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This is a formal apology for not having anything special to post.

But here, check out some of Sabatini’s early short stories. It’s fun to guess beforehand a) whether or not it will be terrible, b) whether or not he recycled the story into a novel later, and c) whether the hero will have a lean sardonic countenance.

So, Captain Blood Day. Yay!

Actually, though, I completely forgot about it until last week, so instead of thinking seriously about which Sabatini book I might want to talk about next, I just grabbed The Romantic Prince off my bookshelf. I read it once before — whenever Batman Begins came out, if the ticket stub I was using as a bookmark is any indication — and I recalled being pretty pleased with it.

If you’ve spent any significant amount of time reading Redeeming Qualities, you’ll know that I’m kind of fascinated by the way novelists solve problems. In particular, there’s a thing you get a lot in romance and adventure novels, where the hero is situated in such a way that it would be dishonorable for him to take any action whatsoever to resolve whatever issue he’s having. And often, as it is here, the issue is mostly just that the hero can’t be with the heroine. And sure, I love the resultant pining, but I also love watching the author’s resultant struggle to steer the characters to a happy ending without in any way impugning their honor. That’s Rafael Sabatini’s principal task in The Romantic Prince, so obviously it’s a lot of fun to me. It doesn’t hurt that the actual barriers keeping Count Anthony of Guelders and Johanna Claessens apart are strong enough that Sabatini doesn’t have to resort to the completely avoidable misunderstandings he seems to like so much.

Anthony is the fictional eldest son of the real Duke of Guelders. He’s also the cousin and best friend of Charles, Duke of Burgundy. But mostly he’s a classic Sabatini character: he begins the book by deciding that the world he lives in is no place for a gentleman. He leaves Charles’ court to travel around incognito and try to be more like Jacques de Lalaing and ends up falling in with a hapless Zeelander named Philip Danvelt. Danvelt introduces Anthony to Johanna Claessens and her father, a rich burgher, and it quickly becomes clear that Anthony and Johanna are exactly the right amount of ridiculous for each other. Anthony knows that it’s not really appropriate for him to make the daughter of a merchant his countess, but it takes the Governor of Zealand having him escorted back to Charles’ court by force to stop him from marrying her anyway.

Eventually Johanna marries Danvelt, making everything super uncomfortable for everyone. This is where Sabatini stops adding obstacles and starts solving them, predictably but also interestingly. Sire Claude de Rhynsault’s pursuit of Johanna and prosecution of Danvelt may look like problems, but they’re actually the machinery that’s eventually going to free Johanna from Danvelt and Anthony from Charles.

So yeah, I like The Romantic Prince. I enjoyed the intricacies of the plot, the heroine who for once doesn’t believe literally everyone else in the world over the hero, and, perhaps most surprisingly, the cast of characters. Sabatini’s prone to making almost everyone but the hero and heroine totally morally bankrupt, to the point where characters who start out by seeming like okay people are, by the end, cringing and groveling and turning on anyone who’s ever been nice to them. The only Sabatini novel I can think of with even half a dozen really likable characters is Captain Blood, which is maybe one of the reasons why it’s my favorite. The Romantic Prince doesn’t have anything like Captain Blood’s merry band of pirates, but Sabatini does reverse his usual MO by making Danvelt initially seem like a completely worthless human being and then giving him bits and pieces of his humanity back. It would probably be more accurate to say that he goes back and forth, but Danvelt is a better person in his last appearance than in his first, and I’m counting that as a win.

Another character worthy of note is Kuoni von Stocken, Rhynsault’s fool. You may recognize the name from “The Fool’s Love Story” — the hero of that story and the not-quite-villain of this one both seem to have taken their name from a Swiss (?) legend that I’d be able to relate if I knew German, or if Google Translate was better. This Kuoni, like Sabatini’s earlier character of that name, is a jester, but he’s got beady eyes and evil features instead of the other’s lean sardonic countenance, and spends most of the book treating other people as his puppets. And yet he too gains some humanity, and is kind of hilariously perplexed by any actions that aren’t guided by self-interest in ways he’s familiar with.

