The Dragon Waiting

This is a complicated book. I know some people love it, some people don't. I can see why it is loved because of the historical references and it has become a classic. It's alternate history with vampires (written in the 80's), and maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I was a little more knowledgeable about the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century. To be honest, I lost interest in the characters at about 60%. There were random scenes happening here and there that seemed to be out of place to me. It was hard to follow the passage of time on this book. The writing is very polished, and the author leaves a lot of action and descriptions to the reader's imagination. Some actions are hinted at, so it's a book that you gotta work it in your brain to get it, I guess.

Neil Gaiman is ook één van die mensen waarvan ik blindelings aanraders van volg. Dus zonder er meer dan “aangeraden door Gaiman” van te weten, begon ik aan The Dragon Waiting.
Op de (virtuele) achterflap stond

“Had [John M. Ford] taken The Dragon Waiting and written a sequence of five books based in that world, with that power, he would've been George R.R. Martin.” —Neil Gaiman

...en haja, meer dan dat heeft een mens niet nodig.
In het boek zijn er een aantal dingen anders dan bij ons (magie bestaat, vampirisme is een ziekte die wel degelijk onsterfelijk maakt), maar het is vooral het althist-aspect dat mij aansprak. Ik blijf daar een fan, en misschien wel het meest wijze is proberen achterhalen waar het divergentiepunt is ten opzicht van de onze geschiedenis.
Het boek begint met het verhaal Hywel Peredur in Wales, in “the nine hundred tenth year of Arthur's Triumph, the one thousand ninety-fifth year of Constantine's City”. Een beetje rekenen leert dat 1095 jaar na de stichting van Constantinopel in 330 uitkomt in 1425, da's het laatste jaar van Manuel II Palaiologos en eigenlijk ook wel de allerlaatste fase van de doodsstrijd van Byzantium.
Niets daarvan hier: het wordt nooit helemaal expliciet duidelijk tot waar in het oosten Byzantium gaat, maar quasi heel Europa tot ergens in het midden van Frankrijk) valt onder Byzantium, en tijdens het verhaal breidt het zijn macht uit in de Italiaanse stadstaten.
Het tweede verhaal gaat over Dimitrios Ducas, van de Doukai, waar de keizer kwaad op is, wiens vader op een zijspoor gezet is ergens in Frankrijk. In het derde verhaal wordt Cynthia Ricci geïntroduceerd, een arts in het noorden van Italië.
Het vierde hoofdpersonage is Gregory von Bayern, een Duitse Fachritter, een soort genie-troepachtige ingenieur-ridder. Die ook een vampier is. En die geïntroduceerd wordt in een soort murder mystery waar de drie andere hoofdpersonages ook in zitten.
En dan wordt het, in de tweede helft van het boek, een totaal ander verhaal. Een mens zou kunnen verwachten dat het over het wedervaren van pakweg Dimitrios zou gaan, hoe die zich weer een positie van macht verwerft, met de hulp van Hywel. Of over Cynthia Ricci en hoe ze de invloed van Byzantium fnuikt. Of over de achtergrond en de toekomst van von Bayern.
Nope, niets van dat alles: de tweede helft van het boek is eeen alternatieve geschiedenis van het verhaal van Richard III en de War of the Roses. Zeer gedetailleerd, zeer politiek, en het is zeer handig als ge een beetje (veel) van de échte geschiedenis weet.
Ik vond het zeer zeer goed.
En dat divergentiepunt?

“And do you understand how the Empire rules, when it is not of the population ruled?”
Dimi knew the words from his lessons. Now, for the first time, they began to mean something, and he did not think he liked the meaning. “We rule because we force nothing but the law. None need worship our gods, speak our languages, adopt our ways, even walk our roads, given only that they obey the law.”
Cosmas nodded. “And what is the first among Imperial laws?”
“The Doctrine of Julian the Wise: All faiths are equal: no faith shall forbid another, nor shall the Empire champion any faith.”

Julianus de Afvallige overleeft langer dan een paar jaar.
Ha.

It's been a while since I last acquired and read this book, but I decided to reread it again, and this time, to think a bit more critically on it, rather than just diving right into it and enjoying the ride.

As I've said before, anyone who knows me well knows that I love history, especially High Medieval-Italian Renaissance history. There is something magical about that particular period of European history, and I find myself drawn to books that tackle that period again and again and again. Fortunately, there's very little lack of fiction from that time period (thank the gods for the increasing popularity and interest in the Borgias), but what makes The Dragon Waiting so different is that it is set in an alternate version of that period in history. How alternate is alternate? First and foremost: the Byzantine Empire is powerful - very powerful. Finer details in the book will explain how this happened, but essentially instead of degenerating and weakening until it finally disappeared when Constantinople was sacked by the Arabs, Byzantium was instead strengthened by a succession of canny rulers - and a very interesting ruling policy. I shall quote that policy directly, as it was spelled out in a conversation between two characters:

“And do you understand how the Empire rules, when it is not by the population ruled?”... “We rule because we force nothing but the law. None need worship our gods, speak our languages, adopt our ways, even walk our roads, given only that they obey the law.”... “And what is the first among Imperial laws?”“The Doctrine of Julian the Wise: All faiths are equal; no faith shall forbid another, nor shall the Empire champion any faith.”

