My Third Read of The Game of Kings

[rusty_halo]

http://rusty-halo.com/wordpress/?p=2769

So I was all set to read the sequel to The Sparrow, but my brain is in Lymond mode, so I re-read The Game of Kings a third time instead.

Everything... actually made complete sense this time. I understood all the back-and-forth political machinations, as well as the various character motivations: the hints that Sybilla was helping, Patey Liddel's role, the strategic significance of the Herries/Maxwell marriage, Lymond not revealing the Douglas' secrets at the trial.... The translations helped, and the fact that I've gotten more familiar with the political history of the time, and just that over time I've learned to read Dunnett and know to pay attention to the little hints she drops. Nothing's ever meaningless; if she makes a vague reference in the middle of a paragraph to a character having gone to some place, or having an unexplained reaction to a line of dialogue, you know it's going to be essential to understanding something major three hundred pages later. PAY ATTENTION TO EVERYTHING is the rule, and thankfully if you do, the reward is grand. I really love this book; it's probably my favorite, although The Disorderly Knights and Pawn in Frankincense also come close.

Various interesting bits I noted on re-read...

Lymond's first line in the series: "I am a narwhal looking for my virgin." It's perfect; in retrospect it says so much about the character. A narwhal is a sea creature with a tusk like a unicorn; in legend it could only be captured by the lure of a virgin. The unicorn is a symbol of Scotland, so this opening line already hints to a careful reader that Lymond isn't the traitor to Scotland that he appears to be. And at the end of the series, it turns out that what Lymond has been looking for emotionally all along is love and home, represented by Philippa and Scotland.

Readers frequently complain that Lymond keeps too much to himself, and cite as an example that Lymond should've just told Richard to pretend to be against him, instead of attacking Richard's family and getting Richard to actually be against him. But... Lymond's choice here is really all he could've done. He comes back to Scotland and the first thing he hears, listening at Mungo Tennant's door, is the gossip that Richard is under suspicion for not hunting Lymond down, and that this not only casts doubt on Richard but puts Scotland itself in danger because they need him as a trusted leader in the looming war. For both Richard's sake and the sake of Scotland, Lymond has got to get Richard against him. And he knows Richard. If Lymond came to him and managed to convince him of his innocence, there is no way Richard would pretend to be against him. Richard would stand by his brother even at the risk of himself--in fact, he does, during the trial at the end, when he insists that he was helping Lymond escape, even though this won't do Lymond any good and will only get Richard punished along with him. Even if, by some miracle, Lymond convinced Richard to pretend to be against him, Richard wouldn't have wanted to and would've done such a crappy job of it that he'd have remained under suspicion. Lymond had to get Richard to actually be against him.

Unfortunately there were several factors Lymond didn't count on, most notably (1) Dandy Hunter's interference, so that Lymond got blamed for far worse acts than he committed, and (2) Richard's own dark side, the violent judgmental attitude that comes from Gavin. Lymond wanted Richard against him, but didn't count on Richard becoming so obsessed with defeating him that Richard's loyalty to Scotland came under question anyway. (That seems to be a pattern... Lymond's plans would be perfect, except for some other factor that he couldn't possibly anticipate. You could say call this a flaw in Lymond, although I'm more likely to blame Dunnett. If there's any flaw with Lymond IMO it's that his motivations are too pure and his mistakes are always caused by such extreme circumstances that a sane person can't possibly blame him.)

Of course it all gets resolved in that wonderful scene in the dell, which is still one of my favorite scenes in the whole series. It's Dunnett's understanding of psychology that really makes it work for me; I completely understand and sympathize with the brothers, and why they act the way they do and make the mistakes they make, the competition and jealousy and affection all mixed together. Look at page 453-454, when Richard decides to go back for his brother (I particularly like the authorial voice using the word "subconscious" even though the characters in 1548 obviously would have no concept of Freudian psychology!):

[Richard's left Lymond to die and is thinking about the details of going home.]

