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cahnI didn't forget!
Tangentially, I realized there is no way I can do this during Yuletide season. I'll pick this up again in January. Anyone have any thoughts on what book they'd like me to do?
OK... let's see whether I can make any sense of this. This is where the book gets even more tangled than it was before. Knowing a bit of history, and knowing that the whole point of some (all?) of these subplots is to riff off of our universe's history, really helps. Again here is the link to Draco Concordans (DC), which elucidates a lot of this history.
Second half of Ch 9:
At Ludlow Castle in Wales, Cynthia does a biopsy on Prince Edward (Edward IV's son and heir) and finds that he has an incurable blood disease (possibly leukemia?). She and Hywel meet the wizard John Morton. Later, in Brecon Castle (which belongs to the Duke of Buckingham), Morton performs a magic spell (with human sacrifice!) to give Edward IV fatal apoplexy. Hywel teleports to Windsor Castle with Cynthia to try to save Edward IV, but he is captured by Buckingham's men. Cynthia escapes but is shot in the process. We don't see them again until Chapter 12.
From this chapter we can infer that Duke Buckingham is not a friend to Our Heroes or to Edward IV, although by "can infer" I of course mean "I never figured this out before because in all previous readings I was hopelessly lost by this point in the book."
In this chapter we also meet the Earl Rivers, Anthony Woodville. (He will turn out to be important in the AU.) He is the brother of Edward IV's wife Elizabeth Woodville (and so Prince Edward's uncle). (The Woodvilles are practically a dynasty themselves, and the next chapter will address the tug-of-war between the Woodvilles and the Yorks.)
When Cynthia asks Hywel if he can cure the Prince, Hywel says, "Cynthia... do you ever feel an aching in your muscles and sinews? A great aching, more than you would expect from exercise?" Cynthia and I both thought he was changing the subject, but DC postulates that Hywel is referring to wizards drawing power and health from other people, and leaving them drained, with the implication that Morton's health and youth comes from Prince Edward, and possibly Edward's sickness stems from this. (A very similar description comes at the end of Ch 12, where it is definitely a wizard draining people, so I now think this is the correct inference.)
(Also. Holy cow. I never thought about this until now, but Charles Williams was really, really into something he called "substitution" -- he believed that people could literally take upon them other people's pain and emotions (and wrote at least one novel with this as the focus), with of course Jesus being the epitome of this. ...I now really wonder whether this aspect of wizardry is meant to be a dark foil to that concept.)
Also we find out (at least by implication from Hywel's words) that a wizard's death curse is actually real, not just superstition, but we won't see a real death curse until Chapter 12.
Ch 10-12: Morton's plot/conspiracy.
Ch 10: The Prince changes hands.
Edward IV has died, so now Prince Edward is Edward V. Anthony Woodville/Earl Rivers is with Edward V in Wales, in possession of the new King, and has been tasked with bringing him to his mother in London. Richard and Anthony make arrangements to meet together (with, as it turns out, Buckingham). Rivers comes in good faith, but Richard -- and Dimi -- are suspicious. Buckingham basically needles Rivers until he snaps; this is taken as a show of bad faith and Anthony is trussed up and taken away. (DC claims there may be wizardry at work in this scene; I am not sure there is, only already-existing suspicion and Buckingham goading him. But DC also makes some good points, so...) Richard is now Protector of the King.
(In our history, Anthony is now executed; in TDW he lives.)
Ch 11: In which conspiracies are unmasked to the wrong person
Oh boy. Here we go. Really compressed:
Richard is named "Protector" of Edward V. A special physician comes for Edward V -- John Argentine, who (it becomes clear later) is a vampire. Meanwhile, Richard orders Dimi to get one of Dominic Mancini's letters and try to figure out if there are any secrets encoded therein. (Dominic Mancini is an Italian diplomat who in our universe wrote a report of Richard III which is a main historical source; in TDW he will turn out to be working for Byzantium. Naturally.) Dimi has the idea to ask Gregory to help. Gregory, being an awesome engineer, figures out the hidden and encrypted message in Mancini's letter, and realizes that Argentine is a vampire and allied with Margaret of Anjou and Byzantium (Argentine and Morton are who Margaret saw in Gregory and Hywel's faces, back in Ch 6 -- so in essence, Argentine, Morton, Mancini, Buckingham, and Margaret of Anjou are all working with the big Byzantine conspiracy to get control of Britain). He confronts Argentine, who reveals that Edward V is now a vampire!! Gregory shoots Argentine (unfortunately, we learn in the next chapter that he doesn't die). However, Gregory does not know that Buckingham is allied with the villains (he's not in the letter, as it turns out) and tells him about it, and Buckingham throws him in a cell in the Tower of London.