Therein lies another clue: the Byzantine Empire is not Christian. For some reason or another, the vision that Constantine the Great is supposed to have had before the battle that would make him Roman Emperor does not occur, but he wins that battle regardless. History proceeds more or less as usual - except Rome, and its successor Byzantium, remains pagan. This has allowed the proliferation, and in many cases retention, of the multitudinous pagan faiths that were dominant all across the territory occupied by the Roman Empire.

This is, in a word, exciting, and one of the reasons why I fell completely in love with this book. Though set primarily in the waning years of the 15th century (my favorite time period), with all the familiar faces and places that accompany that stretch of time - Lorenzo de'Medici, the Sforzas, Richard, Duke of Gloucester - the fact that Christianity is not the dominant religion of Europe makes for a fascinating read, particularly when characters mention moments in history (theirs, not ours as we know it) that would make a reader familiar with the event and/or people mentioned either giggle or raise their eyebrows. A particular favorite of mine is the possibility that Richard the Lionheart and Saladin could have been the very greatest of friends and comrades if that pesky issue about the Crusades had not come about. In The Dragon Waiting, the Crusades never happened because of widespread practice of religious tolerance, and Richard and Saladin are indeed the greatest of friends, fighting side by side, and, it is implied, dying side by side as well.

But portrayals of historical characters who appear in the story itself seem quite true to the way they would have been in actual history, and this is something I deeply appreciate. While the Italian characters fit in quite snugly, alternate history or no alternate history, it's quite surprising how well some of the other characters manage to do so. A particular favorite is Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who would eventually become Richard III. The Richard presented in the book is the farthest thing imaginable from the scheming hunchback of Shakespeare's play: this is Richard as the historians believe he was like, before the Tudor propaganda changed all of that. And since mention of Richard cannot be made without speaking of the Princes in the Tower, well... I shall say only that the way that particular historical mystery was resolved in this novel is quite interesting, and also quite appropriate, given the setting and world-building.

And now that I speak of world-building, it must be said that though The Dragon Waiting is predominantly an alternate history, there is also magic. Perhaps the alternate history was necessary to allow magic to flourish, since it handily eliminates both the Crusades and the Inquisition, and pantheons are necessary for magic to exist, but if that was the case, then I do not mind it in the least. But what I appreciate the most is that the rules of magic in the novel are quite strict, and when it is used, it's usually a decisive force, with a certain finality about it that only emphasizes how important it is.

And where magic goes, supernatural creatures follow - primarily the vampire, in the case of The Dragon Waiting. One of the key historical figures presented in the novel is described as a vampire, and one of the fictional characters is a vampire with a great deal of knowledge regarding engineering and the building of firearms and cannon. Said character also happens to be one of the most interesting and sympathetic characters in the entire novel - a sure sign that the portrayal of vampirism in this novel is more than acceptable, and not a sign of sparkling skin in sight.

While this book is enjoyable on a great many levels for me, and will likely be enjoyable to others for the same reasons I liked it, it does come with a few problems. First and most glaring is the narrative style. There are a small handful of point-of-view characters (nowhere near as numerous as George R. R. Martin's in the A Song of Ice and Fire series), and the third-person limited narrative voice in which the novel is written jumps from one character to another. Unfortunately, Ford doesn't handle the transitions as well as Martin does, and the jumps between characters are rather uneven and jarring, with the shift in events from one character to the other connected only tenuously.

Another major problem is that some things aren't explained as clearly as they ought to be. While leaving out certain bits of information is a good way of creating tension and to foreshadow certain events, but Ford doesn't balance it very well, with a tendency to leave out a little too much information. This could be a failure on my part, of course, but it can be rather frustrating playing a guessing game, only to get to the end without any true understanding of how it got there.

Finally, there is the simple fact that this is an alternate history. While I have an okay grasp of the history which was turned topsy-turvy in this novel, other readers might not. Fortunately, this isn't anything Wikipedia cannot solve, and Ford's endnotes explain which parts of history were changed, and which weren't.

Overall, however, The Dragon Waiting is an excellent novel, with the perfect blend of (alternate) history and fantasy, offering a window into a world that I, at least, wish could have been real - blood and magic and sacrifice and all.