The mare's skin was warm; his fingers tightened on her rough mane. God, Francis had screamed.

Something unused and ritual at the back of Richard's conscious mind stirred, and he stared into the buffeting darkness, quickly denying it.

[More thoughts on the details of home: route, provisions, details.] And all the time the stiff-jointed thing at the back of his mind was flexing its subconscious limbs and shaking its aged neck and rearing nearer and nearer his waking mind.

The wind sprang among the young trees: persecuted beyond reason an ash high above them lurched heaving to its feet and crashed beside Bryony and the mare leaped, whinnying and shaking under Richard's idle hand.

The block of sensation, held so insecurely in check, broke its bar and blundered into the forefront of his mind. It gripped him as he pulled down and soothed the mare, beyond proper analysis: man's infant fear of the irretrievable; a starved yearning for warmth; a childish speck of uncluttered vision; a tight and tangled warp of reason and emotion become suddenly an obsessive compulsion.

Abandoning sense, revenge, and the role of complacent dempster and letting reason fly like a hag through the night wind, Richard Crawford struck off through the darkness, plunging over myrtle and bracken and torn boughs and boulders, between thorn and furze and blurred trees and low thickets, in the direction last taken by his brother.

Brotherly love wins out. I can't tell you how happy this moment of realization makes me, after an entire book of Richard foaming at the mouth with murderous revenge for his brother!

And, of course, Lymond's breakdown earlier on is written with such keen understanding of human psychology. Throughout the series, his worst enemy is himself. This whole book is kind of him nearing the point of that breakdown, as the pressures mount. After five years of suffering and betrayal, it's no wonder, and it's particularly heartbreaking when you realize he's only in his very early twenties here! (I forget if he's twenty-one or twenty-two.) He tries so hard to avert it, though; as he says earlier: "I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands." You can read the book in this light, as he keeps trying all these methods of clearing his name. He finally gives up when his last hope, Samuel Harvey, dies. That's the point where he stops trying to clear his name and resigns himself to death: first, by trading himself for Christian; then, by trading himself for Scotland and little Queen Mary; and then when he finally just snaps and takes Richard's knife.

It's got echoes of Checkmate all over it. All Lymond's psychological issues come to light here, and it takes the rest of the series to deal with them. (And man, do they ever get worse before they get better.) Already he considers himself "deformed and unserviceable, defective and dangerous to associate with" -- the same reason he cites for pushing Philippa away after they fall in love "too late." His suicide attempts here echo those later on; the attempts to die at least doing something noble, and the eventual snapping and just going for it with a knife. And, of course, the thing that finally starts to break him is the issue that haunts him throughout the series: the fact that people he cares about die for him. Here it's Christian, Turkey Mat, and Eloise. And Eloise's death is really the thing at the core of Lymond's psychological issues, because it happened first and it's the only one where you can really say he's in some way deserving of blame. Christian chose to help him with full knowledge of what she was doing. Lymond manages to blame himself, but looking at it objectively, it's hard to blame anyone but Margaret Lennox. Turkey Mat's death was the fault of Will Scott and Turkey himself. But Eloise's death happened because of Lymond's mistake. It was a well-meaning mistake by a young man who was trying to help, but you could definitely look at the situation and say that he should've been more careful with how he wrote that letter and who he trusted it with. (Although, again, you can also make the case that the blame for that situation lies on the people who betrayed his trust, Margaret Lennox particularly!)