After this, Buckingham takes Gregory's notes on Mancini's letter and uses them to convince Richard of the following: he says Lord Hastings (I haven't mentioned him yet, he's another Historical Figure who historically was killed by Richard III) and Morton killed Edward IV. This is untrue about Hastings. Totally true about Morton, but with Buckingham rather than Hastings. (At this point in the book, as Buckingham meets with Richard, possibly Morton is also confusing everyone's brain at this point, including mine.) Hastings is executed. Dimi starts putting pieces together and realizes Mancini is a Byzantine agent and that Argentine must be involved, at which point Buckingham realizes he knows too much and grabs him and throws him in the cell with Gregory.
Whew.
What is going on with Gregory? I had totally thought he was suicidal, but this seems to be contradicted by his intention to go and get some food from Cecily's kitchens. Maybe he was going to do that and then kill himself?? Who knows.
(DC p 289 THE COUNT IS A GOTH OMG. I never understood this bit until now! )
Ch 12: All the plot happens
The densest chapter! This is going to take a while. But take heart, we are at the end of the Morton conspiracy chapters.
We find out what happened to Cynthia: when she was shot, she dragged herself to Mary Setright's hut, and Mary healed her. (or made her pull out her own bullet, which I still don't get. WTF. DC's take is that magical body parts don't do as well as natural body parts, which, sure, makes as much sense as anything else.) When she gets better, she disguises herself and makes her way to Cecily. She then goes to find Dimi and Gregory. Argentine threatens her, at which point she kills him and rescues Dimi and Gregory from prison. (Mancini got put in there with them, and they made Gregory so hungry that he drained Mancini of blood, after which he asked Dimi to kill him, but he didn't. GREGORY!)
DC points out that then the three of them tell Richard all about Buckingham's plot. At this point not only Edward V but also his brother the (now) Duke of York (these are the Princes in the Tower) have been turned vampire. Buckingham tries to use a magic spell (presumably given him by Morton) to escape, but the spell doesn't work. (Morton and Byzantium didn't really think Buckingham was all that important, certainly not important enough to save -- their plans ride on Henry Tydder, as we'll see in the next chapter.)
The Princes in the Tower can't be King as a vampire (the people would not accept it), and they can't be left alive if they're not going to be King (Evil Overlord Rule #1). So they are killed (by Gregory and Richard's man Tyrell).
Richard goes to arrest Morton. Morton tries to talk his way out. At one point (so points out DC) he bribes Richard with a contract of marriage between Edward IV and Eleanor Butler -- which would mean Edward IV's sons would be illegitimate and therefore not heirs to the throne at all, thus easing Richard's path to the throne. In our universe Richard uses this paper to strengthen his claim to the throne, but in TDW he rejects it as "petty." Morton claims that no one will believe anything Richard (or Cynthia) has to say about why the boys died, but Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, shows up alive and says, "They'll believe me!" Morton is (finally) arrested, and Buckingham is attainted traitor and dies. (Buckingham dying because of a plot against Richard matches our history, although in our universe his plot takes place after Richard becomes King.)
Now basically there's no one left to be King, so Richard has to take the throne as Richard III. In our world, it's generally believed that Richard wanted the throne and may have done some unsavory things to get it; how many unsavory things is a matter of incredible debate. In Shakespeare, of course, Richard III does ALL the unsavory things. So this is all basically inverting our universe's/Shakespeare's Richard by making him a man who does most of the same unsavory things he's suspected of having done in our universe (executing Hastings and Buckingham, killing the Princes in the Tower -- the big exception is not killing Rivers) but who meant well the whole time and didn't actually particularly want to be king. It also may be meant to invert the Ricardian conception (which from the Afterword JMF doesn't believe in) that Richard was a nice, inoffensive guy who couldn't possibly have murdered his nephews -- TDW Richard is a nice, inoffensive guy who does end up murdering his nephews, but not Rivers!
Morton (magically) checks on the still-missing Hywel, whom it turns out is stuffed into the body of a mute old porter at the Tower, and Hywel forces Morton to let him out, which somehow makes all the corruption of magic Morton had previously avoided catch up to him, and Morton dies horribly. His death curse is to kill Richard's son (who also died in our history).
