Thoughts on Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay
The novel begins with Petras and Alexana and the Blues and Greens and all that. I didn’t care for the beginning. I have so far felt this way about StS and Tigana. The beginning which sets the table and everything for the story to come has been a slog. I almost gave up on Sts because I didn’t care about the characters. I know we’re not supposed to, but if I had known who the MC was in the beginning I would have done better. I was so worried that random guy who was a blue or whatnot in the beginning was the MC and if he was, I would have given up. I kept going. I trusted in the author. We went to that messenger guy. And he was despicable, but we knew that he wasn’t going to be a main character. We didn’t know what his role was but he was obnoxious, selfish, and overall a dung of a person. He delivers the letter, and then we meet our boy.
I was so happy when Crispin came onto the scene. He was different from the cookie cutter sort of fantasy protagonist. He’s older, wiser, and smarter. I appreciated the fact that we didn’t have a 20 something bright eyed and almost vainly outspoken moral boyscout. There is a time and place for that, and I love it when it’s done well, but that doesn’t have to be the only main character in a fantasy story. Crispin is older. A widower. His wife and two daughters are already dead. He’s in morning and in a half death himself. Drinking himself away and working on bathrooms and bits here for the nobles in Verana.
He was angry with a temper that they all feared, and it worked. It made sense given his life and how unfair it all was. His wife and two daughters died. That he didn’t die with them. That he had to go on living without them. This anger fed his character and went on to explain why he did such reckless things. Why he rescued Kasia and went out on the day of the dead. Why he spoke his thoughts before the emperor himself. He was a character worth admiring. An outsider. The perfect witness to history for the plots and intrigues that would unfold in Sarantium.
I have finished the Lord of Emperors. And Dear me. I thought my boy Caius Crispus Crispin was going to be done so dirty. I had a feeling that him and Shirin wouldn’t get together. Her adoration for Scortius? Or whatever the guys name was made it so they never seemed to fully connect. I think that is something that Kay does frequently. There is no ‘the one’ in his stories. In Tigana what’shisface and Katalina were the assumed couple. Because they had sex in the beginning but from there it never really went much and also because what’shisface slept with that lady in the castle. Elianor or similar.
I was so sad when Leontes told Crispin that the dome would have to come down. It was indeed a second death for his wife and two daughters. It was so sad. I also wanted him to finish the dome. With all it’s pagan symbolism and how it went along with Crispin’s rebelious streak to secretly imbue the most holy chamber of all the kingdom with hidden meanings known only to himself. A inside joke and secret between him and the audience.
The parts I was a bit at a loss for was that the relationship between Crispin and the Empress felt a bit missing. Like it skipped. It would have been a bit too perfect for it to be Shirin, but it did make sense. Martinian could have called her up and said hey, ‘my boy is rich now and finished his work so he can do human things like talk now. Come visit.’ And then let it go from there.
It was a surprise that I twas the empress, but it kind of makes sense. Shirin has her own life. She is a dancer, very young, and Crispin and the Empress have a bond through loss that only they both understand, and moreso, she can’t bear children. Which you can understand that Crispin is beyond that now. He seems too tired to want to start all over again. Which is why there was no attachment to Kasia. She was almost a daughter to him in some ways and there is a peak into that when they first meet.
The bigger themes the story bows tis the idea of history and how easily it can change. It was happenstance that Valarius II didn’t die immediately in that tunnel, but then again, he almost escaped. There were a lot of almosts that led each party there. That is something the story does a good job of working through. I think it began with Crispin saving Kasia, and then Lenon’s sacrifice and Carullus deciding to have Vargos murdered, and Kasia raped possibly to death, but then pulling back and then low and behold, they are married. She’s going to bear him a bunch of children and Carullus is now one of the more powerful men of the city it turns out. Because of a chance meeting with Crispin that brought them all together. It does a good job with that.
My favorite scenes in the book have to be the part where Crispin rescues Kasia from the Inn. It’s so well built up and proves that our boy is smart. Wicked smart. It’s subtle. That’s the part that I love. The enemies are acting in full acordance to their wishes and don’t hold back anything. Crispin doesn’t hold back either and comes out on top, and then we have Vargos to play the outside viewer. Someone in the world who can appreciate how brilliant Crispin is and then decides to follow him no matter what, which means we the audience love him too. The audience loves it when their character is appreciated. Like a parent who’s child has found an adoring spouse who thanks you for how wonderful your child is. It fills you up.
The second scene was the one between Crispin and Shirin. The part that saddened me towards the end to such a great deal is that I was hoping they would fall for each other. That Crispin would take her, have a few kids, and then the rest is history. But that is what Kay is trying to prove to us. History could turn out any number of ways and happen so easily. He must have known the audience would want this relationship to happen, and then Crispin is so devoted to his work he never spends too much time with her, and Scortius sneaks into her room and they have sleep together.
I don’t fully know why the Empress decided to show up at Crispin’s little chapel at the end. I think that is the part that confuses me. Shirin had reason to admire Crispin. HE was a friend of her father, linked to the half world, he’s survived a Zubir, and can hear ther bird, and brought Kasia and Carullus together, along with Scortius. All of this coming into play because of Caius Crispin. A normal person has reason to appreciate a man who can do something like that, but the Empress was that person herself, and married to a man more brilliant than anyonei int he book. His plots and devices ran so deep you never really knew when it stopped or began.
So why does she love him? I think there was an initial attraction. But she was in love with Varlius II very much, so nothing would have happened. They weren’t like Stilyana and Leontes, where they both are cheating on the other but keep it under the table because to do otherwise would be rude. It would have been another if she had been an adorante admirer of his work, which maybe that could play a part. She did want her dolphin’s, but she wanted them before she even saw any of his work. She acted on the assumption that he could do as well as he talked.
