100 Books, #27: Crown Duel
Jul. 12th, 2013 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI first got my LJ for a single purpose: I wanted to be able to post on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
athanarel, the LJ comm about Sherwood Smith’s Crown Duel.
I remain terribly fond of the book. I adore the heroine, Mel, who is brave and plucky and brash to the point of rashness - I could probably throw a few more synonyms for “courageous” in this list of Mel’s virtues. But her courage is often the only thing she has going for her: she’s quite ignorant about the world, and therefore makes enormous mistakes and is forced to seriously reevaluate not just her actions but her basic beliefs about how the world works.
And I love the fact that Mel’s ignorance allows her to learn about the world with her, and that the worldbuilding makes this process worthwhile. There’s a scene I particularly love where Nee, Mel’s friend and Mel’s brother’s fiancee, explains the history of Remalna, touching at intervals on world history, through the changes in court clothing over the centuries. It’s so light and airy and so full of information! Brilliant.
But it’s not just that Remalna is well-developed - the glancing mentions of the outside world in the book make the other countries feel real, like places with stories and characters and histories. (Smith’s other books have amply affirmed this impression, although I think often the worldbuilding in her other books lacks the same lightness of touch.)
Crown Duel was also the first book that introduced me to the idea of a comedy of manners - a very gentle stepping stone toward Jane Austen and E. M. Forster and all those 1930s English authors I love to ramble about.
Plus it has an epistolary romance. Epistolary anythings are one of my favorite literary devices in the world.
***
As thefic_corner exchange is coming up, I’ve been thinking about the fic possibilities for many of my favorite old children’s and YA books. Some of them are not very conducive for this sort of thing, but I have ALL SORTS of Crown Duel ideas.
Partly this is another effect of the worldbuilding: I always had the sense that if I could climb into the book, there would be a real place to walk around, and moreover, a place I would want to walk around. But it’s also a result of the wonderful characters in the book.
The love interest of course is first rate (also visible from SPACE, but I will preserve his anonymity for the moment), but I also love Mel’s brother Bran, good-humored and slightly bumbling; Bran’s fiancee Nee, who swiftly becomes one of Mel’s best friends (to the point that Mel must remind herself that she should give Bran and Nee a little alone time), and Nee’s best friend Elenet, who is a very secondary character but fascinating in her shyness, her artistry, her melancholy.
I adore Mel and Shevraeth, but I think the book does excellent justice to their relationship (EPISTOLARY COURTSHIP!) so mostly I am interested in stories about the other members of the court. Three main ideas!
1. Bran and Nee’s courtship. I just think it would be sweet.
2. Tamara fic. She remains a rather opaque character to me, so of course that makes her interesting to explore
I think she feels bitter about Mel garnering all this attention for her dashing heroism when, in Tamara’s eyes, she doesn’t deserve it. Not that Mel wasn’t heroic, in her way (and I think this fact makes it harder rather than easier for Tamara to bear) - but Mel didn’t suffer the particular hell of living in Galdran’s court, didn’t put in the years of forcing smiles and lies and tiptoeing around wondering who Galdran would turn on next. She just waltzed in at the end and got all the glory. I can see how Tamara would resent that.
This is still not a very attractive motivation. I would also like a fic that explains why Savona, who seems like a fairly decent guy, loves Tamara, who is a jerk. “They are the two prettiest people in court” is not sufficient explanation.
3. And I think anything exploring life at Galdran’s court is potentially fascinating. In particular, how did Nee and her best friend Elenet survive it?
Shevraeth and Savona could comfort themselves that they were secretly plotting against Galdran, and Tamara presumably didn’t care (probably taught herself not to care), but Nee and Elenet clearly did not and maybe could not harden themselves like that. How did two such gentle, sensitive girls not just survive, but maintain that gentleness despite the viper’s nest of Galdran’s court?
They’re both from fairly minor families, so presumably they kept out of Galdran’s way as best they could. But still, the atmosphere of the place must have been poisonous, even if they rarely saw Galdran.
athanarel, the LJ comm about Sherwood Smith’s Crown Duel. I remain terribly fond of the book. I adore the heroine, Mel, who is brave and plucky and brash to the point of rashness - I could probably throw a few more synonyms for “courageous” in this list of Mel’s virtues. But her courage is often the only thing she has going for her: she’s quite ignorant about the world, and therefore makes enormous mistakes and is forced to seriously reevaluate not just her actions but her basic beliefs about how the world works.