(DC p318: it's not cited here, but of course the reason Mary can't find Hywel is that Morton has trapped him in Giles' body. p.324: I think Tyrell is uncomfortable because he's about to have to kill two other little boys!)
Ch 13: The Battle of Bosworth Field.
This chapter is curiously episodic, in the sense that it's not clear to me what connection it has to all the other chapters, except in that Henry Tydder (Tudor) is the face of the Byzantine plot that has been discussed for the rest of the book. And I guess the dragon medals which showed up briefly in Ch 9. So there's some stuff that builds on what came before, and Bosworth is won because of the work of Our Heroes. But really this is almost an epilogue just so we get to see Richard III alive after Bosworth, I think.
Okay, the synopsis:
Hywel and Cynthia go back to Wales to ask Mary Setright for help with Richard's wife, Anne Neville (who is having secondary infertility problems). It turns out Mary was killed by anti-Jeshites (that is to say, anti-Christians) who crucified her. So they go back. (There must be some point to this part that I'm just not getting?? It seems really episodic. But perhaps it leads to a link between Mary and Cynthia in some way??)
Meanwhile, Henry Tydder, aided by the Byzantines, a Byzantine wizard handling a Red Dragon, and the magic medallions that are drawing the Welsh to his side, brings Richard III to battle at Bosworth Field. There is some sort of weird magic in the air that is confusing everyone (except for Cynthia, and possibly Hywel although I'm not sure about him). However, Our Heroes manage to fight the confusion. (Dimi snaps out of some sort of memory fugue by a mention of "The King!" and realizes that his father never wanted him to be a king; Gregory snaps out of his hunger-related confusion by seeing Dimi. Cynthia doesn't seem to have gotten confused -- because of Mary?) Dimi and Gregory manage to parry the Lord Stanley defection of troops that surrounded and killed Richard III in our history. Hywel manages to destroy the magic Red Dragon (although I don't quite understand what happened here -- see my questions below). And, finally, Rivers kills Henry Tydder. (Good thing he lived in the TDW AU!) Richard lives and is King!
Hywel and Gregory ride off to (it is implied) continue with trying to overthrow the Byzantine Empire.
WE ARE DONE WITH THE SYNOPSIS!
Mary Setright's death blessing is very interesting to me -- instead of a death curse, she death-blessed her killers to find peace, but (because magic) it misfired, and they became so peaceful they basically just sat or stood around. (DC appears to think that this was intentional on Mary's part; I don't think so. I think because it was magic, it worked in a corrupted way, and I think she did forgive them.) Why does Cynthia have the power to release them? I don't get that. I also don't get why Cynthia was warded during Bosworth (I think it might have been Mary that warded her, but I don't know why or how? Or did Hywel do it?)
I also don't understand what happened with Hywel in the battle. He's clearly suffering symptoms of a heart attack. Did he use the dragon's power to fix his heart? DC seems to believe he did. I feel like this goes against everything he's thought for the rest of the book -- that using magic to do this sort of thing is against everything he believes in -- and I definitely got a "temptation" vibe from the bit where he's considering the dragon's power and how it could heal his heart. But maybe he just used the minimal amount of power he could, whch I suppose would be consistent with his ethos (and how DC explains it). I certainly don't have a better answer either as to what happened, as Hywel is certainly alive at the end.)
(Additional DC notes: p357: this is just Ford's recurring joke that everyone thinks Arthur belongs to them. Now it's the Bretons!)
Tangentially, I realized there is no way I can do this during Yuletide season. I'll pick this up again in January. Anyone have any thoughts on what book they'd like me to do?
OK... let's see whether I can make any sense of this. This is where the book gets even more tangled than it was before. Knowing a bit of history, and knowing that the whole point of some (all?) of these subplots is to riff off of our universe's history, really helps. Again here is the link to Draco Concordans (DC), which elucidates a lot of this history.
Second half of Ch 9:
At Ludlow Castle in Wales, Cynthia does a biopsy on Prince Edward (Edward IV's son and heir) and finds that he has an incurable blood disease (possibly leukemia?). She and Hywel meet the wizard John Morton. Later, in Brecon Castle (which belongs to the Duke of Buckingham), Morton performs a magic spell (with human sacrifice!) to give Edward IV fatal apoplexy. Hywel teleports to Windsor Castle with Cynthia to try to save Edward IV, but he is captured by Buckingham's men. Cynthia escapes but is shot in the process. We don't see them again until Chapter 12.
