

labingi

Sounds like an interesting (if tropish) addition to Arthuriana. I enjoyed your description. I also enjoyed reading The Buried Giant last year, another unconventional Arthurian retelling. Interesting to see that new takes can still be pulled out of this material.

From:

skygiants

I don't think Arthuriana will ever be fully mined, honestly. I've read a number of VERY WEIRD Arthurian books and I keep coming back for more! (The Buried Giant was not for me, though, alas -- there's only so much Allegory I can wade through.)

From:

sovay

I've read a number of VERY WEIRD Arthurian books and I keep coming back for more!

I apologize in advance for sounding like a request for a listicle, but—favorite weird Arthuriana?

From:

skygiants

I feel like you know all the weird ones already! But top for me are definitely:

- the one where Merlin wakes up after several thousand years in a tree and has to go to post-apocalyptic boarding school
- the one where Guinevere packed up the lake, moved to South America, and started keeping herself young through human sacrifice
- the one where four plucky teen siblings have to team up with Morgan le Fay to stop chaotic neutral Merlin from destroying California, and Merlin won't stop terrifyingly flirting with the oldest sister because she's the Arthur avatar
- the part in that Edward Eager book where the time-traveling nine-year-old accidentally defeats Lancelot in tournament and everyone's really mad about it
- Hexwood? Hexwood. Hexwood might be the weirdest, really. It's very hard to get weirder than Hexwood.
- the Once and Future King, while practically canonical, is honestly very deeply weird in and of itself
- I haven't actually seen, watched or read Fate/Zero and I don't really know what it's about (is it a sports anime about a space/time grail tournament?) but I KNOW it has reincarnated female King Arthur in it and therefore I KNOW eventually I am going to and I'm angry about it in advance

Turnabout's fair play, you should tell me any favorite weird Arthuriana of yours!

From:

sovay

- the one where Merlin wakes up after several thousand years in a tree and has to go to post-apocalyptic boarding school

On my list.

- the one where Guinevere packed up the lake, moved to South America, and started keeping herself young through human sacrifice

Also on my list, although I read it so young that for years it didn't register with me just how whack-a-ding-hoy an Arthurian it is.

- the one where four plucky teen siblings have to team up with Morgan le Fay to stop chaotic neutral Merlin from destroying California, and Merlin won't stop terrifyingly flirting with the oldest sister because she's the Arthur avatar

I am not sure I know this one!

- the part in that Edward Eager book where the time-traveling nine-year-old accidentally defeats Lancelot in tournament and everyone's really mad about it

I had forgotten that until you mentioned it. Is it some kind of shout-out to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court? That is an extremely weird Arthurian, but I also hated it, so here we are.

- Hexwood? Hexwood. Hexwood might be the weirdest, really. It's very hard to get weirder than Hexwood.

I don't think I even saw the Arthuriana coming the first time I read Hexwood. I don't feel bad about that.

- the Once and Future King, while practically canonical, is honestly very deeply weird in and of itself

Ditto The Sword in the Stone! Again, I read it very young and focused on things like the archery and turning into animals, not so much the wild anachronisms and White writing his own poetry.

- I haven't actually seen, watched or read Fate/Zero and I don't really know what it's about (is it a sports anime about a space/time grail tournament?) but I KNOW it has reincarnated female King Arthur in it and therefore I KNOW eventually I am going to and I'm angry about it in advance

I had not even heard of this! I look forward to the inevitable review.

Turnabout's fair play, you should tell me any favorite weird Arthuriana of yours!

Winter of Magic's Return, The Stolen Lake, and Hexwood having already been mentioned—

The Drawing of the Dark (1979) is the only Tim Powers novel I haven't bounced off of and I have no idea why; it is a retelling of the Siege of Vienna in 1529 with reincarnated Arthur and Vikings and mad prophetic painters and the Fisher King and sacred beer and I hate beer, but while reading this novel I totally accept that the dark beer brewed by Herzwesten has the power to hold off the enemies of the West, why not? Because it is built around an East/West dichotomy assumed to be as fundamental as light/dark, summer/winter, or the clash of Seelie and Unseelie Courts, I cannot promise it hasn't gone weird about the Ottoman Empire since last I read it, but it starts with an aging soldier of fortune being hired as a bouncer and ends with an apocalypse, so it is probably not a total waste of your time.