And I love the fact that Mel’s ignorance allows her to learn about the world with her, and that the worldbuilding makes this process worthwhile. There’s a scene I particularly love where Nee, Mel’s friend and Mel’s brother’s fiancee, explains the history of Remalna, touching at intervals on world history, through the changes in court clothing over the centuries. It’s so light and airy and so full of information! Brilliant.
But it’s not just that Remalna is well-developed - the glancing mentions of the outside world in the book make the other countries feel real, like places with stories and characters and histories. (Smith’s other books have amply affirmed this impression, although I think often the worldbuilding in her other books lacks the same lightness of touch.)
Crown Duel was also the first book that introduced me to the idea of a comedy of manners - a very gentle stepping stone toward Jane Austen and E. M. Forster and all those 1930s English authors I love to ramble about.
Plus it has an epistolary romance. Epistolary anythings are one of my favorite literary devices in the world.
***
As the
fic_corner exchange is coming up, I’ve been thinking about the fic possibilities for many of my favorite old children’s and YA books. Some of them are not very conducive for this sort of thing, but I have ALL SORTS of Crown Duel ideas. Partly this is another effect of the worldbuilding: I always had the sense that if I could climb into the book, there would be a real place to walk around, and moreover, a place I would want to walk around. But it’s also a result of the wonderful characters in the book.
The love interest of course is first rate (also visible from SPACE, but I will preserve his anonymity for the moment), but I also love Mel’s brother Bran, good-humored and slightly bumbling; Bran’s fiancee Nee, who swiftly becomes one of Mel’s best friends (to the point that Mel must remind herself that she should give Bran and Nee a little alone time), and Nee’s best friend Elenet, who is a very secondary character but fascinating in her shyness, her artistry, her melancholy.
I adore Mel and Shevraeth, but I think the book does excellent justice to their relationship (EPISTOLARY COURTSHIP!) so mostly I am interested in stories about the other members of the court. Three main ideas!
1. Bran and Nee’s courtship. I just think it would be sweet.
2. Tamara fic. She remains a rather opaque character to me, so of course that makes her interesting to explore
I think she feels bitter about Mel garnering all this attention for her dashing heroism when, in Tamara’s eyes, she doesn’t deserve it. Not that Mel wasn’t heroic, in her way (and I think this fact makes it harder rather than easier for Tamara to bear) - but Mel didn’t suffer the particular hell of living in Galdran’s court, didn’t put in the years of forcing smiles and lies and tiptoeing around wondering who Galdran would turn on next. She just waltzed in at the end and got all the glory. I can see how Tamara would resent that.
This is still not a very attractive motivation. I would also like a fic that explains why Savona, who seems like a fairly decent guy, loves Tamara, who is a jerk. “They are the two prettiest people in court” is not sufficient explanation.
3. And I think anything exploring life at Galdran’s court is potentially fascinating. In particular, how did Nee and her best friend Elenet survive it?
Shevraeth and Savona could comfort themselves that they were secretly plotting against Galdran, and Tamara presumably didn’t care (probably taught herself not to care), but Nee and Elenet clearly did not and maybe could not harden themselves like that. How did two such gentle, sensitive girls not just survive, but maintain that gentleness despite the viper’s nest of Galdran’s court?
They’re both from fairly minor families, so presumably they kept out of Galdran’s way as best they could. But still, the atmosphere of the place must have been poisonous, even if they rarely saw Galdran.
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no subject
Date: 2013-07-12 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-12 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-13 02:12 pm (UTC)I think your comment about Tamara is spot on. Also, Tamara probably felt disempowered, being unable to do anything about Galdron's reign. Shevraeth and Savona (?) were secretly undermining Galdran for years, while others, like Nee, are simply grateful that Galdron's gone, but I suspect Tamara wishes she could have done something. So it's not just that Mel waltzes in at the end, but she achieves what Tamara could not.
I've also assumed that Savona gets why Tamara can be spiteful and is therefore able to look past that - to pay more attention to why she's saying the things she says rather than her words themselves. I'd have to reread Crown Duel to see if it actually supports that interpretation, or if that was just what my imagination came up with.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-13 06:39 pm (UTC)IIRC there's not a lot of interaction between Savona and Tamara in the book - we hear that they used to be an item, and learn that they become one again once Tamara stops pursuing Shevraeth, but we don't see them interact. But Savona seems to be very easy-going, so he probably could let Tamara's occasional spitefulness roll over him like water off a duck's back.
On an unrelated note, I have been zipping through the Gallagher Girl books as swiftly as the library can get them to me. The third book is on hold for me at the library right now.