"There is always war among Them"

Gratillonius gives Mithras a bull on Lir's cliff under Taranis' sky during a thunderstorm and laughs at the Ysan Gods. One of his followers knows that:

"'Other Gods are angry.'"
-Poul and Karen Anderson, Dahut, Chapter VIII, section 3, p. 165.

-but another replies:

"'There is always war among Them.'" (ibid.)

"'...the common folk are with Grallon...is he not their wonderful King, on whose reign fortune has always smiled?'" (VII, section 4, p. 171)

For a politician, it is often enough to have the common people on his side, although not in the long run if his policies are economically or ecologically ruinous. Defiance of a literally existent Sea God is ecologically ruinous. James Blish's black magician says:

"'...the sciences don't accept that some of the forces of nature are Persons. Well, but some of them are. And without dealing with those Persons I shall never know any of the things I want to know.'"
-James Blish, After Such Knowledge (London, 1991), p. 365.

I find parallels between The King Of Ys and After Such Knowledge.

I wanted to find that statement by Theron Ware but had to reread a chunk of the book to find it but did so with pleasure.

Patriarchs And Patricians

In Latin:

pater, father;
patres, forefathers;
patricius, of the forefathers;
patricii, patricians, aristocrats.

Patres is plural of pater and patricii of patricius.

In Poul and Karen Anderson's King of Ys Tetralogy, St Martin says that his cousin, Sucat, will become Christ's patrician. Sucat is renamed "Patricius," in English "Patrick," and canonized, thus St Patrick.

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization, a star is named "Patricius." Thus, the star and its planets are the Patrician System.

In Larry Niven's Known Space future history, the kzinti are ruled by a Patriarch. In Poul Anderson's Man-Kzin Wars stories, Ulf Markham admires the kzinti and has a hereditary vote in the Wunderlander House of Patricians although only on federal matters. Election as a consul of his state would give him a say in who attends the House of Delegates. This sounds to me like Anderson's political thinking enriching the Wunderlander constitution in Niven's future history.

Markham leaks the hyperdrive to the kzinti. His excuse:

"'They would inevitably have gotten it. Only by taking part in events can we hope to exercise any influence.'" (The Man-Kzin Wars, p. 125)

A familiar argument: we can influence Apartheid by supporting it instead of sabotaging and ending it.

Ysan Inns

The murderous inter-dynastic deceit in Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings approaches a crescendo. Haakon Jarl plans to kill Gold-Harald Knutson who plans to kill Harald Eiriksson who is sailing into a trap of the kind devised for Tryggvi Olafsson by Gudrod Eiriksson: the consequences of their own actions.

I seek temporary respite in the intriguing inns of Poul and Karen Anderson's uncanny city of Ys. See:

In An Ysan Inn
Time Passes
Inns In Ys
More Details About Ys
Epona's Horse
Appreciating Details

There may be more about Ysan inns and, of course, there is a lot about Ys, sadly inundated centuries before the events of Mother Of Kings.

"A Wonderful World"

Gunnhild's daughter, brought up to want greatness, becomes a murderess like her.

Poul Anderson's Mother Of Kings, like Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys, is historical fiction with elements of fantasy. Thus, in both, witchcraft works and so does a Christian miracle. It is acknowledged that Christ is a god. By remaining unharmed while holding a white-hot iron bar, a Bishop demonstrates that Christ is also a powerful god.

King Haakon commands all to be baptized. A spokesman replies:

"'If...you mean to drive this undertaking of yours through with might and threat, then we yeomen have agreed we'll be done with you, and find another lord, who'll allow us freedom to keep whatever faith we ourselves want.'"
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Four, Chapter VI, p.313.

I am bound to agree with the spokesman.

The King's close adviser asks:

"'...is not the world of the gods a wonderful world?'" (p. 314)

He lists "Green Yggdrasil...," Odin winning wisdom and Thor repelling trolls until the last winter. His final point is that these are ours, not anything from Romaborg or the Empire, and he asks how long we can remain ourselves without them. The answer is that we still have them, alongside every other worldview, and they are well expressed through modern media like Poul Anderson's novels.

The First War And Later Events

"The gods themselves fought the first war that ever was."
-Poul Anderson, War of The Gods (New York, 1999), Chapter I, p. 9.`

There is a beginning.

"Saxo places Hadding three generations before Hrolf Kraki."
-War Of The Gods, Afterword, p. 301.

