reading Wednesday
Mar. 27th, 2019 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
achrayI promised starshipfox I would say more about Dunnett, The Lymond Chronicles, and the glorious ultimate bisexual disaster that is Francis Crawford aka Lymond.
I started reading Book 1, The Game of Kings, on my Kindle (which, if you want to give these a try, I recommend, as the print in the reissued books is very small and they are very long). Mostly I was reading it for work-related Scottish lit purposes. Then I basically….didn’t stop reading for around three weeks, until I finished book 6. I stayed up till 3am every night. I carried my Kindle around with me, reading it under the desk in work, on the bus, while getting dressed in the morning. Outside fanfiction, this was the most enjoyable reading experience I’ve had in easily a decade, where by ‘enjoyable’ I mean that these books had everything I could possibly ask for in a work of fiction and more.
The Lymond Chronicles are set in Scotland, England, Europe and beyond in the sixteenth century, during the early years of Mary Queen of Scots. There is a lot of high and low politics and court drama and intrigue, with lovingly rendered historical detail in excellent prose and a cast of varied and well-drawn characters. There is brilliant plotting full of twists and reversals and suspense. There is also a fair amount of Scottish nationalism, which I am definitely there for. But the point of these books is not any of this. The point of these books is Francis Crawford.
Lymond belongs to the line of fictional heroes who, I would say, are often beloved by fans, especially slash fans: they are highly intelligent; passionately invested in literature, music and the arts; exceptionally and unexpectedly good at fighting; brilliant at strategic thinking; and constantly being underestimated as shallow or superficial while actually being deeply committed to a cause. They are ruthless and tend to present themselves as heartless, while being extremely vulnerable to others. They are also prone to forms of mental illness and are hopeless at any form of self-care. They have a strong tendency to fall for very intelligent women. See: Howl, Peter Wimsey, Stephen Maturin, Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell, Sherlock et al.
However, Lymond is the only example of such a hero I can think of (though – give me other examples!) who is as openly bi as it is possible for him to be in a set of novels written in the 1960s and 1970s and set in the sixteenth century. [ETA I woke up at 4am one night this week thinking 'Mary Renault! I forgot about her!' So, yes, Mary Renault, though you can get away with a lot more if you set your books in the classical world.]
Everyone in Dunnett's books knows that Lymond sleeps with men. In book 1, one of the many young men who become obsessed with Lymond and whose POV we share is invited to join him in a private room in a brothel and instantly assumes Lymond wants to fuck him (he thinks about this for 0.005 seconds and then decides he’s up for it, because literally everyone wants to fuck Lymond - the bewildered desire that various supposedly heterosexual men feel for him is a Major Recurring Theme). In Book 2 Lymond, in disguise for Reasons, is sleeping with half the French court, male and female. In Book 3, his brother suggests that they should distract him from seducing a beautiful young girl staying in the family home by hiring some attractive grooms.
Of course, Lymond is a Tragic Bisexual Disaster and so pretty much every sexual encounter he has is unhappy. Since he is usually sleeping with people for political rather than personal reasons, and at least once pre-canon and once during the series he is in sexual relationships that are unquestionably coercive, there are also a LOT of interesting and complicated questions about consent going on. These issues expand outwards into much of Lymond’s life, in which he becomes a very politically desirable asset for various rulers and monarchs, not always with much or any choice in the matter. (Without spoilers, sexual consent becomes a major issue in the later books for the leading female character, too). Lymond tends to end up in situations in which he is misunderstood, betrayed, beaten up, thrown into prison and tortured, quite often by the people he is closest to. He is at various points addicted to drugs and alcohol, and as the series progresses he is increasingly and explicitly suffering from acute depression manifesting in physical ways. It is always genuinely unclear whether he will survive whatever madness is going on. I mean, with five books to go I would not usually be holding my breath to see if the leading character makes it at the end of Book 1, but that’s how good a writer Dunnett is. In the later books, Lymond is also in a Fake Marriage – spoiler! THEY FALL IN LOVE – with a truly wonderful female character, too, which causes much wonderful and painful angst.