Of course, of all the dead people Lymond blames himself for during the coma at the end of Checkmate (Diccon Chancellor is kind of a funny one because he died due to weather; Lymond blaming himself for not being superhuman is never more obvious than that!), you could also add Khaireddin as one Lymond deserves blame for. Although I'd blame Gabriel and Roxelana Sultan for that! (jaydk and I got into an hour-long argument last night over which child Lymond should have chosen; despite having only read my blog entries and not the actual books, she is vehement that he was morally obligated to choose his own child, regardless of any other circumstance. Whereas I think either choice was equally awful, and commend Lymond for choosing to cause the least harm to the least number of people. Choosing Kuzum would've killed one child and emotionally shattered another--Philippa--whereas choosing Khaireddin killed one child and emotionally shattered Lymond himself, and he both didn't count himself and expected to be dead shortly anyway. But that's an argument for another day. And for having with someone who's actually read the books. ;P)

But anyway, the breakdown scene continues to fascinate me. I think it's the lowest we see Lymond throughout the series, although you could probably argue the night with Philippa after Khaireddin dies or the opium withdrawal scenes. This is definitely the most revealing, though, because he actually talks through it and actually explains himself (!!). Throughout all the scenes in all the subsequent books where Lymond's behavior seems cold and inexplicable, you can return to this scene for an understanding of what's actually going on with him: his horror at losing people he cares about, his self-hatred, his insistence on shaping his own fate, his bond with his family ("Five years--even five such as these--can't tear me drop by drop from your blood"), his sense of honor: "I use compassion more than you do; I have loyalties and I keep by them; I serve honesty in a crooked way, but as best I can; and I don't plague my debtors or even make them aware of their debt." (That last bit totally explains why he never tells judgmental Jerott that he slept with the Aga Morat to save Jerott's life.)

And it's Richard denouncing him, after he explains himself, that causes him to totally snap. Which, again, is connected to his core psychological issues: his fear that he doesn't belong with his own family, thanks to a childhood of being rejected by his "father" and suspecting that he's a bastard. This is also why my favorite Richard moment in the series is in The Disorderly Knights, when Lymond's been working his ass off to stop Gabriel, alone and mistrusted by those who should be standing by him, while everyone assumes that Gabriel's awesome and Lymond's just jealous. And then when Lymond brings the group together and lays out his case against Gabriel, you think Richard's going to denounce Lymond again and instead, for once, Richard actually stands by him and stands up for him! (And I love that it's because he knows his brother well enough to know that if Lymond asks for help, it's because he really really needs help.)

There are hints about Lymond's parentage even in this book: his clashes with Gavin; the question of what Eloise knew (Richard: "Once , late at night when you were away, she told me..."); the line about Richard, when Will says "He's your brother," and Lymond says something like "He's as much my brother as I am his."

Much of the fascination of this novel comes from its introduction of characters we later get to know intimately. The intro of Margaret Lennox, for example, which calls her "Meg Douglas" and refuses to give us any moral judgment on her. So that we approach the character with an open mind and eventually grow to loathe her after witnessing her actions... but for quite a while we're really not sure what to think! And the introduction of the Somervilles! Kate called "Katherine"; so strange to have Gideon around when we get used to it just being Kate and Philippa; Philippa's introduction! That Lymond and Philippa meet in the music room, with him playing the harpsichord; that later he tries to get her to play with him and she refuses, declaring her hatred; that the series ends in that same music room, with Lymond playing that harpsichord and Philippa the lute that she refused as a child, and then Lymond making his promise of their love and bright future. The first time I read this series I had no idea Lymond was going to end up with Philippa (dude, she's ten), but I suppose to an experienced romance novel reader, the fact that she violently loathes him is probably all you need to know...! (I still kind of wish Lymond had ended up with Kate or Christian, but, oh, I do love Philippa, and it is important that we see her grow up and go through all the life-shaping experiences that she does.) And it's a great irony that Philippa is the one who sells Lymond out to Richard, although it's also nice to see that Philippa already has that stubborn core we grow to know and love. Thankfully as she gets older she learns to apply it more wisely!

Also, Kate gets described as "neat" twice. I'm used to her being disheveled and smeared with jam; either she went downhill after Gideon died or Dunnett's concept of the character changed slightly...

After finishing Checkmate, the Opening Gambit of Game of Kings has a completely different tone. This is where Lymond breaks into Midculter, robs his mother's guests, and sets the place on fire. The first time you read it, you're like, wow, he's flamboyant and uncaring and awful, and his poor mother! Knowing what you eventually come to know about the characters, it becomes very apparent that that's not what's going on.