The third scene was the first chariot race. It is the mark of a good author when they can create something so real and alive before you, that you can’t help but be drawn in. I’m not a sports person. Even moreso I can’t ever have thought it would have been fun to see a charriot race. Kay does this very cleverly, where he positions first Crispin, and then second Rustem at both of the key races. They play the role of the reluctant audience, which is us. We are the skeptical audience. Kay gives us a character who is like us, an outsider to the world of the Hippodrome, who doens’t get what the big deal is, and who goes along simply because he has nothing better to do. This is the audience. Kay uses Crispin and Rustem to play the same role and let us be skeptical, but as KCrispina nd Rustem’s iopinion changes, we can’t help but be changed ourselves. We can’t help but fall in love with the story behind the sport. The personalities. The arrogance, the danger, the daring. The whole grandure of it to where we are there cheering and roaring along with the ground as we watch Scortius defy the odds and win. The audience is fully on board. We’ve been dragged to the racing and are fully on board.
You see there is always a dance with teh audience before any story and within stories any situation. The audinece doesn’t want to care. But they want to be pulled in. Think of that. Why do we use the word pull, to say a story is pulling them in. It’s as if they don’t want to go in. We don’t say I jumped into that story, we say I was pulled into the story. The characters drew me in. I couldn’t help but keep watching and reading.
It’s because the audience doesn’t want to care, but they want to want to care. It’s a bit tricky. But imagine signing yourself up to watch something horrible happen to someone. I’ll be more specific. A man buys a new house with his beautiful wife and all their children, only for a few days later for a serial killer to come in, murder his wife and all but one of their chhildre, who is maimed in the attack. Horrible right? Who’d sign up for that?
We’ll that’s the intro to Finding Nemo. It’s disguised and changed, but you see how it is. We want to be pulled in, but the story has to slowly bring us in.
Once we’re thoroughly dragged along and invested, from there the story can almost take us anywhere and we’ll go to see it through to the end. This is why midway through Lord of Emperors I was telling my wife how sad this story was making me. Despite all that, I had to see how it ended. I needed to see if there was a ahappy ending to Crispin’s story. All the other chartacters met their happy end. Carullus and Kasia are married with kids to be soon on the way. Vargos is set in the city to be an apprentice Mosasict with Parthos. SCortius has made history for himself and immortalized his legacy as a charrioteer. Rustem is rich and goes off to own a ranch in a far off land. Stylian Dilianor got what she wanted. REvenge and then death. Leontes is Emperor along with Gisel. A united kingdom along with a hopeful lineage. Shirin is the beloved dancer of the greens and even Stre9cook) has his own apprentices to follow and carry his teaching.
But despite all that, I had to see Crispin’s end. I had to see what would happen to our boy. He journeys home and it’s not until he says goodbye to the images and life he was able to create of his wife and daughters on the dome. Goodbye to Caruluss and Artebasos, Kasia, everyone. He knows their places is here in Sarantium. Even Shirin, they have a terse goodbye, where you can’t help but wonder if they will see each other again. Their first meeting was a whirlwind of wit and sexual tension played up for Shirin to escape a dull suitor. The tragedy of what could be or what could have been. The overarching sadness for this section of the story. Crispin’s life’s work is going to be destroyed. The man who had lost everything lost it again, seemingly. ANd that is what’s different. He left behind a series of lives that have been changed forever and for the better because of him. It’s cold comfort, and moreso for the audience then Crispin himself, because he has to leave the city and return home. There is no place for him here. He can’t live under the magnicicence of the great dome and the city where he had to bury the images of his family, and bury them for a second time.
I wanted him to have a good ending. He deserved it. He arrives home, meets with Martinian and we discover they are wealthy. Probably one of the wealthiest in the land. ALong with the promise made in the beginning of the first book of a noblewoman he can take for a wife. They find a number of chests of beautiful tesserae for them to use. Crispin begins work on a small chapel making his own mosaic. His own work that can finally at long last be finished and stand.
The two scenes in question were almost therapeutic for me. The theme of the book as a whole is that History reigns supreme. That history could change at a moment’s notice and that the happily ever after is subject to the same history. Otherwise, Crispin would be in Sarantium with Shirin, looking up at his completed Mosaic on the Dome and Valarius II would be rebuilding his kingdom. So much has happened in the two books that it seems a lifetime ago Kasia was a slave in an Inn, and Crispin was arguing for his life with Carullus. It seems so long ago, and yet everything changed, and too quickly for us. I didn’t have time to fully morn or understand what had happened with the eternal Empire of Valarius II fell and Alexana was hunted through the streets, and then it reversed. Leontes took the thrown, Gisel queened, the empire to be reunited. It all happened so fast and yet, there was nothing lasting for Crispin to have. Nothing that was his own. His life’s devotion and work gone. His friends, in a far off land. We feel so little and insignificant. The world has moved on. Everyone in the city has moved on. Their lives are moving forward with hope and love and joy, and yet, we and Crispin are stuck morning the dead and what could have been.
He finishes the two scenes in thr chapel. The first the court of Valarius the III. Leontes and GIsel and their golden court. Full of hope and light. The second scene is Valarius II. Petras of Tracanus and Alexana. We have something lasting. Something that will last for an era, much like the scene of Helidekos on that little roadside chapel on the way to Sarantium. Something that will endure. And it’s here that Alexana returns. Crispin thinks it’s Shirin, and we do as well. But it’s Alexana. The dead empress who’s come. I found it surprising, but I think it fits. It didn’t fit what I thought or how I imagined it to end. But I think Crispin has found a happy ending. Despite it all, and I am able to close the book on this one and look back at the journey and story knowing it was worth it. That’s what all good endings should do.
G. C.