From this chapter we can infer that Duke Buckingham is not a friend to Our Heroes or to Edward IV, although by "can infer" I of course mean "I never figured this out before because in all previous readings I was hopelessly lost by this point in the book."
In this chapter we also meet the Earl Rivers, Anthony Woodville. (He will turn out to be important in the AU.) He is the brother of Edward IV's wife Elizabeth Woodville (and so Prince Edward's uncle). (The Woodvilles are practically a dynasty themselves, and the next chapter will address the tug-of-war between the Woodvilles and the Yorks.)
When Cynthia asks Hywel if he can cure the Prince, Hywel says, "Cynthia... do you ever feel an aching in your muscles and sinews? A great aching, more than you would expect from exercise?" Cynthia and I both thought he was changing the subject, but DC postulates that Hywel is referring to wizards drawing power and health from other people, and leaving them drained, with the implication that Morton's health and youth comes from Prince Edward, and possibly Edward's sickness stems from this. (A very similar description comes at the end of Ch 12, where it is definitely a wizard draining people, so I now think this is the correct inference.)
(Also. Holy cow. I never thought about this until now, but Charles Williams was really, really into something he called "substitution" -- he believed that people could literally take upon them other people's pain and emotions (and wrote at least one novel with this as the focus), with of course Jesus being the epitome of this. ...I now really wonder whether this aspect of wizardry is meant to be a dark foil to that concept.)
Also we find out (at least by implication from Hywel's words) that a wizard's death curse is actually real, not just superstition, but we won't see a real death curse until Chapter 12.
Ch 10-12: Morton's plot/conspiracy.
Ch 10: The Prince changes hands.
Edward IV has died, so now Prince Edward is Edward V. Anthony Woodville/Earl Rivers is with Edward V in Wales, in possession of the new King, and has been tasked with bringing him to his mother in London. Richard and Anthony make arrangements to meet together (with, as it turns out, Buckingham). Rivers comes in good faith, but Richard -- and Dimi -- are suspicious. Buckingham basically needles Rivers until he snaps; this is taken as a show of bad faith and Anthony is trussed up and taken away. (DC claims there may be wizardry at work in this scene; I am not sure there is, only already-existing suspicion and Buckingham goading him. But DC also makes some good points, so...) Richard is now Protector of the King.
(In our history, Anthony is now executed; in TDW he lives.)
Dimitrios felt himself smiling. Edward was doing his best to be kingly, as his father would want, and succeeding very well. But then, Dimi thought, Edward's father had died suddenly and far away. And his father's brother was a brave, intelligent lord. And Edward was really a king.I... didn't realize until now that Dimi is comparing Edward to himself!
Ch 11: In which conspiracies are unmasked to the wrong person
Oh boy. Here we go. Really compressed:
Richard is named "Protector" of Edward V. A special physician comes for Edward V -- John Argentine, who (it becomes clear later) is a vampire. Meanwhile, Richard orders Dimi to get one of Dominic Mancini's letters and try to figure out if there are any secrets encoded therein. (Dominic Mancini is an Italian diplomat who in our universe wrote a report of Richard III which is a main historical source; in TDW he will turn out to be working for Byzantium. Naturally.) Dimi has the idea to ask Gregory to help. Gregory, being an awesome engineer, figures out the hidden and encrypted message in Mancini's letter, and realizes that Argentine is a vampire and allied with Margaret of Anjou and Byzantium (Argentine and Morton are who Margaret saw in Gregory and Hywel's faces, back in Ch 6 -- so in essence, Argentine, Morton, Mancini, Buckingham, and Margaret of Anjou are all working with the big Byzantine conspiracy to get control of Britain). He confronts Argentine, who reveals that Edward V is now a vampire!! Gregory shoots Argentine (unfortunately, we learn in the next chapter that he doesn't die). However, Gregory does not know that Buckingham is allied with the villains (he's not in the letter, as it turns out) and tells him about it, and Buckingham throws him in a cell in the Tower of London.
After this, Buckingham takes Gregory's notes on Mancini's letter and uses them to convince Richard of the following: he says Lord Hastings (I haven't mentioned him yet, he's another Historical Figure who historically was killed by Richard III) and Morton killed Edward IV. This is untrue about Hastings. Totally true about Morton, but with Buckingham rather than Hastings. (At this point in the book, as Buckingham meets with Richard, possibly Morton is also confusing everyone's brain at this point, including mine.) Hastings is executed. Dimi starts putting pieces together and realizes Mancini is a Byzantine agent and that Argentine must be involved, at which point Buckingham realizes he knows too much and grabs him and throws him in the cell with Gregory.
