#the persian boy

[nvd94]

‘You must tell me when I say the Persian wrongly. Don’t be afraid to correct me, or I shall never learn.’

I said I had thought he would never love me. I did not beg him to take me with him wherever he was going; I did not think so far. I was like a traveler in the desert,who comes to water.

The persian Boy- Mary Renault

#the persian boy #bagoas #alexander the great #iskander #alexander of macedon #mary renault #the Persian boy fanart

[dandelionfool]

doodling al'skander when i should be sleeping because i have not recovered from the effects of the persian boy

#completely obsessed with the whole lover (hephaistion/macedon) vs beloved (bagoas/persia) dichotomy #and all the implications of that #alexander as courtesan to the macedonian army!! #anyway. started reading funeral games today so just having lots of thoughts at the moment #the persian boy #mary renault #my art #alexander the great

[mademoiselle-red]

And now that I’m thinking about Hephaestion and the first two books of Renault’s Alexander Trilogy, it really hit me in the face how despite Renault’s best efforts to paint him as the long-suffering spouse in a sexless marriage, this man’s life is not a tragedy. He befriended a prince as a teenager and ended up 1) rich beyond his wildest dreams 2) the second most powerful man in the largest empire in the (known) world, 3) officially royalty by marriage to the sister of the king’s wife, and 4) dearly loved and trusted by Alexander above all others, all his life. Like, this man died young (and in an utterly idiotic and painful way), but he’s had a good run!!!

#fire from heaven #the Persian boy #alexander x hephaestion #hephaestion

[telltaleangelina]

"I would whisper to some shadow made of moonlight, "Am I beautiful? It is for you alone. Say that you love me, for without you I cannot live." It was true, at least, that youth cannot live without hope."

-- The Persian Boy, Mary Renault

#The Persian boy #mary renault #the persian boy mary renault

[ghostwithwings]

Reading the Persian boy.

Ok but where is Hephaestion? I miss my new Patrochilles.

#the persian boy #mary renault #alexander the great #hephaestion

[benedictusantonius]

[2023|103] The Persian Boy (1972) written by Mary Renault

#the persian boy #mary renault #books2023 #alexander the great #bagoas #queer literature

[jules-of-the-black-forest]

That's it. That's the book.

#bagoas #mary renault #the persian boy

[moonshinemagpie]

Mary Renault just absolutely annihilating 1st century Roman historian Curtius

#this is so funny to me #like she knew him #curtius #mary renault #the persian boy #Alexander the Great #history #booklr

[alessandroiiidimacedonia]

Notizia incredibile, ancora non ci credo!!

A fine mese uscirà la trilogia su Alessandro Magno di Mary Renault!

"Fuoco dal cielo"

"Il ragazzo persiano"

"Giochi funerari"

Pubblicati da Mondadori!

Tutte le info 🔗 https://bit.ly/3H2ngYG

Copertine meravigliose, non vedo l'ora che escano!

Elena

#AlessandroIIIdiMacedonia #ἈλέξανδροςὁΜέγας  #alessandromagno #AlexandreleGrand #Alexanderthegreat #alessandroilmacedone #AlexanderderDerGroße #AlejandroMagno  #AlessandroilGrande #Mondadori #MaryRenault #ThePersianBoy #FirefromHeaven #FuneralGames #Fuocodalcielo #Ilragazzopersiano #Giochifunerari #2023yearofAlexandertheGreat

#alessandro magno #alessandro iii di macedonia #alexander the great #alessandro il macedone #alessandro il grande #alexander the conqueror #prossime uscite #alessandro il conquistatore #alexander iii of macedon #alexander of macedon #Mary Renault #Il ragazzo persiano #The Persian Boy #Fuoco dal cielo #Fire from Heaven #Maria Grazia Bosetti #Mondadori #Bruno Oddera #Giochi funerari #Funeral Games

[nvd94]

The Persian boy sketches 🪷

#the persian boy #bagoas #darius the 3rd #alexander the great #mary renault #sketch

[junesoul]

Why is Hephaestion better than I could ever aspire to be, as an individual

How do we compare,,,

#when you are so noble and your love is so great ... #arthurian knights who #i'm so mad at renault for never showing us hephaestion and when she does HES LIKE THIS #shaking crying throwing up etc #what a waste #excuse the horrible quality of the picture my camera sucks renault doesnt #the persian boy #text

[mademoiselle-red]

I’ve been thinking about how my favorite genre of fanfiction are works that seem to say to the original work, “great concept but I want to execute it differently.” I love how it takes the building blocks of the original work and show how the resulting story could have been arranged differently.

