skygiants: Drosselmeyer's old pages from Princess Tutu, with text 'rocks fall, everyone dies, the end' (endings are heartless)
[personal profile] skygiants
We did Macbeth in our zoom theater group recently, which triggered in me an irresistible urge to reread King Hereafter, Dorothy Dunnett's 850-page novel about Actual Historical Macbeth, here reinterpreted as a brilliant but misunderstood polymath because that is the sort of person about whom Dorothy Dunnett likes to write novels.

Other signature Dorothy Dunnett elements, familiar to any reader of Lymond or Niccolo, that appear in King Hereafter:

- the protagonist is surrounded by well-meaning but less brilliant allies who are constantly stressed out because he's not behaving according to their idea of ethics, but of course he is always behaving in a reasonably ethical fashion, they just can't see it because they don't understand the Long Game
- the protagonist is relentlessly pursued by a homicidal twink who demands either his undivided romantic attention or his life (in this case the homicidal twink is Rognvald Brusason)
- the protagonist meets one woman who proves herself almost an equal on the field of intellect (always almost, nobody is ever quite an equal to a Dunnett protagonist) and falls deeply in love with her; however he will attempt to conceal this as long as possible in order to avoid dragging her down with him when he meets the Bad Fate he's convinced of, despite the fact that circumstances have already forced them to get married
- the reader will be treated to a variety of richly researched and beautifully described historical set pieces, all of which serve in one way or another to allow the protagonist to demonstrate his status as a brilliant polymath

The thing that is different about King Hereafter however is that DD is also making a historical argument through this book rather than just telling a story about a brilliant but misunderstood polymath. The argument is that Macbeth was the same person as Thorfinn the Mighty, a major figure of the Orkney sagas, based more or less on the fact that she's never seen them in the same saga at the same time. So the actual ratio of this book is, like, 35% signature DD plot elements :: 65% lovingly detailed discussion of eleventh-century Viking and medieval politics to explain why and how Thorfinn and Macbeth could absolutely have been the same person, who absolutely could have been the first person to unite Scotland if it were not for a series of unfortunate events that caused a downfall absolutely not of his own doing.

In my memory, King Hereafter was less over-the-top than the Lymond or Niccolo books, and as a result slightly better. Rereading, I am not actually sure that is true; I think that when I last read it (at the age of 15 or so) I was very impressed with the density of historical research, and assumed that meant the book was good.

Rereading twenty years later, I agree with my past self that King Hereafter is both more impressive and less self-indulgent than Lymond or Niccolo, but I don't know that that actually makes it better. The thing is that in order to fit in everything that she wants to do to make her argument, DD resolves all her most compelling personal tensions really early -- by the halfway point of the book, the homicidal twink is dead, and Thorfinn/Macbeth and his lady have sorted out their feelings for each other, and then we just get two hundred pages of Thorfinn/Macbeth being an abstractly competent ruler and doing competent ruler things and setting up a lot of intelligent dominoes that will, eventually, fail to come together perfectly, but absolutely not because of his own flaws, because DD refuses to write a book in which the hero is anything less than overwhelmingly competent at all times. Structurally, it's interesting in that it's unusual -- a tragedy is usually either a straight downward line or a sharp up and then an equally sharp drop, not a nice long linger at how absolutely fine everything could have been, if only fate, etc. -- but it doesn't have momentum.

I also remembered Thorfinn as more broadly likeable and less infuriating than Lymond or Niccolo. I think that is broadly true, actually, with one big exception, which is the spousal rape that DD clearly thinks is Historically Necessary and Forgivable and Thorfinn Is Doing The Best He Can Not To Be An Asshole Under The Circumstances but still does NOT read well to a modern audience. But Thorfinn is not angelically hot -- he is a much less conventional ugly-hot, which means instead of lingering descriptions of his cornflower-blue eyes we get consistently told how much he looks like a troll, which I for one find more palatable -- and he spends much less of his time pointlessly antagonizing people and the main ethical complaint that his friends have about him is either "he's not doing enough Viking things and we don't understand why he's trying to actually maintain a kingdom" (his Viking friends) or "we appreciate the kingdom-building but we're really concerned about the atheism" (his non-Viking friends). And both of these traits are easy things to find sympathetic! However, if his friends were madder at him, or had better and more personal reason to be mad at him, it would also add momentum that the book doesn't really have in the back half, so I'm forced to conclude that the infuriating nature of the standard DD protagonist is a necessary fuel to the plot engine; without it the book doesn't quite go.

