dorothy dunnett writing a character finally realizing that what he's feeling is, in fact, love with the line 'He felt like a dog [...] whose master had died.' is the most insane shit i've ever read with my own two eyes. lymond chronicles books are on another level.
in the game of kings when everyone is like wow lymond the fearsome outlaw lymond the traitor lymond the mastermind… and then christian stewart examines him and her fingers find “the shape of an unconscious boy with a dirty wound.”
pawn in frankincense chess game is the craziest scene of all time for many reasons but it being a jerott pov truly elevates it because for the past two books this man has tried and mostly failed to understand who francis is, and here he's the witness and narrator of the worst moment of francis's life and it's just. so good. but also what is wrong with dorothy dunnett
LYMOND SPARK NOTES: a low-effort project by @yekoc
There is a lot going on in Dorothy Dunnett’s series the Lymond Chronicles, including literary references, un-translated quotations in multiple languages, and real-life historical personages. This project is not intended to delve into, really, any of that. Instead my hope is to map out the basic emotional and narrative core of Lymond, the stuff that’s underneath all the rest of Dorothy’s (and Lymond’s) trimmings. Imo the point of the books is that Lymond is traumatized, bisexual, and he REALLY wants to kill himself. So let’s talk about all of that.
Book 1: The Game of Kings
A useful way to think of The Game of Kings is as a mystery novel. The central mystery here (which continues in various forms throughout the series), is who is Lymond? This is a mystery to the reader, but it’s also a mystery to all of the other characters in the book. Each character has their own view of Lymond, and often these views don’t line up at all. This makes the book confusing: sometimes it’s even hard to keep track of whether the person being discussed is Lymond, especially when he’s in disguise or being referred to by one of his many different names or titles. And this isn’t just a literary device – the question of who Lymond actually is, and where his loyalties really lie, is the question that frames the book’s plot and that is finally answered (in part) at the end of the novel.
Opening Gambit: Threat to a Castle
Lymond -- our hero! -- secretly returns to Scotland from forced exile, gets a pig drunk, flirts with and threatens his sister-in-law, sets fire to his mother's castle, stabs a pregnant woman, and infuriates his brother. War with England begins.
From the book's first lines we get different takes on Lymond, all from outside points of view. “Busy men preparing for war against England” say his name “with contempt, with disgust,” and – interestingly – “with a side-slipping look at one of their number.” In contrast, “a woman’s voice” says his name “with a different note” and a laugh. Finally, Lymond’s own men wait for him with “concern” — they care about him. This pattern of different people seeing and describing Lymond radically, and confusingly, differently, will continue throughout the series. Yay!
Okay, but what actually happens in this chapter?
A lot. Lymond gets a smuggler’s pig drunk, for example. But here are some key things we learn:
Mungo Tennant’s house (Edinburgh):
Lymond is an outlaw (why?), is not supposed to be in Scotland, and will be killed if he’s caught.
Sir Wat Scott of Buccleuch and Tom Erskine, two important landowning Scots who are loyal to the baby Queen Mary, discuss who else can be trusted to protect the country against a potential English invasion. Two options are:
Sir Andrew (Dandy) Hunter. They reject him as too poor (“his estate’s been bled dry”) and with an ill-equipped army.
The third Baron Cutler. This is Lymond’s older brother, Richard. The conversation about Richard is critical to the plot of this book: Buccleuch says some people think Richard Cutler cannot be trusted because Lymond himself has committed treason, and that if he doesn’t hunt down his own brother then he’ll be as good as a traitor too. Buccleuch disagrees with this and trusts Culter, but he and Erskine both acknowledge that if Richard Cutler doesn’t eventually bring Lymond to justice, the Scottish court won’t trust him to help against the English.
Lymond, listening outside the door, overhears this conversation about his brother the Baron Culter.
Lymond then sneezes and is caught listening. He insults Richard’s new wife and departs. We discover, as the scene draws to a close, that he has stolen all of Mungo’s smuggled French wine – and then dumped it into Edinburgh’s gutters.
Sybilla’s house (Midculter):
Sybilla, Lymond’s mother, had three children: Richard (now the Third Baron Culter), Lymond (titled the Master of Culter, because he’s the younger son), and Eloise, who died at school in her teens.
