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SABATINIS_CHIVALRY

                                   March 11, 2006

Polished off Rafael Sabatini's "Chivalry" in short order...
(1932, I think?).

Sabatini's usual schtick: he makes a pretense of writing
a historical novel based on an actual character (down to
the name of a fictitious biographer who is paraphrased).

Many of the scenes have a nice
(melo)dramatic construction, the
kind of thing that was shortly         The Errol Flynn/Olivia 
to become fodder for Errol Flynn       de Haviland movie      
movies...                              "Captain Blood" from   
                                       1935 was adapted from a
                                       1922 Sabatini novel.   
 SPOILERS  
                                       CAPTAIN_BLOOD         
                                                
The ending is ultimately a fizzle, a cheat...
let's all let ourselves be blackmailed into
submission by the Venetian bastards, and we'll
live happilly ever after.

                   (Really: at the close of the novel, the male
                   and female lead would likely find themselves in
                   perpetual confinement.)


Sabatini had written himself into a hole: the main
character is the kind of player that could transform
history, but he must be written into the vague outlines
of actual history.  He cannot, for example, raise an army
and conquer all of Italy (one of the few possible "happy
endings" that would logically follow from Sabatini's
setup...).

The subject at hand is nominally "Chivalry":
this is yet another tale of trying to behave
with honor in a world that has none, a world        LIGHT_EXPECTATIONS
that doesn't believe in it. People always
attribute baser motives to the main character
than his actual ones (and those are often
base enough). This is actually a good thing
because when they do grasp your motives
they immediately try to use them for leverage.

In this case there is much emphasis on the notion that
Chivalry is a code of the correct treatment of women,
and the novel is subdivided into sections given the names
of the various women driving the plot at that stage
(ala "The Lady de Funkheimer").
                                                            
The love interest that the main character eventually lands       
with, by the way, is a total drip.  When she caves in to         
blackmail at the novel's close it seems entirely plausible.     
                                                                 
It's a problem with this genre-- books about Grand               
Affairs, where the passionate, dedicated love for some
woman drives the plot-- the female characters all seem
really useless, when they're believeable at all (and  
it's rare that they are).  Okay, so she's pretty.
That's nice.


            Irrelevant note: I think I
            first heard the name
            "Rafael Sabatini" in                 FUNNY_PART
            "A Thousand Clowns":

                The kid in the story
                once took out a library
                card under the name of          Among authors of swashbucklers,
                "Rafael Sabatini".              Sabatini definitely has the
                                                most swashbuckling name.



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