Whew.
What is going on with Gregory? I had totally thought he was suicidal, but this seems to be contradicted by his intention to go and get some food from Cecily's kitchens. Maybe he was going to do that and then kill himself?? Who knows.
(DC p 289 THE COUNT IS A GOTH OMG. I never understood this bit until now! )
Ch 12: All the plot happens
The densest chapter! This is going to take a while. But take heart, we are at the end of the Morton conspiracy chapters.
We find out what happened to Cynthia: when she was shot, she dragged herself to Mary Setright's hut, and Mary healed her. (or made her pull out her own bullet, which I still don't get. WTF. DC's take is that magical body parts don't do as well as natural body parts, which, sure, makes as much sense as anything else.) When she gets better, she disguises herself and makes her way to Cecily. She then goes to find Dimi and Gregory. Argentine threatens her, at which point she kills him and rescues Dimi and Gregory from prison. (Mancini got put in there with them, and they made Gregory so hungry that he drained Mancini of blood, after which he asked Dimi to kill him, but he didn't. GREGORY!)
DC points out that then the three of them tell Richard all about Buckingham's plot. At this point not only Edward V but also his brother the (now) Duke of York (these are the Princes in the Tower) have been turned vampire. Buckingham tries to use a magic spell (presumably given him by Morton) to escape, but the spell doesn't work. (Morton and Byzantium didn't really think Buckingham was all that important, certainly not important enough to save -- their plans ride on Henry Tydder, as we'll see in the next chapter.)
The Princes in the Tower can't be King as a vampire (the people would not accept it), and they can't be left alive if they're not going to be King (
Richard goes to arrest Morton. Morton tries to talk his way out. At one point (so points out DC) he bribes Richard with a contract of marriage between Edward IV and Eleanor Butler -- which would mean Edward IV's sons would be illegitimate and therefore not heirs to the throne at all, thus easing Richard's path to the throne. In our universe Richard uses this paper to strengthen his claim to the throne, but in TDW he rejects it as "petty." Morton claims that no one will believe anything Richard (or Cynthia) has to say about why the boys died, but Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, shows up alive and says, "They'll believe me!" Morton is (finally) arrested, and Buckingham is attainted traitor and dies. (Buckingham dying because of a plot against Richard matches our history, although in our universe his plot takes place after Richard becomes King.)
Now basically there's no one left to be King, so Richard has to take the throne as Richard III. In our world, it's generally believed that Richard wanted the throne and may have done some unsavory things to get it; how many unsavory things is a matter of incredible debate. In Shakespeare, of course, Richard III does ALL the unsavory things. So this is all basically inverting our universe's/Shakespeare's Richard by making him a man who does most of the same unsavory things he's suspected of having done in our universe (executing Hastings and Buckingham, killing the Princes in the Tower -- the big exception is not killing Rivers) but who meant well the whole time and didn't actually particularly want to be king. It also may be meant to invert the Ricardian conception (which from the Afterword JMF doesn't believe in) that Richard was a nice, inoffensive guy who couldn't possibly have murdered his nephews -- TDW Richard is a nice, inoffensive guy who does end up murdering his nephews, but not Rivers!
Morton (magically) checks on the still-missing Hywel, whom it turns out is stuffed into the body of a mute old porter at the Tower, and Hywel forces Morton to let him out, which somehow makes all the corruption of magic Morton had previously avoided catch up to him, and Morton dies horribly. His death curse is to kill Richard's son (who also died in our history).
(DC p318: it's not cited here, but of course the reason Mary can't find Hywel is that Morton has trapped him in Giles' body. p.324: I think Tyrell is uncomfortable because he's about to have to kill two other little boys!)
Ch 13: The Battle of Bosworth Field.
This chapter is curiously episodic, in the sense that it's not clear to me what connection it has to all the other chapters, except in that Henry Tydder (Tudor) is the face of the Byzantine plot that has been discussed for the rest of the book. And I guess the dragon medals which showed up briefly in Ch 9. So there's some stuff that builds on what came before, and Bosworth is won because of the work of Our Heroes. But really this is almost an epilogue just so we get to see Richard III alive after Bosworth, I think.
Okay, the synopsis:
Hywel and Cynthia go back to Wales to ask Mary Setright for help with Richard's wife, Anne Neville (who is having secondary infertility problems). It turns out Mary was killed by anti-Jeshites (that is to say, anti-Christians) who crucified her. So they go back. (There must be some point to this part that I'm just not getting?? It seems really episodic. But perhaps it leads to a link between Mary and Cynthia in some way??)
