Is the lymond chronicles something I can get into if I know little of history and do not speak many romance languages?

Yes! I mean, it depends on your reading preferences and how you feel about being confused, but I certainly did!

That's my short answer! If you give them a try, I hope you find the series worth it, and I believe that what you like in a story will matter more than what you do or don't know going in.

My much longer answer, about my reading experience, is ....

In my case, I knew the names of monarchs and had a vague familiarity with the setting of the first book (Tudor/1540s Scotland and England). I speak a useful amount of French and a tiny bit of Spanish. Comparing experiences with friends, French was an especially helpful language to have, but I feel confident saying that I would have loved these books without it.

The thing about The Game of Kings (book 1) is that it’s just confusing. Dorothy Dunnett wastes no time in throwing political intrigue, multilingual references, and many characters at you. But even if you’re an expert in the history and in (modern and archaic) English, French, Latin, Spanish, Scots, and a little bit of Italian and German, you are faced with a protagonist who’s running back and forth across the border and interfering with that history … while guarding his goals and motives, explaining nothing about his past, and constantly quoting poetry from the personal library of a mind he doesn’t want to let anyone inside. Most of the people he meets don’t understand him, either.

For me, it was so rewarding when I finally started to learn what was happening and who he is, and after that the ride truly began…

I did not look up many references or translations and just kinda went with it. I was enjoying myself enough that I didn’t mind that so much was going over my head (especially if it was coming out of Lymond’s mouth), and within a few chapters I’d gotten invested in one of the characters (Christian!) and was entranced by a recurring joke/element. By the second section (let’s say … 175 pages in …), I was hooked, obsessed with a second character (Will!), interested in most of the rest, and having a great time.

There’s a character list in non-audio editions (the David Monteath audiobooks are very good, though), and companion books exist with translations/sources for many of the references. There are also various online recaps and chapter-by-chapter discussions. Looking things up yourself as you go along can reduce confusion, but be warned that many of the characters are versions of real people, so you may learn more than you want to know, such as when they die. 470-year-old spoilers, but still.

For me, the characters (complexity, parallels, relationships) and writing (playfulness, beauty, INCREDIBLE use of perspective and unreliable narration) are what make the books so good. They reward rereading, so, when/if you return, you’ll have another chance to go down some reference rabbit holes, and even if you don’t, you will understand much more.

The second book is generally agreed to be easier to understand! Also, there are elephants.

Perhaps more important than knowledge of history and languages is the reader's tolerance for …

angst. pain. agony. devastating reminders of prior angst and pain and agony

on the flipside, truly ridiculous antics, hijinks, and capers

many, many kinds of traumatic/potentially triggering content

bias/bigotry that shows up in characters’ perspectives and in general (not that newer media is free of this, but these books are from the 1960s and 70s, for context)

occasional elements that stretch the definition of historical fiction

revelations about your favorite authors’ influences (this was fun)

excessive reference to and description of Lymond’s beauty

half? a third? a large amount of the cast being in love with Lymond. This made for way more queer text than I knew to expect, which was great, but also … oh my god everyone is in love with him

the most bantering banter to ever banter, mostly, but certainly not entirely, courtesy of Lymond

Thanks for asking! If any of this raises more questions, ask again!

related: my lymond recs tag. There are mild and out-of-context spoilers, but these posts all sum up something about the series. :)

🥜

when I was still a vegetarian I used to roll my eyes at people being like "oh I could never do that, I'd have to give up bacon 😂" but honestly they're right. That shit fucks supremely

random life photos from the past few months

fucking worst thing ever (hyperbole) when you eat a substantial meal at a weird time because you're like grabbing a bite with a friend or something (too early) and then because you're full you don't eat anything really substantial later (habit) and so you wake up the next day ready to like drink the blood of the nearest person (not hyperbole)

nano day 6

total count: 2756; 2212!!! towards main wip, 544 towards fic

finished scene 4!!! Wasn’t expecting that esp bc I was extremely reluctant to write it. It started off strong, then got away from me for a bit, but I think I wrapped it up okay ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m just happy I broke 2k today, it feels extremely rewarding B-)