All that said, a.) I do really like Thorfinn's completely inexplicable Charles Wallace-ish stepson with whom he has a great relationship despite the fact that the kid keeps cheerfully spouting prophecy about how his reign is doomed b.) there was a really fantastic fic in Yuletide 2019 that captures the whole spirit of the best parts of the book.

Date: 2021-05-19 01:17 pm (UTC)
lirazel: Beth Harmon from The Queen's Gambit ([tv] watch the queen conquer)
From: [personal profile] lirazel
Your reviews are always so much fun to read, even when I haven't read the book and can't fully appreciate them.

inexplicable Charles Wallace-ish stepson

Lol

Date: 2021-05-19 02:10 pm (UTC)
kore: (Default)
From: [personal profile] kore
the protagonist is surrounded by well-meaning but less brilliant allies who are constantly stressed out because he's not behaving according to their idea of ethics, but of course he is always behaving in a reasonably ethical fashion, they just can't see it because they don't understand the Long Game

Haah I was just complaining to someone else about how that always, always happens to Black Widow. You'd think those friends would have caught on after a while!

Date: 2021-05-19 04:16 pm (UTC)
chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)
From: [personal profile] chestnut_pod
Do you know, I was once as an undergrad corned by a Canadian scholar of George Eliot and told at great and uncomfortable length about a book whose title I have always struggled to remember, and I think it was this one. My goodness! I really do think it was this one.

I remember having to be like, ma'am doctor Eliot scholar, I am tangentially in the Spanish letters department and also nineteen, and unless you want me to answer you with a conspiracy about Jacobo Timerman I really don't know why you have buttonholed me like this!

This more than anything has made me immediately determined to find and read this book, now I know what it is!

Date: 2021-05-19 04:29 pm (UTC)
larryhammer: a wisp of smoke, label: "it comes in curlicues, spirals as it twirls" (curlicues)
From: [personal profile] larryhammer
I read this before my big saga reading spree, which means I didn't have the background to understand the historical argument -- i.e., hadn't a frickin' clue who this Thorfinn was. It ended up being less successful for me than Lymond.

(I've never read the Nicolo books, because too much Lymond was already too much Dunnett for me.)

Date: 2021-05-19 04:51 pm (UTC)
ceitfianna: (gaze to tomorrow)
From: [personal profile] ceitfianna
I feel like I must have read this but don't remember it at all. At one point I was reading a lot of Sharon Kay Penman and Dunnett though I think I didn't finish the Nicolo series but read all of Lymond.

Thinking of books about vikings, have you read the one about the ivory chess set? I forget what its called, some really simple name but does a lot of we know this and this might be true, an interesting read.
Edited Date: 2021-05-19 04:53 pm (UTC)

Date: 2021-05-21 02:06 am (UTC)
ceitfianna: (flying in hyperspace)
From: [personal profile] ceitfianna
Oh cool. If you've got Vikings on the brain, can I recommend The Welsh Viking on youtube, a historian who's a lot of fun and knows his stuff.

Date: 2021-05-19 05:59 pm (UTC)
stranger: rose nebula on starfield (Default)
From: [personal profile] stranger
Having read King Hereafter about 30 years ago, I may be mis-remembering, but at the time I assumed the stepson was a nod to one of the prophecy scenes in Macbeth-the-play (wherein doomed children's voices foretell that Macbeth is going to fail -- it reads like a fast-forward to Victorian séances, which is quite a trick even for Shakespeare). Also, the odd bit of vaguely deniable psychic element is also a DD speciality...

Date: 2021-05-19 07:02 pm (UTC)
oracne: turtle (Default)
From: [personal profile] oracne
I have never read THE KING HEREAFTER but now I feel I could possibly be friends with it.
Edited Date: 2021-05-19 07:02 pm (UTC)

Date: 2021-05-19 09:30 pm (UTC)
slashmarks: (Default)
From: [personal profile] slashmarks
I don't actually want to read this book, but I enjoyed your description immensely and I'm slightly happier just knowing it exists and was published.

Date: 2021-05-19 11:45 pm (UTC)
genarti: Old book, with text "I have plundered the fern, through all secrets I spie; old Math ap Mathonwy knew no more than I." ([tdir] i am fire-fretted)
From: [personal profile] genarti
I'm so torn on whether I should read this book, because it sounds like another one where I would love part of it and rail at part of it and often those two things would be different aspects of the same scene or character, but either way I really enjoy this write-up of it. :D

Date: 2021-05-21 02:41 am (UTC)
genarti: ([avatar] the boulder is not conflicted!)
From: [personal profile] genarti
lol, as usual this is almost certainly correct on both counts.

