Three Hearts And Three Lions, CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.
In the previous post, I wanted to highlight a parallel with Thomas Malory so I omitted a few other points.
(i) Holger and Alianora had declared their love before the end. Holger now wants either to remain in the Carolingian universe or to return there if he is drawn back to our Earth. This explains what he is doing in A Midsummer Tempest when he is helped by Valeria Matuchek.
(ii) Before Ogier rides out on the wold, the others gather around, Alianora encircled by his left arm, Carahue clasping his shoulder and even his horse, Papillon, touching his cheek. Ogier and Carahue share only this single moment of mutual recognition.
(iii) A paragraph summarizes Ogier's history:
like Hamlet, he is a prince of Denmark;
Faeries gave him strength, luck and love;
he was one of Charlemagne's finest knights;
he defended Christianity and mankind;
he defeated, then befriended and wandered far with, Carahue of Mauretania (I can't find this guy anywhere);
Morgan le Fay gave him back his youth in Avalon;
a hundred years later, he defended France against the paynim (when was this?);
"Then in the hour of his triumph he was carried away from mortal men." (p. 154)
- like Arthur. (Well, not exactly triumph in the case of Arthur.) But was this when Morgan le Fay suppressed Ogier's memory, regressed his body and transferred him to our Earth? (The historical periods would not have had to correspond on both Earths.)
(iv) When we are told what "some say," we are also what they forget, that the Defender is a man with human needs. This also links with A Midsummer Tempest.
All that remains to reread is the concluding NOTE.
25 comments:
There were serious Saracen raids and invasions in southern France during the 900's, when France was caught up in the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire, the Viking episode, and the Magyar invasions (which got well into Central Europe in the form of constant raids).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
You beat me to saying almost the same thing! In our timeline, after the Carolingian Empire disintegrated following the death of Louise the Pious, both France and Italy were repeatedly attacked and ravaged by Saracen raids and invasions. And of course the Viking raids and Magyar invasion of central Europe added to the chaos.
Ad astra! Sean
Correction: I meant LOUIS the Pious, not "Louise" in my previous comment.
Drat! Sean
I have just googled and seen that Charles Martel was much earlier than I had thought.
Kaor, Paul!
That was when the early Carolingians were still the Mayors of the Palace to the later Merovingians, who were more and more the helpless puppets of Charles Martel and his son Pepin the Short.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Charles Martel has been held up as a hero who saved Northern Europe from Muslim conquest.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And it's very possible Martel's defeat of the Saracens at the Battle of Tours WAS crucial. A successful Saracen conquest would have aborted Western Civilization. See Gibbon's interesting thought experiment about that in THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I saw someone dressed as Charles Martel (I think) on a British National Party demonstration. BNP types are either Pagan/anti-Christian or Christian/anti-Muslim. The important thing is to be anti-someone.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Well, I am anti-ISLAM, because I don't believe it has been good for the world. But, I also don't believe in treating MUSLIMS unjustly, as persons.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: there is no "us" without a "them"; that's just the way human beings operate.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And humans will always behave like that, IMO.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: failing genetic engineering, yes.
If you try to fight xenophobia and tribalism, you immediately form an anti-tribalistic tribe who must FIGHT the BAD-WRONG TRIBALISTIC TRIBE! We are GOOD and RIGHT and they are Bad-Wrong!
(Cue tribal war-dance.)
it's like trying to outrun your own sweat.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ha! Exactly! I only wish I could come up with such ironically sardonic and apt lines as this!
Ad astra! Sean
I still see some difference between Nazis and anti-Nazis, though!
Paul: I agree. But that's because we both have the same purely subjective opinion.
One of the good things about being an ethical nihilist is that it makes maintaining a certain ironic distance from your own opinions easier. Moral certainty is a Very Bad Thing, on the whole.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: It depends on WHO are the anti-Nazis. I see NO moral difference, for example, between a Communist and a Nazi.
Mr. Stirling: I do have certainty about some things. A direct abortion is always nothing but plain murder.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think that the situation was far more complicated than that but fortunately the Communist Parties no longer exist! I knew Communist Party members who: (i) were genuinely and actively anti-racist; (ii) pro-democratic, often voting Labor; (iii) believing that social advances could be made in Britain through Parliament; (iv) totally deluded about the USSR, thinking that it was some kind of beneficial social system that should be defended and was even somehow democratic. Some of us had lots of arguments with them. Fortunately, those arguments have become historically redundant.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I still have to disagree. I'm sure sure there were SOME Nazis or pro-Nazis who could fit into your points i to iii (such as Sir Oswald Mosley, possibly). And your point iv totally wiped out whatever credibility the Communists you used to know had.
I'm reminded again, of Lenin, and of the contempt he had for the kind of persons you had known, dismissing them as "useful idiots." The gulags, concentration camps, purges, killing fields, etc., of Lenin, Stalin Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, etc., forever discredits all Communists.
Fortunately, I agree in believing the Communist Parties mostly no longer exist.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think I asked a while back whether you have a source for the "useful idiots" comment and which group it was applied to?
Of course the gulags etc do not discredit Marx or Engels.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I will try. I know I came across that somewhere, the contempt Lenin had for the kind of woolly minded Communists you knew.
I'm sorry, I have to disagree. Things like the gulags does at least bring Marx and Engels into disrepute, if their thought could be so easily used to justify the slaughter of so many millions by avowed Marxists.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Any ideas can be used to justify slaughter. Christians have tortured and burned each other. Generals have overthrow democracy instead of defending it. You can of course continue to argue that any attempt to establish common ownership of the means of production must inevitably degenerate into bureaucratic dictatorship but not everyone agrees with you on that and there I think that the argument rests for now although it has gone through some historical stages and will continue.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course Christians have behaved badly! But EVERY single self avowed Marxist regime has always become a thuggish despotism, without exception. You should ask yourself WHAT is it in Marxism that makes it so easily a tool of tyranny?
And "common ownership of the means of production" is vague and unclear. Defining socialism as government control/ownership of those means of production is both more accurate and squares with the facts of REAL history. And I argue that inevitably means the state using a giant and inefficient bureaucracy as it tries to determine what to produce and distribute. And dictatorship always accompanies that.
I've not managed to find any direct source stating where and when Lenin used the phrase "useful idiots." Many online websites attribute it to Lenin, but not with any citation from any of his works.
I've also been consulting Volume 1 of Solzhenitsyn's THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO because of his frequent quoting from the tyrant's works in that book. While I did not find "useful idiots" there, I found other comments from Lenin just as damning. On page 328 of GULAG I found this:
In a letter to Gorky on September 15, 1919--which we have
already cited--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin replied to Gorky's
attempts to intercede in the arrests of members of the
intelligentsia, among them, evidently, some of the defen-
dants in this trial, and, commenting on the bulk of the
Russian intelligentsia of those years (the "close to the
Cadets" intelligentsia), he wrote: "In actual fact they
are not [the nation's] brains, but shit."
Solzhenitsyn cited as his source Lenin's WORKS, fifth edition, Volume 51, page 48. And I could quote many other similar statements from GULAG of Lenin's hatred and contempt for all who in any way dared to get in his way!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Part of the answer is that I do not accept that any regime is just whatever it calls itself. "Marxism" became a label that could be used for certain purposes. Anyone who practices a one-party dictatorship is neither encouraging nor leading workers' democracy. But, as I said, this argument will continue. When I feel that it is becoming repetitive here, I let it rest for a while.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Understood, despite my continuing to disagree.
Ad astra! Sean
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