nano smite!, Mariza

[burntcopper]

nano being fucking evil. Got completely bogged down every time I started a new paragraph. This section clearly doesn't want to be written. And considering it's the opening scenes of the Pevensies deciding to stay and aftermath of the battle of Beruna, gyeeaargh. Though I don't understand why Caspian's pov keeps sneaking in. It's supposed to be omniscient.

4,334 / 50,000 (8.7%)

Just hope the reaction scenes go better so I can get on with the sort-of-plot. Then figure out where precisely I want to stick Glozelle's pov on Peter. Or rather, where up to - I know I want to start from when he first encountered or heard of him, which is probably the siege on the castle, but not sure where up to after that. I'm presuming that most of the Telmarines know a bit about the Narnian kings as legends or something - not on the near-worship King Arthur status the Narnians have them (Calormenes have them on King Alfred/Normans level where they still have records of treaties and so on of the time and thus know a bit better what they're more likely to do), but more like... I dunno, Robin Hood? GAH. Why can't the English have more legendary figures so I could do comparison better? But nooooo, we only have two. :headdesk:

Went and saw Mariza (fucking stunning Fado singer) last night at the Barbican (food in the restaurant is really good, btw), including the newbies of my aunt Sam and her mate Heidi, and bro's gf Louise. See them be stunned. mwhahaha. And she just gets better every time - better interaction with audience, more confident, funnier, more commanding - she's learnt how to control the audience with a single gesture. Voice and stage presence are stunning, as usual. Added bonus - she came down into the crowd and was an arm's length from us. Mum has informed me she's going to torment the portugese bloke at work with this. (the only pouty bit of this vs. Cardiff is the fact that due to it *not* being Wales, the audience singing a bit back to her was rather weak. I still treasure that moment in Cardiff - it was the end of her last tour, she'd been getting audiences to learn the chorus of a song, and when it came to the part when the audience sang it rather than hesitantly repeated it, she had this rather stunned look since she'd got hit by the wall of sound that is Welsh choral and clearly hadn't been expecting it.) Half the portugese population of London were in the audience. :g: Oh, and she apparently did a kids and families session that afternoon with added Q&A, which is very cool and a great way of capturing the new generation.

Comments

[gmh.livejournal.com]

the near-worship King Arthur status the Narnians have them (Calormenes have them on King Alfred/Normans level where they still have records of treaties and so on of the time and thus know a bit better what they're more likely to do), but more like... I dunno, Robin Hood? GAH. Why can't the English have more legendary figures so I could do comparison better? But nooooo, we only have two.

Why? Probably because the UK has any number of different mythos cycles that have fed off each other over the years, many of which originated from neighbouring countries or racial groups.

The Arthur mythos has been particularly voracious; there are any number of older or more obscure stories that have been recast to bolster Camelot.

Also: a lot of English mythos is Germanic; whereas what was British mythos remains in some form or another in Wales and the West.

Good book to read (when you're not up to your eyeballs in nano): Charles L Squire's 'Celtic Myths and Legends' (pub. 1905); not the most exacting or up-to-date book, but it does cover a fair bit of the British and Irish mythology well.

Non-Arthurian hero figures?

Bran
Taliesin
Gwyddno Garanhir (king of the Lowland Hundred - near Aberdyfi)
Gwydion
Peredur (who possibly got morphed into Percival)
Culhwch
Beowulf
Wayland

(Some of which are used to some degree in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising)

As for Robin Hood-alikes and historical figures:

Boudicca
Owain Glyndŵr

Hereward the Wake (who held the Fens against the Normans for some years).

Jarl Buthar and Aikin the Beloved (who kept Lakeland free of the Normans for 30 years post-invasion - the Viking resistance to the Normans is the backdrop for Sutcliff's 'The Shield Ring'.)

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know about all those - my problem is easy touchstone comparison ones that *everyone* knows about. Not that they're exactly relevant. I'm trying to work out how much Glozelle as a Telmarine would've heard of the Narnian legends of the Pevensies. (Narnian *knowledge* of the Pevensies being rather... King Arthur/Robin Hood-ish by the time of Caspian - mythos and 'he will save us' of Arthur, location specifics of Robin Hood. The Calormenes, on the other hand, still have written records of their dealings and treaties, so they view them more as we would the Normans.)

also, trying to think - I need formal announcement or way of conveying to the populace that the Pevensies are official monarchs too, and that Peter is the High King - should I get Aslan to do it as the last thing he does pre-buggering off or get Caspian to make the announcement?

[gmh.livejournal.com]

...my problem is easy touchstone comparison ones that *everyone* knows about.

Tricky one, since Camelot of Borg tends to swallow up any number of older or more obscure legends.

The Matter of Britain is the only detailed English story arc that has survived in continuous usage throughout the last 800 years; reconstructions of older works like Beowulf are thanks to efforts in the last century or so.

Thought: a couple of names that might fit the hero/nursery story requirement:

Old King Cole
Caratacus

(Not forgetting King Lear!)

As for Glozelle; he's a nobleman and a politician; he probably knows the stories but views them as childrens' stuff, not something that should distract an educated Telmarine lord from the realpolitik - but something that could be used to his own ends.

Slight tangent: bureaucracies are your greatest friend when trying to separate historical fact from fiction.

If you tried to reconstruct the siege of Troy from nothing but the Iliad, it would be vague at best; but because there were pen-pushers and form-fillers behind the Achaean and Hittite empires, we have precise and verifiable records of the events; in the case of Troy, even down to the name Alakshandu of Wilusa (Alexander of Ilios); or to the 'catalogue of ships' - which refers to towns that had been rubble for 300 years by the time Homer compiled the Iliad.

Glozelle's clearly a man of some political power, even if just as a toady of Miraz; what do we know about Telmarine/Calormene relations at this point?

(Or, for that matter, the shadier parts of the Telmarine Secret Service? - information is always a handy commodity, and if you're suddenly facing mythical creatures as enemy combatants...)

Old Narnia's a theocratic monarchy; and the Old Narnians are inclined to invoke Aslan fetishistically; as per the use of Susan's horn in the books; the Talking Animals more than the Dwarfs (who have a bloody-minded streak).

I think most of them would be fairly OK with 'Here's the new King, here are the old ones and Aslan behind them'; but the 'old guard' Telmarines and some of the more stubborn Dwarfs would have to have it confirmed from the top; play along with the new rules or you're catfood - even Trumpkin needs to have it pointed out to him directly who the Pevensies are and what they can do while in Narnia.