#ivanhoe

Ivanhoe

She had made a better job of it than he could ever have hoped for. Even by lantern light, the sunset colors were rich and bright, the tree tall and strong and noble. The falling star was a bright slash of paint across the oaken sky

The captain's sister found her in the common room, drinking a cup of milk and honey with three raw eggs mixed in. "You did beautifully," she said, when the woman showed her the freshly painted shield. It was more a picture than a proper coat of arms, and the sight of it took her back through the long years, to the cool dark of her father's armory. She remembered how she'd run her fingertips across the cracked and fading paint, over the green leaves of the tree, and along the path of the falling star.

John the Oak : Wilfred of ivanhoe ,Giants, tree shields and Mystery knights.

Ivanhoe, the titular character, is in approximately 3 total scenes

There are like 10 chapters dedicated to a jousting tournament, at the end of which the author bemoans the fact that relatively few people were killed and only a handful were permanently disabled by the contest

Cut to a wildly existential section about knights fighting for glory only to be utterly forgotten by everyone in a few years

Is he a feminist?? Is he not?? It’s really hard to tell

Both of the love interests have names that start with R and the only way they are distinguishable is because they’re kidnapped and put in separate rooms

The knights who kidnapped said love interests both try seducing their respective chosen ladies. Rowena snaps the man’s ego in half and then begins to cry. Rebecca threatens to jump out the window. Neither of them is seduced

Cut to the hallway: both knights realize they know exactly 0 things about seducing women

The book then becomes a Robin Hood fanfiction

The army outside the castle sends a letter to the army inside the castle. They realize that none of them know how to read

There’s like 4 different people impersonating the clergy

The entire battle for the castle is told by Rebecca who narrates what’s happening to the wounded Ivanhoe by sticking her head out the window

Nobody wins the battle. A madwoman lights the castle on fire

The Saxons’ only candidate for king dies in said battle. They have a very sad funeral for him

The Saxons’ only candidate for king shows up at his funeral. He’s not dead. Whose body do they have??? Nobody knows

The last 80 pages is a speed run through English medieval politics, wherein Ivanhoe finally actually does something

Is he anti-Semitic?? Is he not?? It’s really hard to tell

Cut to a wildly existential section about the tragedy of colonialism and the self-inflicted destruction of Saxon culture by their gradual intermingling with the invading Normans

Hi, Anon! Your essay sounds very interesting. It's easier to point to patterns, ideas, and even set pieces in ASOIAF that echo or draw on 19th-century medievalisms than it is to point out "red flag moments." And to be clear, 19th-century medievalism can be fun! I love William Morris. But also, precisely because those medievalisms are so shaped by 19th-century European (!) ideas about religion, politics, and gender, I think it's good to be able to spot them for what they are.

For one thing, I would argue that the Orientalism and imperialism in the descriptions of the Dothraki and the cultures of the Free Cities are steeped in 19th-century medievalism. For that matter, the same goes for Varys: palace eunuchs, according to 19th-century European tropes, are untrustworthy because the Ottomans have them, unlike the English and French who are performing gender and empire correctly. Edward Saïd was right.

Also the profound anticlericalism and the assumption that literally no one actually cares about religion. The representatives of the Faith are venal and corrupt. Or maybe, at best, incompetent. Unless they're weird fanatics (see: whatever is going on with Rh'llor.) Jules Michelet I just want to talk!!!

As I have said before, at length: gender. The women of ASOIAF deserve better; they all deserve better; and they would have less shitty lives if GRRM read any of the scholarship on medieval women and their agency that has been coming out since the 1970s. As recent events in the US have decisively demonstrated, progress in terms of women's legal privileges is non-linear, but 19th-century Europe was still very invested in the idea of teleological progress towards modernity.

Finally, check this out:

On a platform beyond the southern entrance, formed by a natural elevation of the ground, were pitched five magnificent pavilions, adorned with pennons of russet and black, the chosen colours of the five knights challengers. The cords of the tents were of the same colour. Before each pavilion was suspended the shield of the knight by whom it was occupied, and beside it stood his squire, quaintly disguised as a salvage or silvan man, or in some other fantastic dress, according to the taste of his master, and the character he was pleased to assume during the game. The central pavilion, as the place of honour, had been assigned to Brian be Bois-Guilbert, whose renown in all games of chivalry, no less than his connexions with the knights who had undertaken this Passage of Arms, had occasioned him to be eagerly received into the company of the challengers, and even adopted as their chief and leader, though he had so recently joined them. On one side of his tent were pitched those of Reginald Front-de-Bœuf and Richard de Malvoisin, and on the other was the pavilion of Hugh de Grantmesnil, a noble baron in the vicinity, whose ancestor had been Lord High Steward of England in the time of the Conqueror, and his son William Rufus. Ralph de Vipont, a knight of St John of Jerusalem, who had some ancient possessions at a place called Heather, near Ashby-de-la-Zouche, occupied the fifth pavilion. From the entrance into the lists, a gently sloping passage, ten yards in breadth, led up to the platform on which the tents were pitched. It was strongly secured by a palisade on each side, as was the esplanade in front of the pavilions, and the whole was guarded by men-at-arms.