Thus, War Of The Gods, about Hadding, precedes Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga.

"Great and rich was the Thraandlaw, a home for heroes. Hither had come Hadding from the South, to fell a giant, and win a king's daughter. Hence had gone Bjarki to the South, he who became the right hand of Hrolf Kraki."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book Two, Chapter XXII, p. 184.

Thus, Mother Of Kings, about Gunnhild, comes third.

"'It's said he fathered Gunnhild, the queen of King Eirik Blood-ax -'
"Skafloc gripped the tiller hard. 'The witch-queen?'
"Mananaan nodded. 'Yes...'"
-Poul Anderson & Mildred Downey Broxon, The Demon Of Scattery (New York, 1980), p. 193.

Skafloc and Mananaan converse in the untitled Prologue and Epilogue of The Demon Of Scattery during their voyage to Jotunheim described in The Broken Sword. Thus, The Broken Sword and The Demon Of Scattery are, chronologically, the fourth and fifth volumes of this sequence although everything in ...Scattery between Prologue and Epilogue is an extended flashback.

Mananaan's father, Lir, was a God of the City of Ys and Skafloc sees:

"...the drowned tower of Ys..."
-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), Chapter V, p. 31.

Thus, Poul and Karen Anderson's four-volume The King Of Ys precedes The Broken Sword and, indeed, since it features the decline of the Roman Empire, is set several centuries before Mother Of Kings and about a century before Hrolf Kraki's Saga.

The title character of Anderson's The Last Viking Trilogy is Eirik Blood-Ax's father's great-great-grandson, Harald Hardrada, who refers somewhere in the Trilogy to Gunnhild and falls in battle in 1066.

Skafloc also saw:

"...the sea maidens tumbling in the sea and singing..." (ibid.)

Christian priests drive the last merpeople from Europe in the fourteenth century in Anderson's The Merman's Children.

One long literary sequence alternating between historical fiction, historical fantasy and heroic fantasy.

A Bird Made Of Fog

Gunnhild, projecting her soul as a bird and calling her future husband to her, reproduces a magical achievement of one of the Nine Witch Queens of Ys. The sunken towers of Ys are seen in the first of Poul Anderson's five Viking Era novels and Gunnhild is referenced in one of its sequels.

The Witch Queens needed Gratillonius to challenge and kill their King and thus to take his place. Gunnhild needs Eirik's men to kill her two Finnish mentors and then to take her to Eirik.

Mother Of Kings, about Gunnhild, is a culmination of Anderson's historical novels containing elements of fantasy and a prequel to The Last Viking, the historical fiction trilogy in which an expedition in search of Jotunheim - visited in an earlier novel - finds only icebergs and whales.

Guests at Eirik's and Gunnhild's wedding consume:

beef
pork
mutton
fowl
fish cooked with garlic
leaks
peas
turnips
herbs
wheat and rye bread
butter
cheese
honey
berries dried and stewed
ale
mead

It is quite a while since we have had a food list on the blog but this wedding is a suitable occasion. 

Britannia

Yet again, our Latin class reads Julius Caesar's account of his invasion of Britannia. When the soldiers hesitate to jump from the ships into deep water while weighed down by heavy armor, the standard bearer gives a lead. Shouting that he at least will do his duty to the republic and to his commander (imperator, later to mean "Emperor"), he jumps down and runs among the enemy. The men have no choice but to follow since loss of their standard is the greatest disgrace for any legion. Here is a hero worthy of later works of fiction.

Caesar's account prefigures:

Poul and Karen Anderson's Gratillonius, a British Roman Centurion;
Time Patrolman Manse Everard's mission to post-Roman Britain;
the immortal Hanno's encounter with the post-Roman warlord Artorius, who resisted English invaders;
the history of Britain with its later imperial role;
Manuel Argos' founding of the Terran Empire, based on the Roman Empire.

Caesar came before all this so it is a worthwhile exercise to try to decipher his text!

The Roman Tradition

The Aeneid, with which I currently struggle, is the epic of the Roman myth. As such, it explains the wars between Rome and Carthage as originating in the personal conflict between Aeneas and Dido. (Not trade rivalry but mythical founders explain everything.)

Thus, the Aeneid is variously relevant to Poul Anderson's works:

the originals of Odin and Thor escaped from Roman slavery;

the Time Patrol ensured Roman victory against Carthage, kept Germania in the Empire despite the pagan prophetess preaching the destruction of Rome and prevented a post-Roman-British-European world civilization;

the last King of Ys was a Roman centurion;

Manuel Argos based his Terran Empire on the Roman Empire.

