History In Books -- Fiction and Non 2

[Zorral]

Hollick, Helen (2000) I Am the Chosen King (in the US).

Alternate narration between the Saxons in England, including he who becomes the last Saxon king, Harold Godwinesson, and William the Bastard in France. Begins in 1043.

Hollick is so comfortable with this complicated history, in which there are so many characters who are exiled, change sides, and have long history with the North, and with Norman France as well as Saxon England.  I am impressed at how she has been able to take all these figures and the inter and intra family conflict, particularly that of the Godwinessons, and make it all individual, comprehensible, and entertaining too, while hewing so closely to what we do know historically.  This is something not even skilled, popular historian, Marc Morris was able to do in his excellent The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England (2012).

Hollick has written two additional novels by this author about Saxon England, including two featuring Emma,  The Forever Queen (2004) starting in 1004, followed by The Hollow Crown, (2004) set in the year of the Battle of Hastings. Emma is the mother of the Saxon king, the weak and petty ruler, Edward, in I Am the Chosen King. She’s featured in the first part of this novel too, so it’s odd her story got told by the author in reverse. But a novelist's mind can become engaged with a character beyond what the scope is of the novel in which s/he first appears, so it isn't actually odd.

All the female characters seem to be named Edyth, Edith, Emma, etc.  Funny that as historically correct Penman’s sagas have the same problem, because they too adhere to the historical record, and Penman was a friend and mentor to Hollick. 

I highly recommend these novels.  

Hollick has written novels set in the Arthurian legendarium.  I've never read those, assuming they were more 'Romance' than my preferences. But perhaps I'm wrong and should take a look at them.

 

[Zorral]

Just out!

Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age by Tom Holland

Quote

The bestselling historian, author and co-host of The Rest Is History podcast turns his attention to Rome’s golden age in the third of his superb books on the Roman empire. As the title suggests, the seven decades after AD69 are a time of peace and remarkable prosperity, but they only come as a result of extreme violence, and four emperors in one year. Holland’s superb storytelling takes us right into this era as viewed from every standpoint (including our own), offering fresh and vivid insights into well-worn history.

 

[Zorral]

In direct contrast with Helen Hollick's I Am The Chosen King, featuring Harold Godwinesson (commented on in the previous History in Books thread), this series is firmly on the side that William the Bastard/Conqueror is the legitimate king of England, and that Harold was a treacherous, oathbreaking usurper*:

Conquest: The Bloody Aftermath series by James Aitcheson, featuring Tancred a Dinant. 

Sworn Sword  (2011). Set in the year of 1069, the Northumberland revolt, to oust the Bastard and replace him with Edgar the Aetheling, who the Thing had passed over, due to age, character and inexperience, in favor of Harold.

This is the author's first novel, written while Ph.D. history candidate. If I understand it correctly -- he's abandoned his website, he went back to finish after doing this novels.  He's very young, in other words -- like his Tancred, and it shows somewhat in the narrative, but not enough to interfere with pacing (perhaps . . . over-paced? and over-packed with violent incident? but again that's taste). It's most obvious in the female characters, whom we only see briefly, ever, for starters, and only from his pov.

This novel is followed by (have not got these in my hands yet):

The Splintered Kingdom (2013). Winter 1070, against the threat of the first Danish invasion to unseat William and reclaim England, while Our Protagonist, Tancred a Dinant harries Wales.

Knights of the Hawk (2015). Autumn, 1071. Tancred fights in Northern Europe.

>>>>>>>

The Harrowing (2016) A tale of 1066; Stand-alone, not a part of the Tancred series, or from the perspective of the Normans, but the English.