Lymond does, in fact, flat out tell Mariotta that he's putting on a show:

Watch carefully. In forty formidable bosoms we are about to create a climacteric of emotion. In one short speech--or maybe two--I propose to steer your women through excitement, superiority, contempt and anger: we shall have a little drama; just, awful and poetic, spread with uncials and full, as the poet said, of fruit and seriosity.

Which is true--the whole point is just to clear his family of blame by making it seem that he's against them.

Mariotta, collecting her wits, produced the only deterrent she could think of. "Your mother is in there."

He received this with tranquil pleasure. "Then one person at least should recognize me."

The first time you read this, it seems like he's being horribly cold and uncaring; in retrospect, you can read it as his knowledge that Sybilla will recognize what he's doing and won't hold it against him.

Dunnett herself tells us that Lymond's putting on a show; the entire thing is written using the metaphor of a play. Lymond's entrance: "Lucent and delicate, Drama entered, mincing like a cat." (God, how I love that line.) The characters arguing whether it's drama, pantomime, or farce; Sybilla accusing Lymond of acting.

Sybilla seeing Lymond for the first time in five years: "After the first moment, every trace of expression left the Dowager's face; her white hair shone like salt." And Lymond, utterly aware of her presence and refusing to look at her. It's written to suggest their estrangement, but in retrospect, Sybilla knows exactly what's going on. They're both probably trying not to cry! And the fact that Lymond has to get drunk to even bring himself to pull the thing off; the first time we read it, it's written to make him seem drunk and irresponsible and disheveled; in retrospect, knowing Lymond, we know how unusual this is. You can just imagine the way his emotions are racing here. (It reminds me of that scene at the end of The Ringed Castle when he wakes up after fighting his men to the death to get back to Russia, smells Philippa's perfume, and has to fight not to cry.)

Also cool in retrospect is how the Opening Gambit expands from the personal to give its quick overview of the changing political situation in Europe, particularly in relation to Scotland. Henry VIII of England and Francis of France dead; "Europe, poised delicately over a brand-new board, waited for the opening gambit." This is where the Lymond Chronicles begin, and they cover this era until the ascension of Elizabeth; the series ends, once again, on a changed political board, awaiting the next moves--this time with Lymond not as a loathed outlaw but a man in a position to shape the board in Scotland's favor. (Considering that the years he supposedly helped weren't exactly lacking in political tumult, you've got to wonder what epic historical disasters we don't know about that he must've averted!)

Lymond on page 14: "Tell Richard his bride has yet to meet her brother-in-law, her Sea-Catte, her Sea-Scorpion." We don't find out until (I think) Checkmate that Lymond's a Scorpio, but here's a big hint! I do love a series where you have a sense that the author has planned the whole thing from the beginning and stuck to her outline. The one thing that's clear is that she changed Lymond's age to make him younger; a lot of the stuff about him and Richard sharing a childhood, and the psychological impacts of that, gets kind of iffy if Richard is ten years older. Although there is that wonderful hint, where Richard asks Lymond if he's ever told Will Scott how old he is, implying that Lymond's younger than anyone would assume; we don't find out his actual age until book four!

This book also contains two of my favorite scenes in the series, Lymond as his most charismatic. First we have the ruse at Hume; Lymond disguised as Don Luis Fernando de Cordoba y Avila. I don't even know how to quote my favorite moments; I just want to type out the whole scene. It's brilliant on every level. It's funny beyond words; it's incredibly clever and cheeky of Lymond; it gives Lymond more power over his men; it teaches Will Scott several important lessons; it works in Lymond's favor politically.

And... just... the way Dunnett wrote it! I was laughing out loud on the subway:

"The door burst open, the tapestries flapped, and a human tornado, enveloped in a whorl of depot-stamped canvas and trailed by protesting soldiers, erupted into the room."