Thus, Anderson's antecedents are considerably older than Wells, Stapledon or Heinlein.

Have I said that I detect parallels between Classical and Biblical traditions?

Homer and the poets, like Moses and the prophets, were regarded as divinely inspired authorities on theology and morality;

Greek "philo-sophia" is love of wisdom and the Hebrew Writings include Wisdom literature;

Virgil's poetry of the Augustan Age is like a pagan New Testament;

the Fourth Gospel identifies Jesus with the Word that was in the Beginning, an idea adapted from Greek philosophy, while Virgil's Aeneid has Caesar's soul in Hades waiting to be born long before the founding of Rome;

the promise to Abraham and the promise of everlasting Roman greatness are fulfilled in a single church - if you see it that way, of course! (And Anderson appropriately speculates on the future of that church.)

Gratillonius' Beloved Aeneid

Poul and Karen Anderson's character, Gratillonius, the last King of Ys, loved Virgil's Aeneid - and I also think that he disliked studying the Homeric epics because they were not Latin but incomprehensible Greek? Regular blog readers might remember that I attend a Latin class which sometimes tackles Virgil. We have just started to read excerpts from the Aeneid Chapter VI, in which Aeneas visits Orcus, the Underworld.

In Poul Anderson's The Day Of Their Return, Orcus is a region on the colonized planet, Aeneas, in the Virgilian system. The next planet towards Virgil is Dido which, of course, is another important name in the Aeneid. Dido was the first queen of Carthage, the city that was:

Rome's rival in the Punic Wars, consequently pivotal in Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Delenda Est;"
the power of which Ys was a colony;
an example cited both by Robert Heinlein and by Anderson's immortal character, Hanno, of an issue that had been resolved by force.

It is idle to wish that Anderson had written about Aeneas - the man, not the planet. We might as well include the Homeric epics and the Arthurian cycle as well. Everyone cannot write about everything (although why did Shakespeare not write a Robin Hood play?). I would like to be able to share some information about the Virgilian hereafter but like Aeneas himself, I am obscurus, in the darkness, and will have to decipher the opaque text before I am much wiser.

Mountebanks And Bacaudae

Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991).

Poul Anderson's extensive vocabulary includes many words that I have never seen before or since but also some that I had encountered although I am hard put to explain them, like "...mountebanks..." (p. 59). Bacaudae (ibid.) I have encountered before but only in Poul and Karen Anderson's King of Ys tetralogy where one such brigand or insurgent becomes the King's right hand man after unsuccessfully challenging him for the crown.

In Boat..., many flee social degradation to become serfs, slaves, itinerants, mountebanks, Bacaudae or barbarians. However, Lugo the immortal is better equipped to deal with changing times:

"Lugo had made better arrangements for himself, well in advance of need. He was accustomed to looking ahead." (p. 59)

Lugo has had to look ahead as an individual but humanity now needs to look ahead as a species.

History In Parallel Works

"The marriage brought [Lugo] certain useful connections, her father being a curial, though no dowry worth mentioning, the curial class being crushed between taxes and civic duties."
-Poul Anderson, The Boat Of A Million Years (London, 1991), p. 5.

I thought that Anderson had described the plight of the curials before, or indeed that both of the Andersons had alluded to this issue in their King of Ys tetralogy, so I googled "Poul Anderson curials" and was referred to this blog. See here. Thus, both Gratillonius' father and Lugo's grandfather were impoverished curials. Lugo/Hanno was born in Tyre when Hiram was king there. Manson Everard of the Time Patrol visited Tyre in that period and even met Hiram.

These are three works of two kinds:

Ys is historical fiction with the fantasy elements of gods and magic;
Boat... is historical science fiction with the sf elements of immortality and a high tech future;
the Time Patrol is historical science fiction with the sf element of time travel from the future.

Ys, published as a tetralogy of novels, is a single long narrative;
Boat..., published as a single long novel, could have been serialized or its concluding futuristic section (145 pages) published as a sequel to the historical and contemporary sections;
the Time Patrol is a series. 

Arthur

I am reading a "Grail" history with Jesus as the ancestor of the Merovingians and lots of esoteric information about Pendragons and Merlins. Why did Poul Anderson not write an Arthurian novel? Because he wrote other historical fictions and fantasies. Also, he and Karen Anderson wrote The King Of Ys. We have all heard of Arthur but I had not heard of Ys.

