dhampyresa

In the I'm the Grim Reaper by GRAVEWEAVER, there's a character called Ante Nora. This character has (a) been condemned to the Ninth Circle of Hell because of (b) committing crimes against humanity (exact details tbd as of writing).

In Dante's Inferno, Antenora [1] is the name of the second ring of the Ninth Circle. It's dedicated to traitors to their country.

This is THE DEEPEST FUCKING CUT, seriously. I just now noticed this, even though I've read the entire The Divine Comedy (in French, admittedly, but placenames are the same) and have been reading the comic for years/since before the appearance of this character name. The only reason I noticed is that that's the part of Inferno I'm currently rereading.

The slow "waaaaaaaait... is it? it IS!" realisation was a moment of pure joy I really needed lately, so thank you GRAVEWEAVER.

And bravo. Please leave more obscure references in your work, you lovely nerd.


[1] Antenora is named after Antenor, who let Ulysses's [2] treacherous horse into the city.

[2] Ulysses is also in Hell, in the eighth bolgia of the Eighth Circle, the place for fraudulent counsellors. Dante made up a last voyage of Ulysses, where he sailed past the pillars of Hercules in an unending, prideful and fatal search of knowledge. Dante will get his headcanons aaaaaaaaaaall over your classical texts. According to the France Culture podcast Dante, bienvenue en Enfer; Épisode 3 : Mort d’avoir trop voulu connaître (Dante, welcome to Hell; Episode 3: Died of wanting to know too much) [3] Dante didn't have access to a complete version of the Odyssey as we know it now. If memory serves, the first complete Odysseys came to Europe post the fall of Constantinople in 1453, a good 120+ years after Dante magnum opus came out.

[3] Did I find out about Stromae's L'enfer from the first episode in the series? You can't prove anything.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

For hokuton_punch . (I'm sorry I forgot about the talking meme for a while there. All posts forthcoming, I swear.)

I have a whole historical tl;dr post about Mehmed, Radu and Vlad, as well as some more talk about the time period (15th century Wallachia/Ottoman Empire)/what Vlad and Mehmed might be like without Radu in this reading wednesday post (under La croisade des Carpathes).

Long story short: Radu cel Frumos is the youngest brother to Vlad the Impaler. As children they were sent as hostages to the Ottoman Empire, where they met Mehmed. Despite a rocky start (RADU STABBED HIM AND RAN UP A TREE), Radu and Mehmed fall in love. Then they go to war against Vlad, somewhere in there Constantinople becomes Istanbul and biological warfare is invented.

Here's the bit I have to confess that I know less about Mehmed and Radu than I do about Vlad, because Vlad being "Dracula" was my in into this part of history, but I'll try my best to talk some more about Mehmed and Radu anyway.

A thing I've seen coming up over and over again in fiction about the period, mostly in regards to Vlad -- because Vlad is the one that's had the most fiction written about him, because "Dracula" -- but occasionally in regards to Radu as well, is that they were sexually abused as children while with the Ottomans. (Looking at you Helsing, looking at you Chronicles of Legion*, etc.) As far as I can tell from primary sources there's no evidence of this. So unless I missed something, a bunch of authors just decided to add this. Because I guess being torn away from your family and held hostage against your country's nominal freedom is not a tragic enough backstory (so let's add some shitty, xenophobic clichés).

At least a few of these work actually conflate Murad and Mehmed (for those keeping score at home: Murad is Mehmed's father), in which case I can see why 'Radu gets into a relationship with the Sultan' could get really creepy. On the other hand, while I'm not saying there wasn't any power imbalance in the Mehmed/Radu relationship -- because there was -- the actual age difference is only about five years and sources seem to point at the relationship being Radu's idea, past that initial STABBED HIM AND RAN UP A TREE incident.

I don't think the Mehmed/Radu relationship was as straightforward as "they were in ~love" or "Mehmed pressured Radu into it". Most notably it's hard to tell how Radu felt both on account of how there aren't that many sources and how if Radu had any reservations about it he sure as hell wasn't gonna say anything. What I'm pretty confident about is that Mehmed, at least, really loved Radu. Look. Mehmed was married four times and he had a harem yet his relationship with Radu is a constant for years.

But let's take a step back from the personal and look at the political for a moment.

I don't think it'd be much of a surprise to tell you that religious wars were all the rage in the Balkans in the 15th century. Christendom hates the Ottomans because they're Muslims, the Ottomans hate Christendom because it's not, the Orthodox hate the Catholics who hate the Orthodox (and prettymuch everyone hates on the Jews, big sursprise there). It's basically a clusterfuck/powderkeg of proto-nationalistic sentiment, xenophobia and religious fanaticism. In other words: if people aren't killing each other left and right, it's because veryone's already dead.

Mehmed conquering Constantinople in 1453 does nothing to help matters, obviously. But 1463 is when it gets interesting.

In 1463, Mehmed publishes an edict that reads "I, sultan Mehmet, inform the entire world that those who posses these imperial edicts, the Bosnia Fransiscans, are in my good graces and do hereby command: let nobody bother or disturb neither those mentioned nor their churches. Let them dwell in peace in my empire. And let those who have become refugees be allowed to do so and be safe. Let them return and let them settle in their monasteries without fear in all countries of my empire". It's not the first time Mehmed's tried to calm down religious tensions in his empire (there are sources that go back at least to the fall of Constantinople), but it's the first time he's made it official. I would be very very surprised if Radu had nothing to with any of this.

