"Temeraire" means "bold" or "rash" in French.
At school, I learned:
"There'll be many grim and gory,
"There'll be few to tell the story,
"But we'll all be one in glory
"With the fighting Temeraire."
-see here.
I mention this because Stirling has a ship called Temeraire.
The British Grand Admiral realizes that the Germans are using a secret weapon. Read the book to find out what.
There are changes to the British Royal Family comparable to such changes in other Stirlingian alternative histories.
The conventions of action-adventure fiction are respected and skillfully implemented. A battle is won but not the war. One adventure is concluded but there will be more.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
At least HMS Victory was not broken up! Nelson's flagship was saved almost at the last moment and preserved as a monument. Much as the US did with USS Constitution.
Drastic changes in the UK royal family? That's for sure! At the end of BLACK CHAMBER, the foolish and criminal German nerve gas attack on London killed most of the senior members of the royal family. Princess Mary was the only child of George V to survive, and became Queen and Empress as Mary III.
BLACK CHAMBER is a published book, so I felt free to say that!
Sean
Sean: yup, except that her throne name is "Victoria" -- the British royal family doesn't regard "Mary" as a fortunate title for Queens.
Her actual full name was: Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary, so "VIctoria" was actually her first name. She reigns as Victoria II.
Mr. Stirling:
Ha! I was tickled by the hints we got of the Angrezi Raj's Victoria II, who gave the term "Victorian" a radically different meaning from what it has in our world.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I sit corrected, VICTORIA II, not "Mary III," was the regnal name of the sole child of George V to survive the nerve gas attack on London, in BLACK CHAMBER. I had not known the royal family regarded "Mary" with disfavor as a name for regnant queens. I assume that was because of how Mary I was traduced by anti Catholic propagandists. And Mary II was possibly regarded with distaste because of how she became Queen by helping to drive out her father and brother (IOW, she was a usurpess).
I think it's safe to say the Victoria II of the BLACK CHAMBER books will not marry Henry Lascelles (later 6th Earl of Harewood). Lord Harewood was the man Princess Mary married in OUR time line.
I think, to paraphrase Talleyrand's comment on Napoleon's judicial murder of the Duke of Enghien, the German nerve gas attacks on London and Marseilles (provisional capital of France), was worse than a crime, it was a mistake. These atrocities could not help but turn both the UK and France into totally IMPLACABLE enemies of Germany. It would have been wiser for the Germans to have used nerve gas simply to break the deadlock on the Western Front. A strictly MILITARY use of such weapons might have been grudgingly accepted as "falling within the rules."
Sean
Sean,
But Mary I did burn people for heresy and try to dictate the beliefs of everyone in the country? I know that many others did likewise but right now we are talking about her.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, but the more I learned about Mary I, any honest narrative about her becomes more complex and nuanced. For one thing Queen Mary simply reversed Protestantizing policies that most of the English of her time loathed (as Eamon Duffy detailed in THE STRIPPING OF THE ALTARS). For another, Mary I's alleged cruelty has been grossly exaggerated by anti-Catholic propagandists, such as by Matthew Foxe's ACTS AND MONUMENTS. Fr. Philip HUghes, in his massive three volume THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND, gave us a detailed analysis of Foxe's work showed how often Foxe exaggerated the persecution of Protestants.
We even get a sympathetic glimpse of Mary I in one of Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix stories, "Losers' Night."
Sean
Frankly, in Reformation-era Europe Protestants and Catholics were equal-opportunity persecutors whenever they got the chance. Catholics were more systematic about it because they were better organized, but that's about the only difference.
Virtually nobody wanted freedom of conscience -- most people regarded the idea with horror, as tantamount to atheism.
Elizabeth I was prepared to tolerate Catholics as long as they kept their heads down -- I think she really didn't care about theological details, a most unusual attitude for the time, and she cordially detested Puritans -- but the Catholic Church as an institution had declared her anathema and called on Catholics to overthrow or kill her, and that was linked to the national enemy, Spain, who virtually everyone in England hated. That more or less forced her hand.
Elizabeth said that she did not want "a window into men's souls."
Later, I think a Catholic Parliamentarian helped to foil the Gunpowder Plot because he could tell the difference between loyalty to the state and loyalty to his church, i.e., the former involves preventing assassination of the King whereas the latter does not involve assassinating the King!
I read some 19th century Catholic propaganda which said that Mary's execution of heretics was less reprehensible than Elizabeth's because Mary was motivated by religious conservatism whereas Elizabeth was motivated by political cynicism. Of course, the truth or otherwise of Catholic doctrine does not depend on our moral judgments of these two monarchs.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I agree partly with what you said. Both Catholics and Protestants were persecutors. I would merely stipulate the Catholics were defending themselves, after all, from Protestant attacks. But that makes little real moral difference.
I am not so sure Elizabeth I was that disinclined at making windows into men's souls. If she had really believed that, why did Elizabeth rammed thru a reluctant Parliament the Second Act of Supremacy of 1559, which again dragged a Catholic England into schism? Why impose the undoubtedly Protestant 39 Articles in 1563? And the first anti Catholic Penal Laws logically followed from these acts. All YEARS before Elizabeth I was formally excommunicated. In fact, I could argue the popes showed patience and forbearance waiting as long as they did before so acting.
I agree Elizabeth detested with a passion the Puritans, and Calvinists like John Knox, whom she bitterly resented for writing a book attacking her.
I agree patriotic English Catholics could and did make the distinction that loyalty to their faith did not mean they were pro-Spanish. But many, even most, English Protestants refused to accept that. Which was one of the issues discussed in Antonia Fraser's book GUNPOWDER AND FAITH (I might have gotten the title wrong).
Paul: And I would disagree with any attempts by a Catholic to justify executing Protestants, no matter how wrong I believed them to be. And I thnk Elizabeth was motivated by both some degree of genuine belief in Protestantism and cynical opportunism. It would have been so much easier and spared her a great deal of trouble if Elizabeth had accepted the Marian Restoration. It took about thirty years to firmly force Protestantism on a still mostly Catholic England, after all. With all the trouble, costs, strains, and dangers that meant (such as the Northern Uprising).
Sean
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