This is from Ivanhoe, and it is definitely the literary ancestor of the tournament in Game of Thrones. It even has a Queen of Love and Beauty!

Reading Walter Scott's Ivanhoe currently and just out of curiosity searched some opinions on plot and characters and I am massivley disappointed by:

1. Rowena slander??? I was expecting the general public's hatred towards the female character that was the "less spicy" one out of the two but still, the way people (including William Thackeray) talk about her you'd think she was Bella Swan from Twilight, but worse. Even though the author clearly did not want to focus on her much, she's still a great character to me, just based on the canonical facts alone. (She knows her mind, is not prejudiced against Jews like the very prejudiced, strict man who brought her up, and even if Scott says these traits were the products of Cedric pampering Rowena and never refusing her, it is clear that he does refuse her and that she has very little say in her own life, and despite that, she's her own person with her own opinions. She waits for the man she she loves with full loyalty and devotion, knowing that it's most likely going to cost her the only family she has known.)

2. The need to mention Rebecca's beauty in almost every sentence. You have a character that is brave, resourceful and compassionate, and that defies the stereotypes of Scott's time and manages to make the best out of dire situations. When you have someone that impressive why would you go back to mentioning her appearance and charm as if those are the things that ultimately make her worthy of attention. And the Ivanhoe x Rebecca thing is beyond unnecessary and I am (not) sorry folks but I do not get why so many people want them together. Can a man not respect a woman without being attracted to her. Although why am I surprised by this, the novel was written by a man after all. Besides, one of the most impressive things about Rebecca is her fearless faith in her God, and to make her give up something that's so integral to her character in order to feed into a male(Wilfred)-centered love triangle would feel extremely dissapointing. The amount of focus on that that we did get already feels very disappointing, it just feels wrong. Also, we got how beautiful Rebecca was when Prince John (rasict AND entitled) favored her beauty over Rowena's. The way he describes her after that gets more and more racist, in a way. And on that note

3. How Scott manages to be racist towards/prejudiced against every effing ethnicity, even the freaking Saxons. A lot of the time the tone of the novel feels like a nerdy man mansplaining English history, even though it's basically a crossover fanfic between legends and history. But the thing with mansplainers is that they are often tragically wrong because their need to explain overrides their judgement and perception, so we get distored views projected on characters with potential instead, who become vessels for the author's prejudice, or for strereotypes. And it's especially painful when characters had so much genuine potential, like they did in this novel.

4. How in the beginning I was so glad I had two very distinct, different but memorable female characters that I could kind of see myself in (doing better than like 90% of classic fiction), but I did not get that. I got Rowena vs Rebecca comparison in the big 2026 (or whatever year, it's still this century). Oh wow, "bland" vs "spicy" women compared constantly, how original.

5. THE NERDY SEGWAYS INTO HISTORY OR CONTEMPORARY STUFF. STOP. They're not annoying all the time but they mostly just take me out of the narrative and into the mind of a man with very fixed opinions/vision.

6. (I got spoiled on this one) That Wilfred's decision to marry Rowena seems like the matter of honor (him keeping his word/promise) more than a decision made out of chemistry/love. Idk guys I've only read a bit more than the half of the novel (3/5 I'd say) but according to internet, apparently, he liked Rebecca more. If that is true, I want all the "Rowena does not deserve Wilfred" people to shut up forever. They should kind of shut up even if that is not true. Please do not spoil me any more I want to read on my own. 👀

Anyways, I still really like this book and cannot wait to read more. I read that post by someone here who said that the book should be called "Gurth and Wamba's great big adventure" or something like that lol and I agree. Them, Robin Hood and his merry men are by far the best part in it. I kind of wish that the book was a Robin hood fanfiction starring them but then again I am a sucker for that time period in England in general, and I love the whole aesthetic of knights and chivalry and political complexity of it, i yearned for a good old-fashioned somewhat romantic adventure with knights and I'm not too dissapointed 🙃. But the real romance was the bromance between Gurth and Wamba all along.

Also I have guessed that the black knight was Richard the Lionheart lol he though he was sneaky.