fangirlmiscellany

FORGIVE ANY TYPOS!!

Important note before I start: I will consider Alfred as a man having Crohn's disease because that's how both the TLK writers and Bernard Cornwell wrote him, so he should be read under that lens.

OKAY SO. I could rant a lot about how TLK uses very specific words to create parallels and subtext — not only here but in many other occasions as well, but for now I want to focus on what I did in this gifset which is highlighting the use of food symbolism when it comes to Alfred specifically.

The reasoning behind using food as symbolism for Alfred is quite obvious: he was written as a man who had Crohn's disease, thus one of his main struggles was with food. The interesting thing though is the fact that food is used as a representation of Alfred's sexual desires and this too connects with his illness.

In the gifset I have added a part of chapter 74 of Asser's Life of King Alfred. This part talks of how, when he was young, Alfred prayed to God for an illness that could have made it impossible for him to act on his "carnal desires" and God answered him with piles. Because of this, it was assumed by some historians that Alfred could have been a passive homosexual, and the one article in which those theories are also pointed out is the one article that pushed forward the theory of Alfred having been affected by Crohn's disease (that is Alfred the Great: A Diagnosis, by Gillian Craig in 1991). Now, Craig didn't really support the whole possibility of Alfred having been a homosexual man, but that is not important for the explanation, just know that there were some theories going around and the article was such an important one that it is impossible that none of the tlk writers or Bernard never read it (a man who has studied Alfred for like 40 years, by the way). But, on the top of that, even that absolute cunt of Alfred Smyth mentioned that there were theories about it (he mentioned it in an absolutely homophobic way but he did mention it) and unfortunately the guy's tome is read a lot amongst Alfredian historians (personally, I hope he's rotting in hell).

SO, now that you have in mind this theory of the possibility for the historical Alfred to have been a queer man, we can go back to the use of language in TLK for the purpose of subtext, parallels and symbolism.

Three types of food get mainly mentioned in this gifset (all are from season 1): apples, milk, and meat. When it comes to symbolism, meat is often associated with the male gender (strength, etc.) and milk with the female gender (maternity, etc.). In the scenes in season 1, milk is always accompanied by apples. As I said, milk is associated with women and what else is associated with women? The apple as the forbidden fruit — Eve (the woman) tempted Adam (the man) with the apple (gonna read this under a christian lens because Alfred is deeply connected to Christianity, as you all know).

ONWARDS. Going through the gifset:

1. (1x03) The servant says "the milk has soured" and indeed after that you never see them in an intimate scenary. 2. (1x04) Alfred asks Uhtred if he has eaten. 3. (1x03, same scene as before) After the servant leaves, Alfred says that he's tired of "milk and apples" (the two types of food that are connected to the woman) and that he needs meat (the type of food connected to the man). 4. (1x02) This is Alfred's first scene ever and Alfred has just been intimate with the servant girl and Beocca tells him of Uhtred. Alfred says that unless Uhtred becomes "flesh and bone" (flesh can be connected to meat) he won't mention him during the witan. Alfred then claims that he only has faith in God. Afterwards, he asks Beocca to bring the servant girl into his service, thus listening to Beocca's previous advice of keeping the temptation close to him so that he could show God how much he was good at resisting it. 5 & 6. Here's the part of chapter 74 of Asser's Life of King Alfred that I mentioned earlier. Also, I would point out that the illness mentioned in this part is connected to his youth (so technically before TLK even started), but piles affected him in season 1 for sure too because Iseult in 1x07 asked Alfred "You pass blood? From your arse?" and his silence confirmed that he did pass blood, so he did have piles. 7. (1x03, same scene as before) Beocca says that he's a martyr to meat, thus he directly refers to chapter 74 of Asser's Life of King Alfred in which it says that Alfred became afflicted by his illness because he wanted to resist his carnal desires, desires that are most likely queer desires. By saying that Alfred is "a martyr to meat", in this context I believe it could be read as a "you crave to be intimate with a man but you prayed God to have an illness that could stop you from doing that so you are a martyr to such an act, you could never do it". 8. (1x04) Alfred tells Uhtred (who became "flesh and blood" in the meantime) that he craves "meat and other things". This line clearly connects meat to sex, and again, meat is mainly used as a symbol for the male gender. 9. (1x02) Alfred points out how Uhtred is a man. A small reminder of how Beocca told Alfred to take the girl that tempted him into his service, that was also when Beocca spoke of Uhtred for the first time and Alfred first told Beocca then that Beocca only knew him as a child, something that he points out again in the scene here, specifically highlighting the fact that Uhtred is now a man. In the episode after, as said before, Alfred says how he is tired of "milk and apples" (thus women) and how he "needs" (verb used in 1×03) and "craves" (verb used in 1×04 in Uhtred's presence) "meat" (thus men) and what does Alfred do in that same episode (that is 1x03)? He takes Uhtred into his personal service, and immediately after Uhtred claimed that he "had no need of a wife" and Alfred stared at him for a while without saying anything. 10. (1x03, same scene as before) After Alfred has a whole crashout on how he needs "meat", Beocca asks him to pray for strength, to which Alfred says "Why does it have to be a sin?" and this line, I believe, can be seen under a completely different light with everything that I tried to point out here, and while homosexuality wasn't "legally" and truly condemned in the 9th century, there were penitentials that considered it as a sin and we know that in Seven Kings Must Die, Aethelstan views it as such and it is even pointed out to Uhtred how christians do not "endure" homosexuality.

After all of this, I chose to close the whole gifset with the line that follows Alfred's "I crave meat and other things": But I know the gratification would be fleeting, the suffering prolonged and so I suffer gruel, so the gratification of giving into his desires would have just been painful for him, and as a consequence he suffers gruel — something that can be boiled either in water or in milk, by the way. Lastly, it is quite interesting that immediately after that line, Alfred says "Though my wife will not allow it to be called anything other than broth" and the second Alfred says the word "gruel" for a second time in that same scene, Uhtred corrects him and says "broth, lord", and Alfred whole ass smiles.