#queens play

[theconceptsofastan]

I love how offended he is at the thought that the courtly men were not lusting after him too

[no-where-new-hero]

robin stewart you are such a gay disaster

[spending-life-pretending]

I’ve seen people talk about cringefail loser Robin Stewart trying to give his assassination target a blowjob but absolutely no one prepared me for the fact that letting Robin blow him was the sum total of Lymond’s plan on how to evade assassination. Do u mean to tell me he’s literally femme fatale-ing him?? He’s straight up just trying to seduce this guy into not killing him??? He’s being a manic pixie dream Irish guy on purpose?????

There’s an alternate version of this book entirely from Robin’s POV that’s just a romantic hitman drama

[softieghost]

Idk what you guys are talking about about, queens play is great. Lymond has survived the previous book and now gets to be a juggler and clown. This is great. I'm sure he's enjoying it. Nothing bad is ever going to happen again

[thecrenellations]

In the dark room in the Château Neuf, facing him silent at last, she was able to clear her mind of all but what she had long ago primed herself to do. His face, like hers, was obscured; his skin and sparkling clothes blemished by the fountain drops strewn on the panes.

* “And what would you keep me for? The graveyards and prisons of Europe are full enough of half-made souls created by Francis Crawford and loneliness and God.”

* “My life is my own,” she said, her voice thin in her own ears. “You asked me last time to leave you to deal with this man. What ails you? Deal with him!” — Queens’ Play by Dorothy Dunnett

Oonagh at the window, before she removes her mask. I lost my mind rereading this scene for the first time after finishing the series and could not decide on a quote to pair with the drawing. Augh.

[boatcats]

Beside him, Lymond had the desperate expression which more spectators than he knew in that audience recognized as the devastating impulse to laugh. With d'Aubigny's imperial grandeur he had simply not troubled to compete; either that, or he had shrieked down all efforts to compel him.

He had no need. Lymond wore black silk, the shirt edge at neck and cuffs snowy white, and a twelve-thousand ducat diamond on his shoulder, pinning a little girl's glove.

- Dorothy Dunnett, Queens' Play

[annalynnaeus]

Queens Play immediate reactions

I finished Queens Play last night.

A few disorganized thoughts before I get going on the Disorderly Knights...

Talking to my IRL friends about Lymond Chronicles has been challenging, because it’s hard to sell ‘250 pages of total confusion followed by 250 pages of *intense melodrama*.’ Even the funniest quotes and lines generally don’t land without the context. 

For example, from Game of Kings, “I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people.” -- terribly funny, probably the most quoted line from the entire series....but its hard to fully appreciate unless you’ve suffered through 350 pages of Lymond’s obnoxious quotations and literary references.

I prefer Game of Kings to Queens Play. They are equally confusing for the first half, and both have their payoff in the second half, but Game of Kings was somehow more satisfying.

I was a little nonplussed by Margaret Erskine, of all people, being such a major character out of nowhere. Of course Lymond is nonplussed by her for almost exactly the same reason.

Queens Play was definitely funnier. I was giggling through large parts of the second half the book. 

Margaret Lennox is not a...likable character, but she gets some *amazing* lines in Queens Play. 

Another few funny lines that don’t land without context, courtesy of Margaret Lennox and Lymond snarking at each other.

“’ Pray don’t allow the shock of it to confuse you,’ she said. ‘Popular resurrections are a tedious pastime of Francis’s. Had I known he would do this, I need not have played out our particular farce.’“

And then again, later, Lymond to Margaret: 

“’Well. On which aspect of our ill-advised doings are we about to lecture each other? I have very little to say. As I recall, I exhausted the matter on several other occasions.’”

‘I hate your guts, we spent all of Game of Kings trying to destroy each other, but this is Queens Play and we’re not actually at odds in this plot-line...awkward...’.

Or consider Little Queen Mary challenging Oonagh O’Dwyer to a knife fight. Adorable, hilarious, incredible writing...but how can you explain it to people without the entire backstory???

Still, Queens Play was a little more impersonal than Game of Kings. In Game of Kings you have Lymond’s entire family, honor, and country at stake. There’s some really intense scenes in Queens Play, but nothing that can quite compare to the *poetry* of the scene in book 1 where he’s playing mute while being tortured to avoid compromising Christian Stewart, or Richard nursing him back to health so he can stand trial and be executed for treason.