There’s a lot about The Lymond Chronicles that is of their time – certainly they are dated and arguably problematic in a number of respects. But they are a great read and I think it's difficult not to fall for Lymond and Main Female Character (whose name is a slight spoiler for events post book-1). My main feeling on finishing book 1 other than the irresistible desire to start book 2 was a sense of betrayal: I could not BELIEVE that no-one had told me about these books before. So – here is my very short pitch for them. Happy to supply a further 100000 words on Lymond’s character and indeed every other character on demand. <3
starshipfox I would say more about Dunnett, The Lymond Chronicles, and the glorious ultimate bisexual disaster that is Francis Crawford aka Lymond. I started reading Book 1, The Game of Kings, on my Kindle (which, if you want to give these a try, I recommend, as the print in the reissued books is very small and they are very long). Mostly I was reading it for work-related Scottish lit purposes. Then I basically….didn’t stop reading for around three weeks, until I finished book 6. I stayed up till 3am every night. I carried my Kindle around with me, reading it under the desk in work, on the bus, while getting dressed in the morning. Outside fanfiction, this was the most enjoyable reading experience I’ve had in easily a decade, where by ‘enjoyable’ I mean that these books had everything I could possibly ask for in a work of fiction and more.
The Lymond Chronicles are set in Scotland, England, Europe and beyond in the sixteenth century, during the early years of Mary Queen of Scots. There is a lot of high and low politics and court drama and intrigue, with lovingly rendered historical detail in excellent prose and a cast of varied and well-drawn characters. There is brilliant plotting full of twists and reversals and suspense. There is also a fair amount of Scottish nationalism, which I am definitely there for. But the point of these books is not any of this. The point of these books is Francis Crawford.
Lymond belongs to the line of fictional heroes who, I would say, are often beloved by fans, especially slash fans: they are highly intelligent; passionately invested in literature, music and the arts; exceptionally and unexpectedly good at fighting; brilliant at strategic thinking; and constantly being underestimated as shallow or superficial while actually being deeply committed to a cause. They are ruthless and tend to present themselves as heartless, while being extremely vulnerable to others. They are also prone to forms of mental illness and are hopeless at any form of self-care. They have a strong tendency to fall for very intelligent women. See: Howl, Peter Wimsey, Stephen Maturin, Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell, Sherlock et al.
However, Lymond is the only example of such a hero I can think of (though – give me other examples!) who is as openly bi as it is possible for him to be in a set of novels written in the 1960s and 1970s and set in the sixteenth century. [ETA I woke up at 4am one night this week thinking 'Mary Renault! I forgot about her!' So, yes, Mary Renault, though you can get away with a lot more if you set your books in the classical world.]
Everyone in Dunnett's books knows that Lymond sleeps with men. In book 1, one of the many young men who become obsessed with Lymond and whose POV we share is invited to join him in a private room in a brothel and instantly assumes Lymond wants to fuck him (he thinks about this for 0.005 seconds and then decides he’s up for it, because literally everyone wants to fuck Lymond - the bewildered desire that various supposedly heterosexual men feel for him is a Major Recurring Theme). In Book 2 Lymond, in disguise for Reasons, is sleeping with half the French court, male and female. In Book 3, his brother suggests that they should distract him from seducing a beautiful young girl staying in the family home by hiring some attractive grooms.
Of course, Lymond is a Tragic Bisexual Disaster and so pretty much every sexual encounter he has is unhappy. Since he is usually sleeping with people for political rather than personal reasons, and at least once pre-canon and once during the series he is in sexual relationships that are unquestionably coercive, there are also a LOT of interesting and complicated questions about consent going on. These issues expand outwards into much of Lymond’s life, in which he becomes a very politically desirable asset for various rulers and monarchs, not always with much or any choice in the matter. (Without spoilers, sexual consent becomes a major issue in the later books for the leading female character, too). Lymond tends to end up in situations in which he is misunderstood, betrayed, beaten up, thrown into prison and tortured, quite often by the people he is closest to. He is at various points addicted to drugs and alcohol, and as the series progresses he is increasingly and explicitly suffering from acute depression manifesting in physical ways. It is always genuinely unclear whether he will survive whatever madness is going on. I mean, with five books to go I would not usually be holding my breath to see if the leading character makes it at the end of Book 1, but that’s how good a writer Dunnett is. In the later books, Lymond is also in a Fake Marriage – spoiler! THEY FALL IN LOVE – with a truly wonderful female character, too, which causes much wonderful and painful angst.
There’s a lot about The Lymond Chronicles that is of their time – certainly they are dated and arguably problematic in a number of respects. But they are a great read and I think it's difficult not to fall for Lymond and Main Female Character (whose name is a slight spoiler for events post book-1). My main feeling on finishing book 1 other than the irresistible desire to start book 2 was a sense of betrayal: I could not BELIEVE that no-one had told me about these books before. So – here is my very short pitch for them. Happy to supply a further 100000 words on Lymond’s character and indeed every other character on demand. <3
no subject
Date: 2019-03-27 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-30 11:26 pm (UTC)In short, do add to your reading list, I need more people to read these books to see if it's just me...
no subject
Date: 2019-03-28 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-28 11:40 am (UTC)