* At this time I tend to fall in with the perspective that William was a brutal thug invader, who decided he wanted England for the sake of having a crown of his own to poke in the eyes of the French kings and the Normans who sneered at him as a bastard, as well as England's resources.  As in this case certainly the history was written at the direction of the victor, it seems the justification for his usurping England's kingship has been manufactured out of very thin sauce indeed.  OTOH, the political conditions and factions, particularly in connection with the Godwinesson's and even inside their family of many, rambunctious sons, most of whom were very capable warriors, makes figuring out for someone like me, what really was the case in England itself, where a sizeable number of Saxons believed he usurped the crown from Edgar the Atheling.  And then, of course, the constant threats of the Danish strongmen who believed they too had the blood right to England's crown.

People who know a whole lot more may well have a different take on this, which I, for one, would be interested in knowing.

In the meantime, it was clear that the English/Saxons DID NOT WANT NORMAN RULE -- shyte, they would even prefer the Danes to him, considering how many allied with the Danes.  The English most certainly did not regard the Bastard as their legitimate king.

Not happy days for the English, and they wouldn't be for a very long time, thinking of The Anarchy of Stephen and Empress Matilda, when Christ and the Saints Wept. Again, it was disputed as to who was the legitimate crowned ruler of England after King Henry I, the last King of the Normandy line. Was it his nephew Stephen, born of Stephen, Count of Blois (which house replaced that of the Bastard’s) and Chartres and William I’s daughter Adela, or was it Matilda, Henry I’s daughter, once the empress of the Holy Roman Empire, now married into the Angevin House of “Plantagenet”. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this dispute, they all unleashed the same violence on the people of England that William the Conqueror did, because he determined he was entitled to a crown on top of his Dukedom, never mind where it came from.  Note, there was never advanced that the English themselves wanted him or thought they needed him to save them from themselves.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Zorral

[SeanF]

On 8/2/2023 at 7:32 PM, Zorral said:

In direct contrast with Helen Hollick's I Am The Chosen King, featuring Harold Godwinesson (commented on in the previous History in Books thread), this series is firmly on the side that William the Bastard/Conqueror is the legitimate king of England, and that Harold was a treacherous, oathbreaking usurper*:

Conquest: The Bloody Aftermath series by James Aitcheson, featuring Tancred a Dinant. 

Sworn Sword  (2011). Set in the year of 1069, the Northumberland revolt, to oust the Bastard and replace him with Edgar the Aetheling, who the Thing had passed over, due to age, character and inexperience, in favor of Harold.

This is the author's first novel, written while Ph.D. history candidate. If I understand it correctly -- he's abandoned his website, he went back to finish after doing this novels.  He's very young, in other words -- like his Tancred, and it shows somewhat in the narrative, but not enough to interfere with pacing (perhaps . . . over-paced? and over-packed with violent incident? but again that's taste). It's most obvious in the female characters, whom we only see briefly, ever, for starters, and only from his pov.

This novel is followed by (have not got these in my hands yet):

The Splintered Kingdom (2013). Winter 1070, against the threat of the first Danish invasion to unseat William and reclaim England, while Our Protagonist, Tancred a Dinant harries Wales.

Knights of the Hawk (2015). Autumn, 1071. Tancred fights in Northern Europe.

>>>>>>>

The Harrowing (2016) A tale of 1066; Stand-alone, not a part of the Tancred series, or from the perspective of the Normans, but the English.

* At this time I tend to fall in with the perspective that William was a brutal thug invader, who decided he wanted England for the sake of having a crown of his own to poke in the eyes of the French kings and the Normans who sneered at him as a bastard, as well as England's resources.  As in this case certainly the history was written at the direction of the victor, it seems the justification for his usurping England's kingship has been manufactured out of very thin sauce indeed.  OTOH, the political conditions and factions, particularly in connection with the Godwinesson's and even inside their family of many, rambunctious sons, most of whom were very capable warriors, makes figuring out for someone like me, what really was the case in England itself, where a sizeable number of Saxons believed he usurped the crown from Edgar the Atheling.  And then, of course, the constant threats of the Danish strongmen who believed they too had the blood right to England's crown.

People who know a whole lot more may well have a different take on this, which I, for one, would be interested in knowing.

