Two actors play the same character. We compare the actors. One is shorter etc. Keith Denison does this with a historical figure:
"'He's younger than I was... He would be, I guess And a little smaller...different face entirely, isn't it? But he'll do.'"
-"Brave To Be A King," 9, p. 111.
He is talking about the man born as Cyrus who would have been killed in infancy if not for an extratemporal intervention by Everard and Denison. And he is comparing this Cyrus with himself because he remembers playing that role. History as a stage where different actors can play the same character...
And there is also the Cyrus of the myth who was brought up in secret. That Cyrus remains a myth. Poul Anderson manipulates powerful forces in a single short story.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
It does make me wonder, however, if the real Cyrus was not killed in infancy by a paranoid grandfather, why there should have been any legends of him being raised in secret? After all, if he grew up in the normal way in his father's house in Anshan, there should have been no reason for any such legends about Cyrus.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But essentially that same legend has attached itself to many such figures.
Paul.
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