Wat Scott’s wife Janet complains to Sybilla that Wat’s son and heir, Will Scott, has come back from university with high-minded moral ideals and is fighting with Wat as a result.
Janet attempts to talk to Sybilla about Lymond and the rumors that he’s come back to Scotland. Sybilla won’t focus on the conversation and keeps trying to change the subject. Earlier, we learned that “what she thought of Lymond’s activities she did not say.” This is interesting, since she’s not reluctant to give her opinion about anything else.
Janet does manage to mention that if the English took over Scotland, Lymond might be restored to the line of succession for Midculter (he was removed from it when he was outlawed) and become his brother’s heir again – if his brother’s new wife doesn’t have a son first.
Lymond sneaks into the castle during this conversation and takes Mariotta, Richard’s wife, briefly hostage. He also flirts shamelessly with her.
Mariotta is confused by Lymond: she is expecting something terrifying, not an “insolent, self-indulgent,” slightly drunk rich boy. Lymond teases her again, saying that didn’t she know he looks different than Richard? He has the “family coloring,” whereas Richard, who has brown hair, does not.
Lymond says that he and his men have forced their way into the castle because he needs money to support his vice, and to amuse himself. When Mariotta reminds him that his own mother is in the group of women he’s proposing to terrorize, Lymond receives the news “with tranquil pleasure.”
Boghall:
Wat Scott muses on the confusing politics of the English and Scottish border wars. Here I, your note-taker, skim and skim and conclude that some Scots support the English and some would rather turn to the French for protection, and it all has a lot to do with Protestantism vs. Catholicism, but in the end Wat Scott dislikes the English far more.
We meet Richard Culter for the first time: “A sober, thickset figure with brown hair and reliable grey eyes.”
Wat Scott tells Richard that Lymond is back in Scotland and says that Richard might as well be in league with Lymond if he’s not going to actively oppose him.
Wat Scott also tells us why Lymond is an outlaw: “Five years ago your brother Lymond was found to have been selling his own country for years: he’s been kicked from land to land committing every crime on the calendar and now he’s back here, God forgive him, with filthier habits and a nastier mind than he set out with.”
Wat concludes his argument: the Scots think the English are going to invade and they need to field an army. If they can’t trust Richard and his men to be part of that army against the English – and they can’t, if there’s any belief that he’s sympathetic to Lymond, who is a traitor to Scotland and sold the country out – then the Scots army will lose.
As they have this conversation, smoke rises in the distance. Lymond has set fire to the castle at Midculter, which contains Richard’s mother and Richard’s wife.
Midculter:
Sybilla sees her son Lymond for the first time since he was outlawed and exiled. He is armed and holding her daughter-in-law hostage. “After the first moment, every trace of expression left the Dowager’s face; her white hair shone like salt.”
As Lymond’s men rob all the women, Mariotta notices that Lymond will not look at his mother at first. Finally, he does, and Sybilla accuses him of “play-acting.” Lymond says the robbery is real, and that he has changed from the son she used to know.
“From the stews and alleyways of Europe with a taste for play acting—yes—and killing and treason and crimes, they say, nameless and enticingly erotic. Haven’t I been worth five years’ excellent gossip to you?”
Lymond then throws his knife and hits Janet of Buccleuch–proving his point that this is not play-acting, despite his flowery and dramatic speeches throughout–and exits, setting fire to the castle on his way out.
Richard reaches Midculter and finds out what happened. He swears that he won’t be “made a fool” of by Lymond again, implying that he trusted him before but now sees him as the outlaw and criminal he really is and will help hunt him down.
He can’t go after Lymond, though, until after he fights the war with England that’s just begun.
Europe
King Henry of France watches as the English go to war to try to take control of Scotland by forcibly marrying Queen Mary to the young King Edward.
Henry would like to “serve and protect” Scotland, but has to make sure he doesn’t threaten the English so much that they ally with the Holy Roman Empire against him. So… he watches and waits.
Reading Questions:
Of all the views of Lymond we are given in this chapter, whose do you trust most and why?
Why did Lymond pour out all of Mungo Tennant's wine? (I genuinely don't know but it's Dorothy so there must be a reason...)