In the meantime, it was clear that the English/Saxons DID NOT WANT NORMAN RULE -- shyte, they would even prefer the Danes to him, considering how many allied with the Danes.  The English most certainly did not regard the Bastard as their legitimate king.

Not happy days for the English, and they wouldn't be for a very long time, thinking of The Anarchy of Stephen and Empress Matilda, when Christ and the Saints Wept. Again, it was disputed as to who was the legitimate crowned ruler of England after King Henry I, the last King of the Normandy line. Was it his nephew Stephen, born of Stephen, Count of Blois (which house replaced that of the Bastard’s) and Chartres and William I’s daughter Adela, or was it Matilda, Henry I’s daughter, once the empress of the Holy Roman Empire, now married into the Angevin House of “Plantagenet”. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this dispute, they all unleashed the same violence on the people of England that William the Conqueror did, because he determined he was entitled to a crown on top of his Dukedom, never mind where it came from.  Note, there was never advanced that the English themselves wanted him or thought they needed him to save them from themselves.

There’s a good reason why English law of property uses French terminology, at a high level, rather than English (freehold, outright ownership is French, leasehold, tenants paying rent, is English).  The upper classes, the landowners, were almost totally replaced.

Similarly, pork, beef, venison, mutton, the meats being consumed, are all French. Swine, bull, deer, sheep, the animals being husbanded, are all English.

The Harrying of the North was devastating.  That aside, I don’t know to what extent the ordinary English saw their government as being an alien, occupying, force.  There doesn’t seem to have been much resistance to kings being foreigners, for hundreds of years.

The Danes were hated when they were pagans, and archeology confirms that contemporary monkish chroniclers were correct about the devastation they caused.  By 1066, most were Christian, and had heavily intermarried with the English, and were the devil they knew.

Going further back, the traditional view, that the Anglo-Saxons displaced or killed the Roman-British population, is now almost completely discredited, thanks in large part to archaeology and testing DNA.  Most people in the UK can trace their genetic ancestry back thousands of years.

Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans all had a cultural impact that far outweighed their numbers.  George Martin seems to reflect that in ASOIAF, where the Andals drove out the First Men only in the Vale and parts of the Riverlands, but most of the country adopted their culture.

 

Edited August 5, 2023 by SeanF

[Zorral]

12 hours ago, SeanF said:

Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans all had a cultural impact that far outweighed their numbers.

That's likely due to them all replacing mostly the landowners/influential class with themselves, which you also mentioned? Which included replacing the Saxons in the upper echelons of the Church and other record keepers with Normans, thus replacing the englisc <stet> language with Norman French. The Saxons did have a written language, with which they kept records, as well as latin.  But, you know all this, of course!

https://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/

This is particularly appropriate to Hollick's novels, and Aitcheson's trilogy, as written englisc plays a significant role i the books by both authors, and both authors, as medievalists, specializing in Nordic-Saxon England, have a serious command of Old English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English

[SeanF]

15 minutes ago, Zorral said:

That's likely due to them all replacing mostly the landowners/influential class with themselves, which you also mentioned? Which included replacing the Saxons in the upper echelons of the Church and other record keepers with Normans, thus replacing the englisc <stet> language with Norman French. The Saxons did have a written language, with which they kept records, as well as latin.  But, you know all this, of course!

https://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/

This is particularly appropriate to Hollick's novels, and Aitcheson's trilogy, as written englisc plays a significant role i the books by both authors, and both authors, as medievalists, specializing in Nordic-Saxon England, have a serious command of Old English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English

English never disappeared as a language of literature but it lost status to French and Latin (the latter, as a language of law).  

To see the Norman Conquest as beneficial means ignoring what people experienced at the time, and then projecting backwards, from centuries later.  It's similar to the Black Death.  With the benefit of centuries of hindsight, we can see that it hugely weakened serfdom, and stimulated new ways of working - with sheep-rearing replacing intensive subsistence agriculture.  Real wages rose, as the upper classes had to bid for labour.  By 1400, it's likely that the average peasant was twice as well off as in 1340.  And, contemporaries noticed that rise in living standards. 