"Mr. Secretary Myles, tried beyond endurance, gave a soul-destroyed quack. Dudley and Grey, pinned to the petrified edge of diplomacy... By a combined effort [Grey] and Dudley got the still-detonating visitor into a chair."

"'But,' he said with some hauteur, 'I speak the Scottish perfecto.'"

(After Grey has spent the scene embarrassed to pieces by a temporary lisp acquired in a recent injury.) "'De veras,' said Don Luis politely. 'My Lordship has the true Spanish lisp of Castile. His Spanish sin dude is as much good as the mine.'"

"'And now,' said Don Luis. He rose splashily to his feet. 'To action, senores.'"

The argument over Will Scott's name, "Don Huile del Escocia": "Huile, that is in Scottish, Oil. An unusual name, is it not?" ("'Oil!' said Grey rather hollowly.")

"'Idiota?' said Don Luis stiffly, picking out the insult unerringly from the maze of multisyllables. His feet, a tarry mound, were ringed with pools of water from the cloak, and his eyes were narrowed at Grey. 'Idiota?'"

And the ending: Lymond taking their horses and hostages and Grey's clothing, and leaving the scene with a double round of bows! And "All is not gold that glitters." And everyone gathering to congratulate Will Scott on a job well done!

In retrospect, The Game of Kings isn't written as well as Dunnett's later books. It's clearly a first novel, and it's difficult to get into. But once you reach this scene, I just don't know how anyone could fail to fall in love, if not with Lymond then at least with Dunnett's ability to turn a phrase.

And then the other scene I adore is the bagpiper in the whorehouse, for the hilarity Dunnett captures and the wonderful use of words.

Then a desolate, mammoth, mourning Troll inflated its lungs and uttered. Through the shocked air tore a stern, snoring shriek followed by another. It became a united bray; the bray a wobble; the wobble a tune. High above the gallery balustrade swam a human head, inhumanly antennaed; the cheeks plimmed, the eyes closed, the fingers leaped, and all audible hell released itself.

("Inhumanly antennaed!")

"Put your walking mandrake on Ben Nevis and myself on the Cheviot, and it's still too close for my liking."

"Give us the piper, that's all we ask. Or the pipes. But unhabble the one from the other, for God's sake."

And the ending, which loses the hilarity and gives us an insight into what exactly Lymond is doing with Will Scott:

Under a pale, fresh mooon, trees and bracken sighed and gentle cloud washed over the sky.

"Th'erratic starres heark'ning harmony. Look up," said the Master. "And see them. The teaching stars, beyond worship and commonplace tongues. The infinite eyes of innocence."

But Scott was too drunk to look up.

Will Scott is one of my favorite characters in the series. He's young and stubborn and idealistic; he gets Lymond completely wrong, makes terrible mistakes, but he learns from them and grows and becomes awesome by the end. One of my favorite aspects of this book is that it's Will Scott who saves Lymond at the very end. Lymond's spent the whole book mentoring Will, trying to shape him into an asset to his family and to Scotland and to himself, and he seems to have failed. Will betrays him, causes him to lose his chance of redemption, and indirectly gets Turkey Mat and Christian Stewart killed. And then, when all seems lost, everything that Lymond's taught him finally coalesces and Will Scott blossoms. So many descriptions of Will hinge on his similarity to Lymond, as he assimilates what he's learned, so it's only right that in the end Lymond is saved because of the good aspects of himself that he's taught to someone else.

And also, one of the more resonant themes of this book is the big lesson Will has to learn: that morality isn't quite black and white. Will leaves his family because he can't accept his father's double-dealing with England, not accepting that it's a necessity of survival for his father to play both sides. Will would rather join a group of outlaw mercenaries who are honest about being rotten than be among what he considers hypocrisy. Lymond, of course, is his big lesson that all is not what it appears! I love how Will grows up in this book and becomes a man to be proud of. (And then I hate hate hate what happens to him in book three...!!! But let's not think about that.)

