There is nothing like a Dane

I've been reading Henry of Huntingdon's History of the English People 1000 - 1154, which he wrote in the twelfth century. The first part of the book is based on earlier sources, and has some of the most interesting turns of phrase I've read in a while. The first part of the book chronicles the Danes attacking England, and mixed in with everyday comments are these horribly gruesome events, such as "Wherever they passed they ate joyfully what had been prepared, and when they departed they made payment for their keep by murdering their host and setting fire to their lodging-place." The beginning of the eleventh century seemed to be a time where the Danes came and burned and pillaged, and, like the sagas various people have been talking about here on LJ, people have betrayed and murdered their friends.

I've enjoyed the similes he uses based on nature. My life has so little in it of the natural world right now, dealing as it does with computers and trains and television, that I enjoy reading what someone without anything like that does with the language. A couple of my favorites are:

"In the year 1003 the Danes were inflamed with a justifiable anger, like a fire which someone had tried to extinguish with fat. So flying down like a swarm of locusts, [they burned and pillaged]."

"...with [Swein] were always associated his three companions -- plunder, burning, and killing -- and all England lamented and shook like a reed bed struck by the quivering west wind."

I've also found my current favorite name, AElfweard, which I'm sure must be pronounced elf-weird. It just has to be.

Love and Romance

I'm in the middle of reading two books, both of which I'm enjoying quite a bit, and I'm fascinated by the way the two books are similar yet very, very different. Both of them are romances, though I wouldn't say either of them are part of the modern genre "romance," but keep in mind I hardly ever read any genre romances so I'm certainly not an expert. [Note that I haven't finished either of these books yet, so if you have please don't tell me spoilers on the endings. I do have spoilers for the first five Lymond chronicles, though.]

The first book, my current night time reading, is What Love Means to You People, by NancyKay Shapiro. I picked this up a couple of years ago based solely on the fact that NancyKay was a college friend of mine. This is the first of her serious writing that I've read, though I loved a long-running fan fiction romance she kept up in college, about The Who and the Beatles. What Love Means to You People is the story of two gay men, Seth, a young artist who is living in New York City and just scraping by, and Jim, a successful businessman about twenty years older who is still grieving for his lost partner.

The second book is my commute paperback, Checkmate, by Dorothy Dunnett, the last of the Lymond Chronicles. This one more than the others focuses on the relationship between Francis Crawford of Lymond and his wife Philippa, who is ten years younger and married him at his suggestion in order to save her honor when they were forced to spend the night in the same bedroom at a Turkish harem. (Long story. Five books worth of it.) Their marriage has not been consummated, and Lymond is trying to do the right thing by obtaining a divorce, though this is hampered by the laws and politics of sixteenth century Europe, where this is set.

What I find so interesting is that both of these are romances, though the Dunnett one is high romance, and both are concerned with love, sex, and secrets, yet they handle them so differently and so similarly at the same time. In both cases there is an age difference, which is an initial cause for concern in the pairs. In NancyKay's novel, which deals with gay men, there is a period of quite some time while the men simply date without sex, as the older Jim comes to terms with his grief over his dead lover and the guilt about moving on. Lymond, on the other hand, initially (two books back) thinks of Philippa as merely a child, because she is, but over the course of the books she has become quite an accomplished young woman, trained as she has been in the Turkish harem as well as later at the court of Queen Mary of England ("Bloody Mary"). What is more interesting to me, though, are how love and sex are handled. In Renaissance Europe, honor and politics take the lead over love (because of course Lymond is nobility in just about every country he shows up in, being, as a true romantic hero, a better warrior than everyone else in history, as well as more handsome, smarter, and wittier -- and of course more tortured). Both Lymond and Philippa torture themselves in order to do the right thing for everyone else, pushing away their own desire for who they love. Also, even though Lymond is quite the slut, the point is made repeatedly about Philippa's purity. Not so with Jim and Seth. Once they get together there are quite a few good (and graphic, without being silly) sex scenes. I'm not sure that love has even been mentioned between the two of them yet, but sex is an important part, and an early part, of their relationship.

Most of the last couple of books in the Lymond series have had a strong subplot about secrets surrounding Lymond's birth, with both Lymond and Philippa separately seeking answers. In the modern novel, Seth also has secrets he has not told Jim. It looks so far like these secrets will prove to be an important factor in the characters' relationships, though I don't know yet (and don't tell me). I'm looking forward to finding out, and I'm enjoying comparing the two tortured romances, one written forty years ago about a time five hundred years ago, and one written much more recently. I recommend both books.