The Romantic Prince is not available in full online, but this edition at Google Books makes some chunks available as a preview. Also, if you don’t mind partially spoiling yourself, you can read a version of the story upon which Sabatini based The Romantic Prince here. He also did a short story version more closely based on the original for his Historical Nights’ Entertainment. The Historical Nights’ Entertainment version sticks closely to the historical account, but somehow I like the shorter, simpler version best. Still, I can see why Sabatini can’t go for the original, more satisfactory ending: once Sabatini creates Anthony to be the hero of the story, Charles has the potential to become a deus ex machina, and while most of the changes Sabatini makes are at Charles’ expense, I see why it has to be that way — or why Sabatini feels that it does, at least.

Anyway, happy Captain Blood Day. As ever, if you’re going to spend September 19th talking like a pirate, make that pirate Peter Blood.

You know how sometimes your daily life saps your will to do anything you’re not actually required to do? So, yeah. That. But I wanted to drop by to talk about “The Fool’s Love Story”, which I read on the tail end of the Sabatini kick that started with my reread of Bardelys the Magnificent.

It looks like The Fool’s Love Story might have been Sabatini’s first published story — it’s the first listed on the uncollected stories list on rafaelsabatini.com, and…it reads young. It’s about a Hofknarr, or court jester, in a small German kingdom in the mid-17th century. He’s in love with a young woman who’s engaged to an unworthy Frenchman, and it doesn’t end too well for anybody, really, unless you count the fact that I was completely delighted by it. Which was why I wanted to say something about it, but probably not in the way you think.

This is the thing: this story is pretty terrible. The plot is ridiculous, the writing is more than ridiculous, and you’re sort of plopped down in the middle of a fully formed emotional situation that never really changes. Also, dying heroically and tragically tends to go over a little better if there’s a point to it. But it’s Sabatini, who pretty much always gets me where I live, and I was totally sold by the time I hit “lean, sardonic countenance,” halfway through the first sentence.

Basically, I suspect this is one for the Sabatini devotees — and I’d be interested to know if I’m right.

Happy Captain Blood Day, everyone! You can observe this holiday by reading adventure novels, trading witty barbs with people trying to unjustly sentence you to death, or, okay, talking like a pirate. But only if the pirate is Peter Blood.

I felt bad posting a negative review of a Sabatini book on Captain Blood Day last year, so this year I made sure to choose a book I know I like. And actually Bardelys the Magnificent is super appropriate as a follow up to The Suitors of Yvonne. It’s not just that it’s full of French courtiers for whom dueling is always a viable problem-solving tool — Bardelys the Magnificent came out four years after The Suitors of Yvonne and it frequently reads like Sabatini’s (successful) attempt to reshape that book into something, you know, good.

The bottom line is that sometime between 1902 and 1906, Rafael Sabatini acquired a knack for writing likable main characters, and I have yet to come across a later instance where it failed him. So there’s Gaston de Luynes, who is massively hateful, and then in between there’s the guy from The Tavern Knight, who’s just kind of irritating, and then there’s Bardelys, who’s got really poor judgment and terrible timing, but who I like quite a lot.

Bardelys is a marquis or something, fabulously wealthy and a favorite of the king, who is one of the Louis — XIII, I think. He throws a lot of parties and he has a lot of friends. Chatellerault, a rival for the king’s favor, isn’t really one of them, but when he returns to Paris after an unsuccessful attempt to woo Roxalanne de Lavedan — at the behest of the King — he shows up at Bardelys’ house. No one really likes Chatellerault, so Bardelys is worried about fights breaking out, but eventually things start to calm down. Which is when Bardelys starts making fun of Chatellerault for not being able to succeed with Roxalanne. Poor judgment, bad timing.