But, that doesn't begin to comprehend the sheer horror of what people must have experienced in 1347-49, of 33-40% of the population dying over two years.  Of having to watch every member of your family die, and then to have to bury them without a priest to perform any of the rites, in a society where you had been taught this was essential for them to earn salvation.

[Zorral]

 

27 minutes ago, SeanF said:

English never disappeared as a language of literature but it lost status to French and Latin (the latter, as a language of law).

Ayup!  And the French and Latin usage was already decreasing in even official record keeping prior to the Great Mortality.  Even Longshanks had learned to write English. Then with so much mortality in the ranks of the administrative, clerical and churchly classes, as with the still, despite everything, the painful struggle for freedom by the serfs and higher wages and living standards for those not the nobility, french really did begin to disappear.

Chaucer is such a typical exemplar of all these trends, including his rise from a 'mere' court employee -- his family was always prosperous, but with each successive wave of the Plague, more branches of his family died out, and each time he was the only heir left standing, so he was really quite wealthy. And the influence on subsequent English literature of his English language poetry.  He is a Big Deal, all right.

Just the reverse of what happened in what became France in the "dark ages." The Church was literate, it owned the most land in the 7th-8th centuries, it was essential to the petty rulers' taxation records and accounting -- and they ended up speaking French in Frankia instead of German.  In England they got rid of French and stayed English.  Ha!

Again, it feels to me the final proof that England really didn't want that bastard back in 1066.  (Being silly a bit, but lordessa knows, the way things are going in the world and in our countries these days, we need desperately a bit of sillyness!)

[SeanF]

16 hours ago, Zorral said:

 

Ayup!  And the French and Latin usage was already decreasing in even official record keeping prior to the Great Mortality.  Even Longshanks had learned to write English. Then with so much mortality in the ranks of the administrative, clerical and churchly classes, as with the still, despite everything, the painful struggle for freedom by the serfs and higher wages and living standards for those not the nobility, french really did begin to disappear.

Chaucer is such a typical exemplar of all these trends, including his rise from a 'mere' court employee -- his family was always prosperous, but with each successive wave of the Plague, more branches of his family died out, and each time he was the only heir left standing, so he was really quite wealthy. And the influence on subsequent English literature of his English language poetry.  He is a Big Deal, all right.

Just the reverse of what happened in what became France in the "dark ages." The Church was literate, it owned the most land in the 7th-8th centuries, it was essential to the petty rulers' taxation records and accounting -- and they ended up speaking French in Frankia instead of German.  In England they got rid of French and stayed English.  Ha!

Again, it feels to me the final proof that England really didn't want that bastard back in 1066.  (Being silly a bit, but lordessa knows, the way things are going in the world and in our countries these days, we need desperately a bit of sillyness!)

It's funny the way that in Parliament, the upper classes were passing stringent laws to hold down wages, after 1350, and as soon as they got back to their own estates, they were breaking the same laws, because they needed the labour.  Better wages, in turn, meant greater literacy, and also the ability for peasants to club together and hire lawyers, who could study charters and leases, and often demonstrate, in court, that the labour service and other feudal dues that were being demanded of them, were in excess what their ancestors had agreed to, and customary law.  Or that some of the documents being produced by bailiffs and reeves were forgeries.

WRT languages, I think that probably French, and certainly Latin, would have become prestige languages, even without the Conquest, simply due to the popularity of French romances, and the way that Latin developed into an international language, for clerics, scholars, and diplomants.

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

WRT languages, I think that probably French, and certainly Latin, would have become prestige languages, even without the Conquest, simply due to the popularity of French romances, and the way that Latin developed into an international language, for clerics, scholars, and diplomants.