was hoping to get more fic writing done today but alas… maybe tomorrow

thinking a lot today about the different ways that carceral logic shows up in the different arenas of treatment in psychiatry, and something i keep coming back to is the societal perception of eating disorders. this is absolutely a myth, but society views eating disorderes as a thing that only thin white women get. and i think that's foundational to the structure of eating disorder treatment across many levels of care, but especially at higher levels of care. this is fucked for a lot of reasons, because it makes treatment so inaccessible to people of color, trans people, fat people, disabled people, and the amount of bigotry you're going to face in almost all treatment centers is really preventing people from even accessing treatment. or like coming into treatment and being the only person of color in the entire place--that's also another barrier to treatment, and the fact that treatment is so fucking expensive and lots of treatment centers don't accept medicaid, fucking over disabled and poor people. i could go on listing reasons for a long time about how the eating disorder recovery industry is really fucked up and excludes many marginalized groups, but also what i'm thinking about is comparing ed residential treatment to psych wards. treatment is carceral in both places, but there's a big fucking difference in the way treatment is structured in ed residential treatment, even comparing ed treatment to other types of residential treatment. when they know that most of their clients are going to be white women who are more well off, there's a lot of very particular mindsets and structures set up that reflect that particular dynamic of paternalism + fragility. whereas psych wards are incarceration and function almost entirely as social control + have a lot more association with schizophrenia, psychosis, suicide + with those diagnoses come the whole racist history of how those diagnoses changed from being like. like in many ways i think eating disorders are treated now, the way schizophrenia used to be treated back when it was thought of as like, melancholia for housewives + before "protest psychosis" became the new drapetomania. this feels very relevant to any analysis of like, looking at carcerality as a whole throughout the full specturm of psychiatric institutions to understand how ed treatment really does come with a lot more privileges and different underlying assumptions if you're white in ed treatment. the fact that in my residential center there is no forced drugging, no isolation rooms, no restraint of any kind, and also some of the dynamics of the fact that i can tell a lot of employees here are getting exploited by their bosses in terms of unfair working conditions + probably wage theft. and although residential treatment still operates under carceral logic and i fully believe that many things happening here are very much violations, it feels important to understand how instituional racism is shaping these different instituions + to understand some of the reasons why ed res is so vastly different from the psych ward while still very similiar, + also really understanding how my own white privilege is affecting my experience in res.

doing my marble hornets rewatch at the same time im going through emh for the first time is great for the brainrot but HORRENDOUS for my anxiety and paranoia. im fine.

is it like. bad to be really petty about a sandwich (if you check tags, cw for food talk)

i thought howl from howl’s moving castle was fruity, but I’ve been informed he isn’t???? Betrayal

the universe is mean as hell but at least its fucking funny

(cw for christian end-times conversion bullshit under the readmore)

guess who gets to have chipotle today

our aunt is. Incredibly Weird

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feeling: hatred of my grandmother

some important calvin and hobbes facts in case you haven't read the original comic strip in a long time or only absorbed stuff on it from memes and out of context bits on here:

Calvin's last name has never been given, and neither has any of his parent's names. This was actually why his uncle Max only showed up for a brief storyline; the creator of the comic, Bill Watterson, ultimately felt that while it was fine to have him as someone for his parents to talk to, it felt far too awkward to never have Max refer to them by name and he never made a return appearance.

The general tone of the comic is fairly light-hearted, with a big emphasis on goofy slapstick comedy contrasted by clever wordplay and often surprising adult-centered jokes that'll hit you like a slap. A big part of the comedy is, as Watterson put it (paraphrased) "It's really funny to me when people express deeply stupid ideas with really fancy terminology." One notable example you might have seen is that one bit where Calvin asks his mom for money to buy a Satan-worshiping rock album and his mom replies that there's nothing genuine about them and they're just putting on the attitude for shock value, and comisserates with Calvin as he deplores that mainstream nihilism can't be trusted. He concludes that childhood is disillusioning.

There is a LOT of criticism of the extreme materialism and selfish mentality of the late 80s, when the comic was initially written. This may go a long way to explain how its aged so well; much of what it criticizes resonates well with people today.

Bill Watterson views comic strips a legitimate form of artwork, and repeatedly fought to have more space to draw more beautiful and artistic backgrounds, which was a very hard fight and unpopular even with other comic strip artists. He eventually did win some compromises and a lot of Calvin And Hobbes' artwork shows it, with the use of space to indicate time as well as a sharp contrast between the often plain environments of mundane life contrasted by the wildly beautiful imagery of Calvin's imagination (which often sports realistic depictions in an art shift of sorts).

Hobbes is explicitly not an imaginary friend, by word of Watterson himself. We don't know WHAT he is exactly, and Hobbes is apparently unaware of the strange nature of his reality; people look at him and only see an ordinary stuffed tiger plushie, but he has a tangible effect on the world that would be physically impossible for Calvin to do on his own. He's apparently been around for a while, and was apparently around when Calvin was a young baby.

On that note; Hobbes has implicitly killed (notably treated as both a gag and also with the vibe of 'he's a tiger, duh') and while he doesn't do it again on-screen, he doesn't have any moral issues about it. Calvin claims that he's never had trouble bringing Hobbes to school because the last time he did, Hobbes killed and ate a bully named Tommy Chestnut and simply comments that it was gross and he needed a bath. Calvin's tried to repeat this again, but Hobbes was grossed out at the thought having to eat a kid raw and not being allowed to use an oven first, or complaining that children are too fattening.

Hobbes became gradually less human-like in body language and more like an actual cat in both body language and behavior; this was due to Watterson drawing more inspiration from his cat, who also inspired a lot of Hobbes' running gags, such as pouncing on Calvin when he got home. Several years into the syndication of the strip, Watterson's cat passed away, and he did a tribute to her with a comic strip of the two of them agreeing to try to dream together so they can keep playing when they have to sleep; Watterson's commentary (if I recall right), remarks on his cat: "We can see each other again in dreams."