Date: 2021-05-20 12:32 am (UTC)
snippy: Lego me holding book (Default)
From: [personal profile] snippy
Oh! What a good review of Thorfinn-the-character-in-the-book, very thorough. I read King Hereafter about 3 years ago and of course picked up on how much he is like Francis, but also like Claes - secretive, plotting, with a sense of humor that is much more apparent than Francis's.

Date: 2021-05-20 04:20 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] pengwern
Followed the link to the fic and was irresistibly dragged to the lymond fic as well, which are almost enough to drag me into a desire to reread Lymond itself for which the only appropriate emoji would be one that encompassed fear, desire, popcorn gif-ing, and the swirly eyed confusion of a new born infant)
.........>^<;

Date: 2021-05-20 05:23 am (UTC)
gogollescent: (you were warned about the ooze)
From: [personal profile] gogollescent
I was unhappily jarred by the mention of spousal rape in the same breath as Thorbeth's likability vis-a-vis other Dunnett leads, both because a rapist protagonist intended as sympathetic is a major barrier to entry in anything (glad I read your review instead of trying the book, in this case), but also because the combination of "spousal rape" + Dunnett's stock formula for protagonist romance, in which the proud woman through painful experience comes to have her eyes opened to the protagonist's pure intentions, sounds like a total nightmare. I always think Lymond and Nicholas are redeemed as a reading experience partly because they have recognizable moral values--they might be hypercompetent and tormented, but at least at the end of the day I'm supposed to pity them for things done to them rather than things they do to other people. Mostly. Insert a clutter of footnotes.

...I guess in some ways I feel like Dunnnett's biggest successful con is getting us to read her "relative to her other writing," which sounds dumb and is not a little on us suckers who willingly read multiple series by her, but I mention it because you're right about how much of her plot momentum depends on friction between the hero and his satellites; also the belief that unattractiveness and clumsiness and ever missing a trick really DO make you a cosmic underdog. Tragically misunderstood geniuses or not, I always get the impression that Dunnett is as if not more into the poisonous onlooker resentment as the "reveal" of how undeserved it was--so much so that it circles back around to kind of a creepy they-were-asking-for-it enjoyment of the protagonist's humbling, with their eventual vindication a secondary consideration at best. One of the things that makes the books successfully manipulative pulp is exactly that the absurd pedestal occupied by the mains paves the way for all the gratuitous punishment porn, because, after all, They Are Just So Annoying. Weirdly it also seems to make her feel like she has more license for the grimdark sideplots involving antagonists or NPCs, since it's like, "time for a break from the unrealistic perfection of a man who thinks war is bad overall to visit the land of black comedy child abuse!"

So like, it doesn't surprise me that Thorfinn is less hot and also less constantly beleaguered, because that's not her kink... but eh. This was a long way to say I still can't believe I finished Niccolo.

Date: 2021-05-20 03:23 pm (UTC)
qian: Tiny pink head of a Katamari character (Default)
From: [personal profile] qian
That summary of signature Dunnett elements is such a good explanation of why I only ever managed to finish one Lymond book and found the experience maddening. One of the great things about being a grown-up is I no longer feel like I have to pretend that I might ever even consider trying to like Dunnett (or Neil Gaiman).

Date: 2021-05-21 12:06 am (UTC)
melita66: (Default)
From: [personal profile] melita66
I read Niccolo first. When I tried to read Lymond, I bogged down in book 1. Lymond, and the whole whoo-whoo set-up in the beginning, was so off-putting to me. I took usenet suggestions to start at book 3 and then I was able to get through the rest. I ended up skimming books 1 and 2 later. Claes was a much more sympathetic character to me. Reading his sine curve story (up to a peak, down to a trough, back up) versus Lymond's cosine curve (peak, trough, peak/redemption) was easier for me to deal with.

Date: 2021-05-21 10:38 am (UTC)
qian: Tiny pink head of a Katamari character (Default)
From: [personal profile] qian
I absolutely love several writers who were profoundly influenced by Dunnett, but I'm very happy to benefit from that inspiration without actually having to engage with her misunderstood genius dudes. It just ain't my kink!

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