Robert Newman's Merlin's Mistake (1970) is a YA novel whose title refers to its co-protagonist Tertius, who had the mixed blessing of being named Merlin's godson at a time when the enchanter was so infatuated with Nimue that he couldn't keep his mind on his work: he intended to endow the boy with all possible knowledge so as to make him a great magician and actually endowed him with all future knowledge, meaning he could build a transistor radio if he could get the parts in Morte d'Arthur England but can't cast a wart cure to save his life. He ends up accompanying the armiger Brian on his quest to find the Knight with the Red Shield, to overthrow the apparently immortal and invincible Black Knight who exacts tribute twice a year from the town of Meliot; of course Brian who is still a teenager himself has undertaken this quest more or less to impress a girl and that never works out the way it's supposed to; there is a third main character who is too awesome to spoil. I haven't read it in years, but I grew up on it and I can still remember a spell chanted in Latin to an invisible serpent.

The Dark Is Rising is honestly pretty weird Arthuriana. It starts out looking like normal YA Arthuriana with summer quests for mythical objects and mysterious older relatives with tantalizing names and then the next thing you know you've got time-traveling Guinevere and Arthur's son being fostered in 1970's Wales, which is again all the sort of thing I didn't think was unusual as a child, but really is.

Rosemary Sutcliff's later Roman novels run into the Matter of Britain and I haven't read any of them since middle or very early high school, but I believe one of them is a retelling of Y Gododdin and I definitely want to check that out, because that's specific.

THE IDYLLS OF THE QUEEN.

From:

skygiants

I mentioned this to you the other week but I want to make sure to get it in text: the four plucky teen siblings one is L.J. Smith's Night of the Solstice and Heart of Valor duology and they're AMAZING and you should read them.

The Drawing of the Dark and Merlin's Mistake are both going on my list! I can't believe I forgot to put The Dark is Rising on mine but I stand by my decision not to put Idylls of the Queen because it is now my new BENCHMARK Arthuriana and all other Arthuriana is only weird by virtue of its distance from Idylls! I DECREE IT SO.

From:

sovay

the four plucky teen siblings one is L.J. Smith's Night of the Solstice and Heart of Valor duology and they're AMAZING and you should read them.

Thank you!

rushthatspeaks also made an impressive pitch for L.J. Smith on our way home from the wedding. Apparently one of the books is trashy jötunn fic, which in fact makes me want to read it at once.

but I stand by my decision not to put Idylls of the Queen because it is now my new BENCHMARK Arthuriana and all other Arthuriana is only weird by virtue of its distance from Idylls!

Honestly, legit!

Edited (HTML) Date: 2018-09-29 06:32 pm (UTC)

From:

lokifan

- Hexwood? Hexwood. Hexwood might be the weirdest, really. It's very hard to get weirder than Hexwood.
- the Once and Future King, while practically canonical, is honestly very deeply weird in and of itself

Both of these made me laugh a lot. TRUTH.

From:

starlady

The only thing I remember from this book is the scene where Gwenevere bursts into tears and says she hates living at the end of everything. I think about that scene a lot.

You're so right about the Lymond thing, though. And I need to finish the Aksum novels.

From:

skygiants

Yeeeeeah, I ALSO was hit hard by that scene - though only on this read; it did not strike me, particularly, in 2008. But it did now.

(I think it's Goewin, right? When Medraut is trying to gently probe her to find out How She Feels about not being in line for the throne.)

From:

starlady

Yes. Isn't she Guenevere? (I can't even spell it.) I remembered her as the Guinevere analog, anyway.

From:

skygiants

Hm, the Guinevere analog is her mother Ginevra really -- I don't think Goewin as Lleu and Medraut's sister has an easy analog, at least not in Arthuriana. Maybe in some of the other Welsh myths that Wein is drawing on that I don't know as well.

From:

sovay

I don't think Goewin as Lleu and Medraut's sister has an easy analog, at least not in Arthuriana.

To my knowledge, Arthur has no daughters in even the Welsh myths (where he has a bunch of sons who are not Medraut). I think she's original to Wein.