Meanwhile, Henry Tydder, aided by the Byzantines, a Byzantine wizard handling a Red Dragon, and the magic medallions that are drawing the Welsh to his side, brings Richard III to battle at Bosworth Field. There is some sort of weird magic in the air that is confusing everyone (except for Cynthia, and possibly Hywel although I'm not sure about him). However, Our Heroes manage to fight the confusion. (Dimi snaps out of some sort of memory fugue by a mention of "The King!" and realizes that his father never wanted him to be a king; Gregory snaps out of his hunger-related confusion by seeing Dimi. Cynthia doesn't seem to have gotten confused -- because of Mary?) Dimi and Gregory manage to parry the Lord Stanley defection of troops that surrounded and killed Richard III in our history. Hywel manages to destroy the magic Red Dragon (although I don't quite understand what happened here -- see my questions below). And, finally, Rivers kills Henry Tydder. (Good thing he lived in the TDW AU!) Richard lives and is King!
Hywel and Gregory ride off to (it is implied) continue with trying to overthrow the Byzantine Empire.
WE ARE DONE WITH THE SYNOPSIS!
Mary Setright's death blessing is very interesting to me -- instead of a death curse, she death-blessed her killers to find peace, but (because magic) it misfired, and they became so peaceful they basically just sat or stood around. (DC appears to think that this was intentional on Mary's part; I don't think so. I think because it was magic, it worked in a corrupted way, and I think she did forgive them.) Why does Cynthia have the power to release them? I don't get that. I also don't get why Cynthia was warded during Bosworth (I think it might have been Mary that warded her, but I don't know why or how? Or did Hywel do it?)
I also don't understand what happened with Hywel in the battle. He's clearly suffering symptoms of a heart attack. Did he use the dragon's power to fix his heart? DC seems to believe he did. I feel like this goes against everything he's thought for the rest of the book -- that using magic to do this sort of thing is against everything he believes in -- and I definitely got a "temptation" vibe from the bit where he's considering the dragon's power and how it could heal his heart. But maybe he just used the minimal amount of power he could, whch I suppose would be consistent with his ethos (and how DC explains it). I certainly don't have a better answer either as to what happened, as Hywel is certainly alive at the end.)
(Additional DC notes: p357: this is just Ford's recurring joke that everyone thinks Arthur belongs to them. Now it's the Bretons!)
no subject
Date: 2019-10-22 05:03 am (UTC)Yes! -- the murder mystery solution doesn't help the murder, and yup, the document destroyed does nothing, George still dies. You're right, until the end they pretty much fail.
This parallel between the working of magic and the book was based on the idea that the whole book is in a way the story of Hywel doing a single bit of magic: it's the story of him setting things up such that he can destroy the red dragon when it arises, and the reason ninety percent of it is people failing is that ninety percent of magical success is failure, and the important thing is getting the success to happen where it counts. Only as a parallel that seems to be based on a large-scale broad-brush kind of structural thinking which, I am left with the feeling, neither Hywel nor Ford would use.
Hmm. I'm not sure that Ford wouldn't use that kind of broad structural thinking, but I'm equally not certain that he's using it here. I don't really see how the rest of the book (except the part where they're in Wales) really sets things up.
My memory of the final chapter had been more like 'Hywel finally executes his plan,' whereas it reads like 'Hywel finally realises that his method of doing business has limits, and allows himself to deviate very slightly from his method in a way that is consistent with its principles.'
Ah! This is interesting. I don't think I ever gave any thought to the possibility of the latter, I always thought it was all "Hywel executes his plan."
(The sad loves of men on noble missions. This turns up in Scholars of Night too. I am instinctively suspicious of it as a kind of emotional plot, but on the other hand I feel as though Ford understands kinds of pain and life complexity which I don't, yet. With writing as opaque as Ford's, it's quite hard to tell where I disagree with him and where I just haven't understood him yet).
Ha. This comes up in Web of Angels too (and one of the Liavek stories, sort of), and was part of what I was thinking about when you talked about the male gaze earlier. I am not... as convinced by Ford's tragically suffering/dying male-protagonist-motivators (at least Cynthia is not a tragically suffering or dying lady, which is a nice change) as I am by his descriptions of sickness and pain, but perhaps I'm doing him a disservice.
Thank you for rereading and coming back to talk about it with me! Although, ha, between us I don't know that we've managed to really answer any questions :)