"'They'll remember [Dahut] with Ys, a legend, a hearthside story on winter nights.'" (p. 502)
"A few traditions survive from ancient times - among them, perhaps, the story of Ys." (Notes, XXV, p.528)
Poul Anderson imagines that this process of experience becoming legend continues into multiple futures:
"'You frontier people are the healthy ones. You'll be around - most of you - long after the Empire is a fireside legend.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra (Riverdale, NY, March 2012), pp. 149-301 AT VIII, p. 206.
Will they have firesides that far in the future? They will have their equivalents. And, in that particular future, mankind is so widely dispersed across the galaxy that it will not become extinct. Our immediate future is another matter.
15 comments:
Kaor. Paul!
Even as late as "Starfog" we still see people remembering Old Earth and the Empire!
Ad astra! Sean
Events become legends if the culture in question is living in 'legendary time'. It requires a particular worldview, one that was common until recently but has become much less so.
Among other things, it requires a largely or completely oral transmission of information from generation to generation.
Without a complete collapse of technological civilization, that's unlikely to happen.
Example: the events of the Emperor Charlemagne's reign were widely 'legend-ified' -- in the Chansons du Geste. Things like Roncevalles, attaching other legendary figures to his court, etc.
But we also had written chronicles.
There were two 'cultures' operating; the literate one (largely the Church, at that date) and the orally transmitted culture that produced legends, heroic myths, etc.
Eventually, one drives out the other as a source of serious collective memory.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That makes sense. And in the nightmarish chaos of the Long Night, after the Empire fell, I can see many legends accreting around its memory.
I have read some examples of that largely oriented literary culture from the early Middle Ages: THE HISTORY OF THE FRANKS, by St. Gregory of Tours; and St. Bede's ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND PEOPLE. The writing of serious history became more and more the norm, such as Einhard's LIFE OF CHARLEMAGNE.
There was a "legendary" culture as well, producing works of great poetry like BEOWULF and THE SONG OF ROLAND, and SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. And, as you said, the literary culture eventually supplanted the legendary.
Ad astra! Sean
EMBERVERSE.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, the Change in Stirling's Emberverse had the whole world crashing overnight from historical into legendary times. Or outright savagery in many, many places.
Ad astra! Sean
As Juniper Mackenzie commented, Mike Havel had fallen into a legend -- "the King who is father to the land" and "the King who dies for the people" -- but didn't really understand that he had.
Juniper and her children did too, but they -knew- they were living in a legend.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, because Mike Havel was a fully adult 20th century man when the Change crashed on the world in your alternate 1998.
Havel did have some glimmerings tho, as at the moment when he reflected that the first king of his dynasty was a lucky soldier.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: "The first king was a lucky soldier" is actually an old proverb... 8-).
Realizing that was what screwed up the 'monarchy' of the Roman Empire.
The same was probably true among the Germanics, but they were living in legend time and genuinely came to believe that thrones could only be inherited by certain families because they were descended from Wotan or some other God.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, the confused aftermath of Caligula's assassination in AD 41 made it plain Emperors would need the support of the Praetorian Guards to sit on the throne. And the civil war following the suicide of Nero in 68 showed Emperors didn't have to made only in Rome.
As you've said before Rome lacked a monarchical tradition on which the Principate founded by Augustus could have worked out some of stable law of succession for the new monarchy. That might have been achieved in the second century AD if Marcus Aurelius had left a sensible, level headed son to succeed him, instead of the erratic, eccentric, unsteady Commodus.
Yes, the strong sense of dynastic loyalty found among the Germanic tribes was vastly useful, altho the Carolingians damaged that when deposing the Merovingians. The Frankish experiment with elective monarchy led to near Polish level royal impotence and chaos after the death of Louis the Pious.
In a Christianised form the Capetians restored a very strong belief in dynastic legitimacy after Hugh Capet was elected king of the Franks in 987. The Capetians patiently worked at both making sure their family retained the crown and restoring the royal power. By the time of Philip II (r. 1180--1222) it was accepted the crown of France rightfully belonged to the Capetians. The inability of the English to break that sense of dynastic loyalty to the Capetians was a huge reason why they lost the Hundred Years War.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the problem with the Carolingians was also that they had no system of primogeniture, so the realm was divided among sons.
Charlemagne became a legend, but the eldest-takes-all hadn't come along yet. That was a major advance.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. And that idea all the sons of the king had a right to a share in the kingship was inherited from the Merovingians.
I would still argue it was the Capetians who institutionalized the idea that only the eldest surviving son of the king should reign in France. Which the early Capetians did by having their eldest son crowned co-king during his father's lifetime.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yes. "Annointing" a future monarch was a good idea.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Indeed! It prevented future kings from being forced to bargain with powerful barons, being compelled to make damaging concessions to them in return for their support in being elected king.
I checked, Philip II of France was the last to be crowned co-king in 1179, the year before his father Louis VII died. By the time Philip also died in 1223 his triumphs and successes as king had garnered so much power and prestige to the crown that he had no need to have his son Louis VIII crowned co-king. Every king thereafter, down to the Revolution, became king immediately on the death of his predecessor.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the idea that all sons were equal heirs was older than the Merovingians -- it went back far in the Germanic cultures, and despite the strong sense that kingship was a 'blood right' in certain lines, led to innumerable disputed successions and civil wars.
Usually one bad king was preferable to several able ones fighting over the throne.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. I stressed the Merovingians because the Germanic idea that all the sons of the king had an equal claim to succeed is best known to us from St. Gregory's HISTORY OF THE FRANKS. That was also the custom followed in Norway, among Harald Fairhair's descendants. And led, as you said, to fratricidal strife and civil wars.
Ad astra! Sean
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