|
COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS
(1831)
By Sir Walter Scott Reviewed By Patrick Killough I. Reviewed for http://www.barnesandnoble.com TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Leaders of the First Crusade Confront the Wily Emperor of Constantinople REVIEWER'S RATING OF COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS: * * * * (FOUR STARS) Sir Walter Scott, creator of the historical novel, never reached farther back in time in a novel than in this tale of the years 1096 and 1097 when the knightly Crusaders appeared before Constantinople en route to conquest of the Holy Land. Byzantium's star was waning and that of the Turks was rising when Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade not many months earlier. In places, COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS reads like Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, as Sir Walter Scott draws on his photographic memory of readings in medieval chroniclers to bring to life the embattled court of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus and his historian daughter Anna. Scott gives Alexius high marks for good intentions and for playing brilliantly the weak hand left to him by his increasingly hapless predecessors as Eastern Roman Emperors. Alexius is being plotted against by some of his closest advisors and is fearful as well what the unruly crusaders might do to him, his capital city and his Empire. Count Robert of Paris, as attested by Anna Comnena, greatly offends the Emperor by sitting casually on his throne. He and his warrior wife Brenhilde are abducted by the Emperor's son-in-law, the Caesar Nicephorus Briennius, under the spell of the chief plotter against the throne, Agelastes, an aging Cynic philosopher. Twenty-two year old Hereward, Saxon hero of the Emperor's Varangian (English/Saxon) Guards, hates the Normans who had displaced his family in England but makes common cause with and rescues the imprisoned Count Robert. Hereward's sweetheart Bertha (betrothed at an altar of Odin in England) is now the serving maid of Countess Brenhilde. Together the four young foreigners foil the plot against the Emperor, but not without the help of a very intelligent, Saxon language- understanding orangutan from the imperial zoo! The Count and Countess, accompanied as dependents by Hereward and Bertha, ride off with the massive Crusader army toward glory in the Holy Land. Later, after the capture of Jerusalem, Hereward and Bertha are wed in Italy and Count Robert uses his influence with the King of France to gain for the happy Saxon couple a grant of lands in England near the New Forest, where their descendants are found to this day. With all the recent excitement about Dan Brown's novel THE DA VINCI CODE, researchers were not long dragging Sir Walter Scott into the foreground. For he had replicated the ceiling of Rosslyn Chapel in his library at Abbotsford. He had also written of Knights Templars and in COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS and ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN probed sometimes mysterious Royal bloodlines dear to Dan Brown. We see Godfrey of Bouillon on his way to becoming King of Jerusalem. And Count Robert is identified as an ancestor of Hugh Capet and his French dynasty. This is a good cross-cultural and historical yarn. It can also be read as reasonably accurate introductory history of a complex time when Western Europe was renewing acquaintance with East Rome and confronting on more equal terms Turks, Muslims and The Holy Land. The novel also includes cameo appearances by all the great figures of the First Crusade: Peter the Hermit, Bohemund, his gallant nephew Tancred, and others. It is a tale of intrigue, romance, duplicity, plotting and epoch- changing balances of power. COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS has all this and more. -OOO- Also recommended: Dan Brown, THE DA VINCI CODE. Sir Walter Scott, THE TALISMAN, IVANHOE, ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN. Iain G. Brown, ABBOTSFORD AND SIR WALTER SCOTT. Jerome MITCHELL, THE WALTER SCOTT OPERAS. Edward Gibbon, DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Black Mountain, North Carolina 12/10/2006 =-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= II. Reviewed for http://www.amazon.com TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Sir Walter Scott's tribute to a real Byzantine Princess, December 15, 2006 Reviewer: T. Patrick Killough (Black Mountain, NC United States) Rating of this novel: Four Stars * * * * There was an historical Count Robert of Paris. He is described by the Byzantine Princess and historian Anna Comnena. Count Robert offended her father Emperor Alexius by casually sitting on his throne during a showy ceremony in 1097 in Constantinople of fealty by Crusaders en route to the conquest of Jerusalem. This novel is the ailing Sir Walter Scott's final tribute to a spunky Imperial Greek lady whose writings he drew on heavily for the age of chivalry. The novel is a sprawling cross-cultural tribute to brave Anglo-Saxons, called Varangians, who make up the bodyguard of the Greek emperors; to French knights and nobles both Norman and pre-Norman caught up in the intricate etiquette of chivalry; and to Eastern Romans surrounded by and grudgingly succumbing to Muslim, Turkish and other enemies. It is also a novel of political mercy as the wily Alexius first outwits then forgives enemies in his own family and cabinet who plot against him. And it is a novel about women who push envelopes, especially Princess Anna Comnena, who idolized her father and wrote of his many deeds, both glorious and less glorious. There is her mother, the nattering Empress Irene. There is Brenhilda, the Amazonian warrior wife of Count Robert. There is her wise English Saxon serving maid Bertha, beloved of the Varangian guard hero Hereward. The backdrop of COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS is clearly the epic ALEXIAD, by Anna Comnena. From it and other contemporary sources we learn of the exotic animals in the Emperor's "museum," including an elephant, a crocodile, an orangutan, a giraffe and many others to dazzle the "barbarian" Western Crusaders. It seems likely that Scott's imagination made the seven foot tall orangutan named Sylvan able to understand if not speak Anglo-Saxon. If one reads Sir Walter Scott's poems and novels as imaginative introductions to real history, then COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS is a good starting point for a series of Scott novels bearing on the Crusades, of which the best known is IVANHOE. -OOO- TAGS: anna comnena, first crusade, trancred, godfrey of bouillon, da vinci code ==-=-=-==- III. Reviewed for