I was thinking about that too, late last night.  We can see French as the language of prestige, class and power elites throughout Europe from at least the time of Louis XIV, and throughout most of the following centuries until after, maybe, WWI?  Maybe we think of this first in connection with the Russian aristocracy?  Which was fortunate for their descendants when came the Revolution.  They could grab the family jewels and emigrate to Paris, where they could speak the language.

And of course, this was the language of the Brits' elite, fashionable classes too.  Hmmmm . . . certainly true at least through the Napoleonic eras.  Did this begin to change somewhat with 19th C Britain the undisputed global imperial hegemony once Napoleon was gone, gone, gone?

That business with forging dox by reeves and bailiffs also brings to mind the sort of criminally illegal maneuvers pulled by slaveowners prior to the War of the Rebellion, and then after the war to force their labor force to stay on the plantations and in the cotton fields.

~~~~~~~

O Sean!  I just learned of this book -- ooo la la!  I mean, ahem.

The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English (2021) by Hanna Videen.

The press release:

Quote

 

Old English is the language you think you know until you actually hear or see it. Unlike Shakespearean English or even Chaucer's Middle English, Old English—the language of Beowulf—defies comprehension by untrained modern readers. Used throughout much of Britain more than a thousand years ago, it is rich with words that haven't changed (like word), others that are unrecognizable (such as neorxnawang, or paradise), and some that are mystifying even in translation (gafol-fisc, or tax-fish). In this delightful book, Hana Videen gathers a glorious trove of these gems and uses them to illuminate the lives of the earliest English speakers. We discover a world where choking on a bit of bread might prove your guilt, where fiend-ship was as likely as friendship, and where you might grow up to be a laughter-smith.

The Wordhord takes readers on a journey through Old English words and customs related to practical daily activities (eating, drinking, learning, working); relationships and entertainment; health and the body, mind, and soul; the natural world (animals, plants, and weather); locations and travel (the source of some of the most evocative words in Old English); mortality, religion, and fate; and the imagination and storytelling. Each chapter ends with its own "wordhord"—a list of its Old English terms, with definitions and pronunciations.

Entertaining and enlightening, The Wordhord reveals the magical roots of the language you're reading right now: you'll never look at—or speak—English in the same way again.

 

A review:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/09/the-wordhord-daily-life-in-old-english-a-lexical-treasure-chest

Quote

.... As it races through colourful examples, the book does also occasionally pause to make an interesting scholarly argument. The long poem Beowulf is the classic of Old English literature – the extant works of which number altogether only around 3m words, i.e. fewer than those of the works of Dickens – and a source for many of the examples here. But Videen also asks, quite reasonably, why the villain Grendel’s mother is so often translated as having horrible claws (or, in Heaney’s version, being a “monstrous hell-bride”) when the phrase at hand (“lathum fingrum”) could, she suggests, be as fairly translated as “badass warrior”? The roots of woman-fear in literature run deep. ....

 

Edited August 6, 2023 by Zorral

[SeanF]

25 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I was thinking about that too, late last night.  We can see French as the language of prestige, class and power elites throughout Europe from at least the time of Louis XIV, and throughout most of the following centuries until after, maybe, WWI?  Maybe we think of this first in connection with the Russian aristocracy?  Which was fortunate for their descendants when came the Revolution.  They could grab the family jewels and emigrate to Paris, where they could speak the language.

And of course, this was the language of the Brits' elite, fashionable classes too.  Hmmmm . . . certainly true at least through the Napoleonic eras.  Did this begin to change somewhat with 19th C Britain the undisputed global imperial hegemony once Napoleon was gone, gone, gone?

That business with forging dox by reeves and bailiffs also brings to mind the sort of criminally illegal maneuvers pulled by slaveowners prior to the War of the Rebellion, and then after the war to force their labor force to stay on the plantations and in the cotton fields.

