#references in fablehaven

[certain-death-awaits]

Bracken always being in jail is probably a reference to “The Unicorn in Captivity”, a 15th-century tapestry which is the most famous unicorn artwork of all time

[ID: tapestry of a unicorn sitting in a field of flowers, in a small pen, collar around its neck affixed to a pomegranate tree.]

"The Unicorn in Captivity" may have been created as a single image rather than part of a series. In this instance, the unicorn probably represents the beloved tamed. He is tethered to a tree and constrained by a fence, but the chain is not secure and the fence is low enough to leap over: The unicorn could escape if he wished. Clearly, however, his confinement is a happy one, to which the ripe, seed-laden pomegranates in the tree—a medieval symbol of fertility and marriage—testify. The red stains on his flank do not appear to be blood, as there are no visible wounds like those in the hunting series; rather, they represent juice dripping from bursting pomegranates above. Many of the other plants represented here, such as wild orchid, bistort, and thistle, echo this theme of marriage and procreation: they were acclaimed in the Middle Ages as fertility aids for both men and women. Even the little frog, nestled among the violets at the lower right, was cited by medieval writers for its noisy mating.

[certain-death-awaits]

I love seeing the references/ easter eggs in Fablehaven. there’s

-The sack of gales, which is the bag odysseus got from aeolus in The Odyssey

-The Octopus’s Garden, which is a Beatles song, is referenced because Remulon (octopus demon) has an underwater garden

- The man who tells Seth about the Lady Luck might be Nereus, the old man of the sea, though in an interview, Brandon Mull says he “… comes from a ghost story I heard on Hatteras Island off the coast of North Carolina. The story tells of a gray man who sometimes appeared on the beach to warn people before storms, so I included a similar apparition when I had my characters embark on a journey from the Outer Banks.”

- The astrids might be a reference to the myth of Icarus?

- The steppe pyramids at Living Mirage are mentioned to have gardens. In reality, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. They’re supposed to be on a steppe pyramid. However, the Hanging Gardens are the only one of the Seven Wonders for which the location has not been definitively established. They would be in modern day Syria, Iraq, or Turkey. In the Fablehaven universe, they might have disappeared when Living Mirage was established.

- The Beckoning Grove features a lot of literal “forbidden fruit”, much like the fruit in the Garden of Eden. Interestingly, Living Mirage, being in Eastern Turkey, is very close to where scholars say the “real” Garden of Eden would have been.

- The giant rats in the catacombs of Terrabelle might’ve a reference to the ROUSes in The Princess Bride. ROUS stands for “rodent of unusual size”.

- Part of Stratos was lost to the sea. A lost civilisation that sank beneath the waves? Sounds a lot like Atlantis.

-The giants used to live in the sky. In Jack and the Beanstalk, giants also lived in the sky. The giants call Ronodin “the giant killer”, a moniker that Jack also used. In Jack the Giant Killer, Jack kills a two-headed giant and a three-headed giant. Fun fact: in CotTG, Ptolemy (the three-headed giant) is referred to as an “ettin”, which usually have two heads. “Ettin” is an Old English word related to Old Norse  jötunn, meaning giant.

- In Arabic, sorcerers are referred to as “the blowers in knots”. When they make incantations, they blow on knots. Untying the knots would break the spell. This is much like the first book, with the witch Muriel.

- The Font of Immortality is an awful lot like the Holy Grail

-Silvian, language of the fairies, sounds like “sylph-ian”- something sylphlike. Sylphs are vain spirits of the air that the Swiss German physician and alchemist Paracelsus posited were real and named.

- In Celtic folklore, “the Fair Folk” is a term used to discreetly refer to faeries. Calling them something unkind might bring their otherworldly wrath down upon you. Simply using “fairy” is considered an insult. They also have no division into good or evil, light or dark, like most European elves do. Take, for example, the Seelie Court and the Unseelie Court; both are dangerous, but the former is more benevolent and the latter is more malevolent.

-Frosted Peaks is possibly shangri-la

- The references Brandon Mull makes to Dante’s Divine comedy, naming characters Dante and Virgil, and naming a sword Omagion, are likely because his college comedy troupe was called Divine Comedy

[certain-death-awaits]

The Sphinx’s especially dark skin may be related to the fact that “Ethiopian” was an ancient way to refer to dark-skinned people. In Greek, αἴθω means "to incinerate", and "to burn, to shine". From this is derived is Aithiopes (Ethiopians), meaning "people with a burnt (black) visage".

However, this doesn’t mean that he’s not actually from Ethiopia. According to Greek tradition, Hera or Ares sent the Sphinx (the beast of legend) from her Aethiopian homeland (the Greeks always remembered the foreign origin of the Sphinx) to Thebes in Greece, where she tells riddles.

Funnily enough, of the riddles she tells, two of them she told to the legendary king, Oedipus (which vary region-to-region) are the same she tells to our protagonists. They are as follows;

"Consider two sisters; the first is born of the second, whereupon the second is born of the first. " "The sisters born of each other are day and night,"

"What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?" "Man, who crawls as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and uses a walking stick in his twilight years."