http://www.epinions.com TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: East meets West in 1097 when strong men match wits in Constantinople. by aohcapablanca, Feb 25 '07 Why would anyone read ANY historical novel written by Sir Walter Scott? The most obvious (not, perhaps, the best) reason to read a Walter Scott historical novel is because Walter Scott created the historical novel, invented the genre. An historical novel places fictional people (often pretty ordinary men and women) amid real people of yesteryear (often great movers of their times) and shows how the two worlds might have interacted. I recommend that you read COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS as introduction to history. To the Crusades. To the re-capturing of the Holy Places. To the Byzantine Empire and its gutsy female historian, the Princess Anna Comnena. Scott's COUNT ROBERT is fine fiction as well, the "last hurrah" of a dying man. But this "terminal" novel, dictated by a rapidly failing Sir Walter Scott, is a perfect introduction (albeit deliberately compressed in time-frame and mixing of characters) to the West's successful First Crusade (1097 - 1099) which recaptured Jerusalem. The 11th Century was a pivotal point in history. In 1054 the Orthodox Patriarch of Byzantium (Constantinople) had broken with Rome and the Papacy, a breach not expected to last but which is still with us today. In 1071 fanatical Seljuk Turks both destroyed a Greek army at Manzikert and captured Jerusalem from their more tolerant fellow Muslims in Egypt. In 1073 the Greek Emperor appealed to the Pope for Western assistance against the victorious Turks. The Western secular powers were already flexing their muscles against Islam and the time eventually proved right for a Crusade by monarchs and nobles to recapture the Holy Land and reopen its shrines to devout pilgrims. Scott's novel is about the encounters of the Western kings and nobles of the First Crusade with the fading Greeks at Constantinople in 1097. Those meetings were witnessed by Anna Comnena, the 14 year old daughter of Emperor Alexius Comnenus. In old age exile in a convent she wrote THE ALEXIAD, a history of her sire's wars. She also recorded the episode around which the novel is built. A real but unnamed Western "Count" (Robert of Paris in the novel) insolently seated himself on the emperor's throne during a public ceremony when the Crusaders were vowing fealty to Alexius in return for imperial promises to grant them subordinate feudal rule of their future re-conquests along the way between Constantinople and Jerusalem. Anna even gives some curious biographical details about the unnamed Count that have allowed him to be identified. So much and more is recorded history. The plot of COUNT ROBERT is agonizingly complicated to review. Some few plot elements: The Emperor Alexius's son-in-law (Anna's husband) plots his overthrow with the help of an ambitious philosopher and the commander of the Varangian (Anglo-Saxon) imperial guards. One of those self-exiled British guards, young Hereward, discovers that his lost Anglo-Saxon love is now the lady's maid of the French warrior wife of Count Robert. After many perils these four young Western people foil the plot against Alexius and ride off together to conquer the Holy Land. Later Count Robert uses his influence with the King of France to restore Hereward and his bride to ancestral lands in England. Tensions are large and abundant in this novel. Most of the Crusader chiefs hate one another. Most are also tempted to overthrow Alexius and carve the Greek Empire up for themselves. The wily Alexius, however, manages to bribe and cajole them to be off for Jerusalem. Long-lineaged French knights resent the upstart Normans among them. In England the recently conquered Anglo-Saxons hate the ruling (after 1066) Normans. The Greeks fear and despise the Turks, Muslims and Egyptians. Yet the declining Byzantine Empire will somehow totter along for another 3 1/2 centuries. Scott's novel lays out much of the imperial court's obsession with show and pomp, its great learning and the piety of its Orthodox leaders. Fascinating are Walter Scott's descriptions of the imperial zoo of Constantinople with elephants, crocodiles, giraffes and even a very intelligent orangutan named Sylvanus which understands Anglo-Saxon and plays a notable role in making trouble for Count Robert and others. There is also attention to the details of clothing, food and furniture, to Western chivalry, to putting women on a pedestal and attention to the Western joy of armed combat with one's equals, often followed by rapturous male bonding and respect. COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS conceptually lays the foundation for Scott's other novels of the Crusades, including, notably, IVANHOE. A final note: printers such as Kessinger Publishing do readers of hard to find books a great favor by their large print paperbacks called "Rare Reprints." Kessinger's (Lightning Source Inc) 2004 COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS is a reprint of a 1905 Thomas Nelson edition. I first read COUNT ROBERT in an 1890 second-hand edition, with pages still needing to be cut open. I could be sure that no one had read THAT copy before me. Why is big print important? Like most Scott novels, each chapter of COUNT ROBERT is preceded by an epigraph or motto of two or three lines (often from Shakespeare, sometimes made up by Scott himself) which captures the gist of the chapter. In earlier editions, the smaller print of the epigraphs make them hard to read. Furthermore, Kessinger's "Rare Reprint" of COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS goes beyond the 1890 edition by including an informative "Advertisement" of 1833 by Scott's son-in-law and biographer John Gibson Lockhart. Here I learned that the rapidly declining Scott dictated the novel. The 2004 reprint also includes the novel's literary "frame" document, the "Introductory Address" by the fictitious editor Jedediah Cleishbotham, who had similarly framed a couple of other later Scott novels. There is, alas, annoyingly much smeared and blurred printing in the Kessinger reprint -OOO- Pros: A quick behind-the-scenes of the First Crusade. An orangutan who understands Anglo-Saxon. Cons: A fiendishly intricate Plot. Chivalrous love of combat too exalted for this world. The Bottom Line: COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS is the last novel written by the creator of the historical novel genre. This novel is a fine introduction to the First Crusade as history. Overall Product Rating: * * * * Above Average Recommended: Yes =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Black Mountain, North Carolina 12/24/2006, revisited 09/02/2007 |