Bardelys, Chatellerault and all their friends and acquaintances are both bored and extravagant, so the argument results in a wager: Bardelys has three months to court Roxalanne. If he wins, Chatellerault’s estates are his. If he loses, his estates are Chatellerault’s. Super poor judgment. But the wager has been made, so Bardelys heads off to Languedoc, more concerned about the fact that the King is upset with him — he’d prefer that Roxalanne marry Chatellerault — than with the fact that Languedoc is currently home to a rebellion by Henri II, Duke of Montmorency. Bad, bad timing.

Actually, pretty much as soon as they arrive in the area, Bardelys and his retinue stumble upon a dying rebel in a shed. His name is Lesperon, and before he keels over he asks that Bardelys take his papers and deliver them and his farewells to his sister and his fiancee. So it makes sense that Lesperon is on Bardelys’ mind when he stops at an inn later. It makes less sense that when he sees some soldiers and hears them say that they’re looking for someone, he assumes that the King has sent them after him rather than that they’re rounding up rebels. So when they ask him his name, he says “Lesperon.” Massive self-absorption, lousy judgment, incredibly precise bad timing.

His escape from the soldiers brings Bardelys, wounded, exhausted and without his retinue, to the Lavedan estate, where he falls in love at first sight with Roxalanne de Lavedan, climbs to her balcony, and faints. By the time Bardelys wakes up, her father the Vicomte has gone through his pockets and concluded that he’s Lesperon. And by the time Bardelys understands what’s going on, the Vicomte has revealed that he’s part of the rebellion, too, and Bardelys is scared of what would happen if he revealed that he was really a well-known friend of the king. This one, to be fair, is mostly really, really bad luck.

Roxalanne and Bardelys fall in love, obviously, but Bardelys is too busy agonizing over what to tell her about himself and darkly hinting at what a horrible person he is to tell her how he feels. Bad judgement. Then he sleeps in on the day when Lesperon’s fiancee and her brother come to visit, so they don’t see him and everyone becomes convinced that he’s behaved badly towards Roxalanne and the fiancee, which okay, isn’t totally wrong, but: bad timing. Then it’s out of the frying pan of Roxalanne’s disdain into the fire of being arrested — as Lesperon — for treason by the adorable Monsieur de Castelroux. Which actually goes a far way to sorting out Bardelys’ problems, because Castelroux is a reasonable guy and also they happen to run into the fiancee’s brother. Except that then there are more frying pans, more fires, and a very enjoyable forerunner to the courtroom scene in Captain Blood. Plus a duel, a couple of audiences with the King, and Bardelys’ super gross attempt to extort Roxalanne into marrying him (bad judgment) followed by massive amounts of regret (bad timing).

Obviously Bardelys is not without his flaws, but — and I doubt very much that this was intentional — he’s an extremely consistent character, especially in his flaws. I’m tempted to track down a copy of the 1926 movie and make a drinking game of it, only if I try to drink every time Bardelys displays bad judgment or bad timing, I don’t think I’ll make it to the end of the movie. Anyway, Bardelys the Magnificent doesn’t really need a drinking game — it’s fun on its own.

As I said earlier, a lot of this is familiar from The Suitors of Yvonne — the person in a position of power sending someone to woo a young woman out in the country, the hero falling in love with the young woman in question, honorable arresting officers, using the expression “out of the frying pan, into the fire” as the primary inspiration for the plot, etc. So what makes this whirlwind of consecutive impending disasters so much better than that one? Mostly Bardelys, and the fact that he’s capable of displaying a touch of humility, and also of not being magnetically attracted to duels. He’s got that essential Sabatini hero trait, the ability to keep cool under fire, and if he’s not as brilliant as the best Sabatini heroes, he makes up for it by being ridiculous in a kind of endearing way. Let me put it this way: there’s a reason Sabatini’s career didn’t really take off for another fifteen years, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t an excellent adventure novelist long before that.