One of the immortals in Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years did visit a possible original of Camelot but he did this between chapters. And he disclosed it to Cardinal Richelieu, yet another historical figure in a novel by Anderson.

An Arthurian novel by Anderson could have been historical fiction about the original of Arthur or historical fantasy in which Merlin's magic worked or even historical science fiction involving psychics powers, extraterrestrial incursions or time travel. But, given the quantity of Arthurian volumes out there, I am grateful that instead the Andersons gave us the four volume King Of Ys.

Two Series

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series is complete in two volumes, Time Patrol and The Shield Of Time. The former collects ten stories of different lengths, including one short novel, "Star of the Sea," which was originally published not as a separate volume but in the first edition of this collection, then entitled The Time Patrol (see image). That edition included only nine works but Time Patrol also includes the later short story, "Death and the Knight."

However, since the events of "Death and the Knight" occur immediately after the events of The Shield Of Time, I think that "Death..." should, in future editions, be republished at the end of The Shield..., not of Time Patrol. Then, since The Shield... is a tripartite novel, the complete series would comprise nine installments in the first volume and four in the second.

This makes for an interesting comparison with Anderson's Technic History series, which has been collected in seven volumes by Baen Books. Volume I is The Van Rijn Method although I suggest that a more appropriate title would be Rise Of The Polesotechnic League. This Volume collects eleven works although I think that the last two would be better placed in Volume II. In that case, Volume I would collect nine works, including one novel.

Differences Between The Proposed Time Patrol And The Proposed Rise Of The Polesotechnic League

(i) Manson Everard is in every Time Patrol story whereas Nicholas van Rijn is in only two of the nine works to be collected in Rise... (Despite Everard's ubiquity, his series also features in greater or lesser roles many other Time Patrollers.)

(ii) Time Patrol would be followed by four installments in one further volume whereas Rise... would be followed by thirty four installments in six further volumes.

Length is the most obvious difference. The Time Patrol is long but the Technic History is longer. But both are important. Two other substantial series are the Harvest of Stars tetralogy and the King of Ys tetralogy, the latter co-written with Karen Anderson. Any one of these series would have made Poul Anderson significant but, of course, his total output is vaster than the four combined.

Interstellar Feudalism

Dominic Flandry reflects that the slowness of interstellar communication:

"...made a slow growth of feudalism, within the Imperial structure itself, inevitable. Of course, that would give civilization something to fall back on when the Long Night finally came."
-Poul Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2010).

These are the two themes of the Flandry series:

the Empire will fall;
there will be systems in place enabling at least some planetary systems to cope with the "Long Night."

In this story, Flandry hopes that Nyanza will "'carry on...[w]hen the Long Night comes for Terra...'" (p. 339) but we do not read about this planet in the Long Night, Allied Planets or Commonalty periods.

Poul and Karen Anderson's character, Gratillonius, starts to build feudalism after the Fall of the Roman Empire. See here. And, in another of Poul Anderson's imaginary worlds, Time Patrolmen must visit post-Roman Britain to prevent a divergent timeline.

These are three fictional universes with common themes: history and heroism.

Historical Achievements

Dardanus migrated from Italy and founded Troy.

When Troy fell, Aeneas migrated to Italy where his descendent, Romulus, founded Rome and Augustus Caesar founded the Empire.

As the Roman Empire declined, Gaius Valerius Gratillonius built defensive systems that would become feudalism.

As the Solar Commonwealth and the Polesotechnic League declined, David Falkayn founded Avalon.

After the Commonwealth had fallen, Manuel Argos founded the Terran Empire.

As the Terran Empire declined, Dominic Flandry prolonged its existence and strengthened certain planets that would hopefully survive its Fall.

After the Terran Empire had fallen, Roan Tom formed an alliance of Kraken, Sassania and Nike.

While the Commonalty was still strong, Daven Laure opened up the Cloud Universe whose owners will command more wealth than many civilizations.

Thus, after three declines and subsequent periods of impoverishment, Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization ends with a period of expansion and enrichment.

"No Boundary In Space Or Time"

Poul and Karen Anderson's character, Gratillonius, the last King of Ys, loves the Roman epic, the Aeneid, but dislikes Greek poetry because he does not understand the latter.

