Saturday, 23 March 2024

Trinities And Duels

Creator Preserver Destroyer
Father Son Spirit
Maiden Mother Crone
Male Female Neuter

Also, some gods come in threes:

Indra, Vayu and Agni
Odin, Vili and Ve
Odin, Lodurr and Hoenir

In The King Of Ys by Poul and Karen Anderson, the Three of Ys are a god, a goddess and a sea monster. 

In Dune:

"...the male-female-neuter trinity is accepted as Supreme Being by many religions within the Imperium." (p. 494)

In that Imperium, and among the Fremen, duelling is a regular practice. In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Ythrians duel and Flandry fights a duel on Terra. Future archaisms.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Can anything be truly archaic if even bad things like dueling keeps coming back? The Council of Trent condemned dueling in the strongest possible terms, and the civil law of many states at least formally prohibited it. But dueling survived right into the 20th century. Which was why the 1917 Code of Canon Law for the Catholic imposed automatic excommunication for any Catholics who took part in any way in duels.

I'm reasonably sure you've not read any of Avram Davidson's stories about Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy, set in the wonderfully named Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, but one scene in "Duke Pasqual's Ring" is apt: a friend of Dr. Eszterhazy, deeply provoked by the story's villain, lamented that for the first time ever, he was tempted to break the oath he had sworn to his Emperor on the Gospels not to fight duels.

And we see Flandry fighting duels in "Tiger By The Tail," and against Aycharaych in "Honorable Enemies."

Ad astra! Sean