I hate to do this. I can’t believe I’m doing this. Here, for Captain Blood Day, is a bad review of a Rafael Sabatini book. But, given the book itself. I couldn’t very well have written a good one. And it’s not like I uncritically love all of Sabatini’s other books. This one is his first novel, The Suitors of Yvonne, and while I probably wouldn’t have been sure it was by Sabatini if his name wasn’t in the title page (and if, you know, I hadn’t known for years that his first novel was called The Suitors of Yvonne) you can sort of see hints of what he’s going to be like later.

For instance, Sabatini’s heroes are almays saying really cleverly insulting things to people they don’t like. And because they’re so cool and self-posessed and have such clever senses of humor and we know they’re all romantic and sensitive on the inside — and because their enemies are usually warped caricatures of human beings — it’s fun.

Gaston de Luynes, hero of The Suitors of Yvonne, is not like that. He is, in fact, kind of an asshole. I mean, he’s got the insulting part down, but not the clever part, and certainly not the sensitive part. Mostly, he’s just offensive.

In fairness, his situation is difficult. A week after being hired as a companion to Cardinal Mazarin’s nephew Andrea de Mancini, the boy gets drunk on his watch and the Cardinal fires him. It seems incredibly unjust at the time, but after having getten to know de Luynes a little better, I wonder whether maybe the Cardinal had a point. Anyway, the following day a guy named Eugene de Canaples forces a quarrel on Andrea and they schedule a duel. De Luynes agrees to be Andrea’s second, but then the Cardinal pays him a visit and insists that what he actually has to do is to stop the fight from taking place altogether. He accomplishes this by fastening a quarrel on de Canaples himself, and incapacitating him. Andrea still has to flee the city though, because a) de Canaples’ friends still want to kill him and b) the Cardinal wants him to go to Blois and court Yvonne de Canaples, Eugene’s sister. Which is why de Canaples wanted to fight Andrea in the first place. And the Cardinal is still threatening to hang de Luynes, for whatever reason, so he accompanies Andrea on his trip. St. Auban & Co. (de Canaples’ friends) come after them, and de Luynes proves many times over that “when in doubt, attempt to provoke a duel” is his motto in life.

On the way to Blois, de Luynes and Andrea encounter Yvonne de Canaples and her sister Genevieve. Andrea, inconveniently, falls head over heels in love with Genevieve, but that’s probably mostly so de Lynes is free to fall in love with Yvonne. And he does, and it makes him only slightly more sympathetic.

Basically, this is an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” kind of book. Has de Luynes saved Yvonne from being kidnapped? Well, now he’s going to be arrested. And when the arresting officer turns out to be a nice guy who will trust de Luynes to go fight a duel before he’s taken to the cardinal, the duel turns out to be a trap. It’s one miserable situation after another, and whenever de Luynes has a few minutes to look around him, he orchestrates another duel. My favorite instance of this is when he’s all excited about the cunning plan he’s come up with to deal with St. Auban, who has arrested Yvonne’s father and moved into her house with a bunch of soldiers. His cunning plan, it turns out, is to climb into St. Auban’s bedroom window and challenge him to a duel. A duel, by the way, in which de Luynes describes himself as cruelly toying with St. Auban. (“I made him realise that he was mastered, and tha

Happy Captain Blood Day! This, as you may remember, is my fairly arbitrarily designated Rafael Sabatini-centric holiday.

I’m not doing anything special to celebrate — although if you want to discuss how awesome Peter Blood is in the comments section I would be happy to join you — but I do want to set something up for next year. Namely this:

Let’s have a contest. Anyone who wishes to enter can write a piece on Captain Blood — a review, the story of how you first read it, whatever — and email it to me anytime within the next year. On September 19th 2011, they will be posted, and one will win a prize. I’ve only just thought of this, so I’m still working out the details, but I can promise that the prize will be worth having.

I want this to be super low pressure. You don’t have to write an essay. I don’t care whether I get a book review, a memoir, or a haiku. Have fun. My email address is in the sidebar.

It was not until two months later - on the 19th of September, if you must have the actual date - that Peter Blood was brought to trial, upon a charge of high treason. We know that he was not guilty of this; but we need not doubt that he was quite capable of it by the time [...]