I suggest that Homer and the poets are the Classical parallels of Moses and the prophets while the Aeneid parallels the New Testament. The Bible is Hebrew and Greek; the Classics are Greek and Latin.

 In the Aeneid, Jupiter promises:

"'To Romans I set no boundary in space or time. I have granted them dominion, and it has no end.'"
-Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. WF Jackson Knight, (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1982), p. 36.

Well, it is a national epic. Mussolini might have thought that he was regaining the endless dominion. Manuel Argos bases his Terran Empire on the Roman Empire. Combining Classics and scriptures, someone else might argue that the Roman Catholic Church fulfills both the promise to Abraham and Jupiter's prophecy of endless Roman dominion?

Some Fictitious Histories

Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization presents a detailed history of the future. We can contrast it with:

a fictitious past history (see here);
the same author's earlier future history (see here);
an alternative future timeline (see here and here);
a timeline for all time (see here).

Finally, relationships between future histories are discussed here.

Weather And The Seasons

In Poul and Karen Anderson's King of Ys Tetralogy as in Poul Anderson's "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" and "Star of the Sea," chapters often begin by describing seasonal changes and weather, e.g.:

"Winter descended and then slowly, in surges of wind, snow, icy rain, drew back." (Time Patrol, p. 362)

This is because people in former ages lived with the elements:

"Nature - the wilderness, the mysteries of day and night, summer and winter, storm, stars, growth, death - pervaded [this archaic land] and the souls of the folk." (TP, p. 539)

Time travelers can alternate between archaic lands and modern cities. I mentioned Amsterdam in "Star of the Sea." In "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," Carl Farness travels back and forth between the fourth century Goths upon whom "Winter descended..." and 1930's New York:

"I came out of the New York base into the cold and early darkness of December..." (TP, p. 407)

"Laurie and I went walking in Central Park. March gusted boisterous around us." (TP, p. 422)

And, on a visit to 1980:

"Winter had fallen uptime. Snow tumbled past the windows of [Everard's] apartment, making a cave of white stillness for us." (TP, p. 385)

First century Germans, fourth century Goths and Ysans, experienced the elements in a very different way from that of modern city dwellers. Nevertheless, the descent of winter and the sight of falling snow unite us across the ages. 

Ys Or Not?

Where would you prefer to live?

(i) Ys (under which King?);
(ii) in the Time Patrol timeline (which period?);
(iii) in Technic Civilization (which period? which planet?);
(iv) some other Andersonian universe (which one?).

The three that I have mentioned have certain common central features:

a strong historical basis;
a central character striving to hold everything together;
tragedy.

Grallon is tragic because he is the last King of Ys;
Flandry is tragic because he defends an Empire that will fall;
Everard is tragic because he guards a timeline that includes much suffering.

The Technic History is long enough to include central characters before Flandry. Ys informs us briefly about the founder and other early Kings. In an ideal universe, that entire history would be told.

Living With The Seasons

Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991).

The King of Ys Tetralogy by Poul and Karen Anderson and some of the Time Patrol stories by Poul Anderson are set in past societies where seasonal changes mattered, were an over-riding feature of people's lives.

For this reason, passages or entire chapters would begin by telling us what the seasons were doing before proceeding to human affairs. In The Shield Of Time, the chapter headed "13,211 B. C. I" begins:

"Days dwindled away into winter, blizzards laid snow thick over earth frozen ringingly hard..." (p. 187)

Next the sentence strays a little way into mythology:

"...the brown bear shared dreams with the dead but the white bear walked the sea ice." (ibid.)

- but this just means that brown bears hibernate whereas polar bears don't. The second sentence shows the impact on humanity:

"We spent most of the enormous nights in their shelters." (ibid.)

The second paragraph gives us spring:

"Step by step, slow at first but faster and faster, the sun returned. Winds mildened, drifts melted, streams brawled swollen, floes ground each other to bits, calves of horned beasts and mammoths tottered newborn over steppe where flowers burst forth as many as stars, the migratory birds were coming home." (ibid.)

Those two sentences could have been several: sun, wind, melting snow, streams, ice, calves, flowers, birds...

Next, again, is the impact on humanity:

"For Us it had always been the happiest of seasons..." (ibid.)

But at last the text returns us to specifically social issues - although not "political," society has leaders but not yet rulers. The sentence ends:

"...until now." (ibid.)

The We are being oppressed by invaders and at last our attention must return from natural seasons to social changes.