A sub-genre of that I absolutely adore are fanfics that are beautifully written, gentle, whimsical, or romantic in tone, but whose concepts, thematic and stylistic decisions are explicitly hostile and antagonistic to those in the original work. There is something so enticing about the gentle violence of a Draco/Harry fic that turns some of values and choices of the original series upside-down.

I love the way this played out in the fandom for the Alexander Trilogy by Mary Renault. The second book in the trilogy, The Persian Boy is itself a “transformative” work that offers an alternate interpretation of the history and cultural myth(s) of Alexander the Great. It imagines a romantic relationship between Alexander and the eunuch Bagoas, his only male lover recorded in official histories. The story centers this relationship while sidelining the much more heavily mythologized and romanticized relationship between Alexander and the general Hephaestion, his friend / right-hand-man / maybe-lover . Historians from antiquity record in extravagant detail Alexander’s deep emotional attachment to Hephaestion, but nothing about sexual love was ever written in the official histories. By making its protagonist Bagoas, The Persian Boy centers the romance around the explicitly queer relationship over the maybe-queer relationship historians liked to call “platonic”. The novel does depict Alexander and Hephaestion in a sexless marriage-like kind of romantic love, but does not make it the focus of the story. The focus of the romance is between Alexander and Bagoas. I think the novel is very successful in selling this romance and challenging the Alexander / Hephaestion mythos. But it is apparent that the fan favorite couple, even in this fandom, is still Alexander/Hephaestion. And most of these fan works write back against The Persian Boy’s narrative decision to de-center Hephaestion by re-centering Alexander/Hephaestion in their stories, drawing from both Renault’s work and the works of Roman historians, medieval poets, renaissance artists, and other contemporary novelists & historians. When reading and writing Alexander/Hephaestion fanfics, it sometimes feels to me like the mythos itself is writing back against Renault’s attempt at subversion with the might of millennia of storytelling and the fury of millennia of marginalization. On a meta fourth-wall-breaking level, Renault’s Bagoas had foreseen this: Hephaestion will always win, in both The Persian Boy and in the cultural consciousness of its fans. He had won long before Renault set pen to paper, on the day the historical Alexander, the Alexander of our world, immortalized their love through his elaborate displays of devotion and grief. The part of me that reads literature like a blood sport delights in the knowledge that in the collective cultural consciousness, Alexander will always love Hephaestion more.

#the Persian boy #Alexander/Hephaestion #alexander x hephaestion

[queerographies]

[Il ragazzo persiano][Mary Renault]

Il ragazzo persiano di Mary Renault è un n romanzo a suo tempo scandaloso per la naturalezza con cui affronta il tema dell’omosessualità, ma soprattutto impeccabile per la precisione storica e animato da una scrittura avvolgente e raffinatissima.

Giovane servitore del re Dario, il “ragazzo persiano” è Bagoa, rapito da piccolo da nemici della sua famiglia, castrato e venduto come schiavo, che spicca nella corte persiana per la sua bellezza. Quando Alessandro Magno sconfigge Dario e lo mette in fuga, Bagoa viene accolto nella casa reale del Macedone e diviene il suo prediletto. Nonostante le continue campagne militari, i matrimoni e la…

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#2023 #Alessandro Magno #British Fiction #Bruno Oddera #Efestione #Eileen Mary Challen #fiction #gay #Il ragazzo persiano #LGBT #LGBTQ #Mary Renault #Mondadori #Narrativa #Oscar Mondadori #Re Dario #The Persian Boy #UK

[ghostwithwings]

Alexander marrying and making his homies to marry too so that Hephaestion's children and his own can play together.

#you cannot tell me this isn't the only reason #alexander the great #the persian boy #mary renault #hephaestion

[ruderwasem]

#? #skinny boy #ask away #otakuchile #psd coloring #persian boy #cute love #teddy fresh #italia #onsen

[moonshinemagpie]

"He is gone; and all times when he was there seem like lost riches."

—Mary Renault, The Persian Boy

#Mary Renault #The Persian Boy #Alexander the Great #Bagoas #romance #grief #readblr #booklr #quotes