Christian Stewart's death bothers me, but I don't necessarily think it's bad writing. It's kind of necessary, looking at the arc of the series as a whole. Her role gets filled later, when Lymond is ready, by Philippa; at this point in the series it's too soon. I can't hold Dunnett's writing against her; Christian is sympathetic, interesting, flawed, nuanced, and three-dimensional. Her death is a bit of a woman in refrigerators thing in that she's killed off to have an impact on Lymond, but it also completes her arc as a character: she's achieved the adventure and passion that she wanted, and has helped save the life of someone she cares for. And two other things take away from the "woman in refrigerator" complaint: one, that Dunnett just as often kills off male characters to have an impact on Lymond (Will Scott, Khaireddin, Salablanca, Turkey Mat, Diccon Chancellor) and two, that the series is packed with strong, interesting, essential female characters: Sybilla (my god, Bullo isn't kidding when he calls her the shrewdest member of the Crawford family), Kate, Philippa, Oonagh, Marthe, the Dame de Doubtance, even the biggest villain, Margaret Lennox. I think it's a major stretch to criticize Dunnett on gender issues. Her story takes place in a sexist society, but her writing is never from a sexist perspective. Her female characters are as interesting, complex, and equal on every human level to the male characters.

(If you want to get into PC criticism, I think you'd have slightly more ground to criticize Dunnett from an ableist perspective, although when Margaret Lennox dismisses Christian's death with "She was blind," it's clearly meant to make us hate Lennox. Christian herself is a capable, intelligent, interesting three-dimensional character. What actually bothers me is in Checkmate, the "hunchback in a gutter" metaphor and Lymond's friends figuring it's okay for him to die because he's going blind. But it is true to the time period, and it's the attitude of the characters, not the author. [Although I do rather wish she'd chosen something different for the metaphor to explain Lymond's self-hatred.] You could totally get her on racial issues, though; Salablanca is such a cliche. And sexuality is another thing; Lymond has lots of sex with men, but it's usually presented as something shameful--though for Lymond the shame is probably less related to gender than to the fact that it's sex as a transaction, for information or protection, and he seems to feel equally ashamed when he does the same with women. And the Marthe/Guzel relationship is mostly inexplicable and presented as shocking; I do wish we had just plain gotten more information about what was going on there.[I'd assume that Marthe really liked Guzel and was jealous that Guzel preferred her brother, and that Guzel didn't give a shit about Marthe, just about her own power and pleasure.] But... I'm totally digressing.)

One of the more entertaining aspects of this book is just seeing Lymond as an outlaw, despised by most of the people around him, frequently disheveled and drunk. I'm so used to seeing him in later books, impeccable, unflappable, sober, glittering, and desired by everyone around him (either sexually and/or as a political tool).

The first time I read this, I complained that the ending was too pat; Lymond's name is cleared, he's reunited with his family, and the Queen Regent herself congratulates him. With the rest of the series in mind, this ending is actually a lot less happy. The Queen is totally sucking up to him, but it's not sappiness on Dunnett's part. Mary of Guise has recognized Lymond's abilities; she's the first of many powerful figures we see who want him for themselves. It's a prelude to Queen's Play, with the Queen declaring that she wants him, and a lead-in to the rest of the series, in which everyone wants a piece of Lymond and he has to fight to create his own future with everyone around him wanting to control him and co-opt his talents to benefit themselves.

I do think this has by far the happiest ending of any novel except Checkmate. How awesome is it that the hero's happy ending is finally getting to hug his mother after five years of estrangement and torment! And Dunnett writes it so beautifully, says so much about both characters and their relationship with so few words:

In a lifetime of empty rooms, this was another.

Then there was a whisper of silk, a perfume half remembered, a humane, quizzical, intuitive presence; and a wild relief that deluged the tired and passionate mind.

Sybilla was there. She saw her son's eyes, and flung open her arms.

*sniffle*

Current Mood: thoughtful

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. Please click here to comment.
(Anyone can comment on public entries.)