Frederick the Great despised German language and culture, and preferred to speak, write, and compose in French, Italian and Spanish.  In 18th Century England, there was huge divide between the highest nobility, who spoke French and looked to that country as the centre of fashion and high culture, and rural squires who defiantly favoured Englishness. As you say, the Russian upper classes spoke French, save to servants.  French supplanted Latin as the language of diplomacy.  English only took over after 1945, with US hegemony.

[Zorral]

2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

In 18th Century England, there was huge divide between the highest nobility, who spoke French and looked to that country as the centre of fashion and high culture ...

People like Caroline Lamb, and the family into which she married, including Lady Melbourne, the in-law with whom she was a rival for Byron's attention.  Which is how she got to have a flirtatious relationship with Wellington -- they were all in Paris after Waterloo. He seems to have always been a bit sweet on her, even in her more crazy periods (though how one distinguishes I'm not sure, other than when her chronic ill-health kept her living in a solitary manner in the country?)  Astonishing the range of Caroline's admirers, that ran from the Duke of Wellington to William Godwin!

[Tears of Lys]

Seems she scared them all off, though.  She hounded Byron to distraction.  

She could attract them, but had a hard time keeping them.  Except for her long-suffering husband.

[Clueless Northman]

On 8/6/2023 at 7:23 PM, SeanF said:

 English only took over after 1945, with US hegemony.

Things mght have begun to change a bit during the interwar, but until the WWI settlements, French was the diplomatic language. Ataturk spoke and negotiated in French, for instance.

That said, I think French was some kind of prestige languages during 2 different eras. The obvious one during and after Louis XIV, and before that during the 13-14th centuries when France was the major European power, in military, culture, wealth and overall population. It took the combined effects of the devastation of the Black Death, the disruption of international communications and the beating and humiliations of the Hundred Years War to reduce France's (and French language) prestige.

I also had a good lauch reading War and Peace, when some Russian duke or archduke had to learn Russian during in 1812 , because only being able to speak French was becoming unwise and actually unsafe in Moscow.

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

during the 13-14th centuries

The same eras in which, as commented above, the English processed official administrative national language into English, no longer Latin - or Norman French.  Even the monarchs such as Longshanks, whose reign was quite prior to Edward III, learned to read and write in English.

[SeanF]

22 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The same eras in which, as commented above, the English processed official administrative national language into English, no longer Latin - or Norman French.  Even the monarchs such as Longshanks, whose reign was quite prior to Edward III, learned to read and write in English.

Lawyers were holdouts, using a mix of Latin and Norman French, with bits of English thrown in, well past the fourteenth century, up till 1731.  The Statute of Pleadings, 1362, requiring cases to be conducted in English, got the response “hell, no!” from the profession.  Grudgingly, we allowed people to plead in English, but law reports were written in Law French, as it was called.

In fact, we’re using some Latin terminology into the 21st century.  You can’t expect lawyers to use the same language as the general population.

Edited August 12, 2023 by SeanF

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

You can’t expect lawyers to use the same language as the general population.

    And doctors, of course.  I allow biologists off the hook in taxonomy, a little bit, though I don't know exactly why.

[SeanF]

On 7/23/2023 at 5:12 PM, Zorral said:

Just out!

Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age by Tom Holland

 

Just finished it.  It’s very good.

Roman “civilisation” did bring some genuine benefits for the masses, but for those deemed unworthy of being incorporated into the empire (but still subjected to “pacification”), being on the wrong side of the Roman army was a thing of horror.

Out of interest, have you finished my dissertation?

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

Out of interest, have you finished my dissertation?

Not yet -- been doing so much 'difficult' obligations this summer -- it's been a rough one, with the worst being -- well, I'll send you private message.  Sigh.

 

 

[Zorral]

On 8/27/2023 at 2:45 PM, SeanF said:

dissertation?

Check your messages.

[maarsen]

I have been on a Dorothy Dunnett binge this summer. There is nothing like a good historical read and I have been going through her Lymond chronicles and have just started the House of Niccolo series.