In 1462, Radu gets to become voivode of Wallachia by taking the title from Vlad, with Ottoman backing. If getting into a relationship with Mehmed was political gamble, it's one that paid off. (But he could have ran away to Vlad and Vlad would have taken him in -- for sure before the Night Attack, and maybe even after -- and he didn't.)

The other explanation for Radu's loyalty to the Ottomans is Stockholm Syndrome and/or the Ottoman devshirme brainwashing. Radu is five years old when he gets to the Ottoma court. Children taken by the devshirme are usually six years old -- then they get brainwashed into loyal Ottoman janissaries. (The Ottoman Empire is really good at making janissaries.) That Radu end up as Janissary commander would lend weight to this.

Rau might have loved Mehmed too. After all, Vlad was there, at the beginning, and I find it very hard to believe Vlad wouldn't burn down Earth and Heaven if he thought he needed to to protect his brother. (See for example how he treated the boyards who tortured and murderd his brother Mircea.) Vlad never attacked Mehmed personally, though. Even during the Night Attack, where Vlad conducted the reconnaissance HIMSELF, Mehmed wasn't killed.

In all likelihood, Mehmed did love Radu, but Radu's feelings for him were a complicated mess of love, Stockholm syndrome and political gambling. We'll never know for sure, but it sure is interesting.


*I'm actually posting this now, before I do a review of Chronicles of Legion, because Chronicles of Legion is basically ALL VLAD AND RADU ALL THE TIME (+ body horror and vampires).

Alright everybody settle down, it's story time! I'm going to talk to you about the Arthurian legend as I know it in the hope of making you see how wrong on the internet you are.

But first, some context: my first memory of anything Arthuriana related is being wee (let's say six years old or so) and reading a book. I'm pretty sure the book was La Forêt aux 100 sortilèges or at the very least another from that line of illustrated choose-your-own-adventure books. I was reading the book and I stopped. I carried the book all the way to where my mother was, taking care not to lose  my place.

The book was wrong.

On the double-page spread, one I can still see in my mind, the choice you had to make was how to save an emprisonned knight of the round table. So far, so good, right? No, because Morgane had put him there and that simply couldn't be right. I mean, water is wet, fire burns, Morgane is good, everyone knows that.

So I asked what was wrong with the book, why was Morgane evil in it? "Sometimes, in books, Morgane is evil."

That was the moment I started paying attention to Arthurian legend(s).

What's interesting to me, though, is that I have absolutely no recollection of ever learning about Morgane, Viviane and Merlin before this incident -- it was just of those immutable facts of the universe that you just know. Because of this, there are moments in what I'm going to retell where I could tell you who told me (my uncle, my grandma, my great-uncle, that one dude from [town on the other side of Brittany where they get the story wrong]...), but mostly I can't, so you'll just have to take my word for it that that's how the story goes.

(I don't know if you've ever tried to build a narrative out of oral tradition, but it's hard and I'm no Elias Lönnrot. Also, I translating from French and breton French at that, so cut me some slack. Seams are gonna show.)

( In which Morgane is good and Merlin is not AS IT SHOULD BE )

Okay, that should cover most of it, I think. (Also the Fisher King/le roi pecheur is Perceval's grandfather.)

Following the 101 primer,I will now answer some follow-up questions.


Does anybody know why Hannibal didn't march on Rome when he could? And also exactly under what circumstances did Hannibal and Scipio die the same year, were they in completely different places fighting other people or..?

( WE JUST DON'T KNOW )


Why did Scipio's relationship with Rome get sour?

( Delenda Carthago est! )


How come Scipio and Hannibal didn't cross paths in that last war of theirs?

( Not An Expert TM )


( dhampyresa explains the First Punic War )


Could you tell us more about Hannibal's family? Like, his father got a kingdom in Spain?

( The family )


( The kingdom in Spain )


Also, what do you think the powers that be in Carthage think was going to happen with Rome? In not helping Hannibal there, they passed up on an opportunity to storm Rome and possibly crush their enemy. Were they that certain of their ultimate victory in the conflict? Was it just unthinkable to them that Rome would win?
( Psychology of Carthage, Rome and Hannibal )


What did they look like? How do you picture them for shipping purposes?

( 100% legit scholarship )


Are there other members of Hannibal's army named besides Maharbal and his brothers Hasdrubal & Mago?

( Meet the people who are even worse at names than the Romans )


I have feelings. SEND HELP.

There was a war for the throne of France, and all three contenders were named Henri! There. Done.

Long story:
( The War of the Three Henris )

FRENCH HISTORY, EVERYONE! It's not just a mess in the XIXth century.

sineala : I wish to hear all about your love for Hannibal and Scipio (or Hannibal/Scipio, as the case may be).

( Hannibal, Scipio and me )

TL;DR: If you don't think Hannibal and Scipio faked their deaths to run away together, you're WRONG WRONG WRONG OMG HOW CAN ANYONE BE SO WRONG?