#lord darcy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Tumblr Inc. is funded by 13 investors.

noah-luck-easterly · 8 months

Text

So I've been rereading Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories, and they're a fun time I haven't seen anyone mention on tumblr, so I thought I might as well.

They're detective stories, set in a alternate universe where the Plantagenet line has ruled a united England and France for over half a millennium. Aristocracy still rules, this is no constitutional monarchy. Magic has been studied as a science, with trained magicians licensed by the Church. Effects are understood and predictable, though only those with Talent have access to it. Some Talented members of the clergy are trained as Healers, able to treat physical and mental ailments, bringing the life expectancy up to 125. There are trains, but no motorcars, and belief in the healing powers of moldy bread is backwards superstition. It is the 1960s, and Lord Darcy is the chief investigator for the Duke of Normandy. He and his forensic sorceror, Sean O Lochlainn, are responsible for looking into every death among the nobility in his region. If you're willing to give 60-year-old speculative fiction a whirl, I recommend them. They're fun little locked-room mysteries.

If you keep your eyes open, you can spot some fun shout-outs in the text. My favorite is the Marquis de London and Lord Bontriomphe - obvious expys for Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin (Bon/Good + Triomphe/Win; I'm a sucker for a pun).

Garrett drops references to prior cases, but all the stories are stand-alones, so you can jump in anywhere you like.

Caveats: If you expect your speculative fiction to have a more critical eye for power structures like monarchy, aristocracy or colonialism, you won't find it here. The Anglo-French empire are presented as the good guys here (or at least the home team). They claim the Americas (New England = N. America, New France = S. America) and are at war with unspecified groups of indiginous peoples there; though they seem to have assimilated the Aztec Empire entire ("Mecchicoe") as a Duchy without warfare. There are a variety of female characters throughout, but not in high enough density to even pass the Bechdel test. Only one speaking character is explicitly described as being non-white. No evidence of any queer lifestyles, other than an offhand comment about a lord's taste in lovers not including men. ("It's 60 years old", yeah, well, Delany's Dahlgren turns 50 next year)

#randall garrett #lord darcy

2 notes · View notes

sherlockholmesbracket · 1 year

Note

Lord Darcy from the eponymous series by Randall Garret

The noble detective the magical investigator, Lord Darcy!

#lord darcy #ultimate sherlock holmes #this looks interesting i might read it

4 notes · View notes

jbk405 · 2 months

Text

I just finished the last of the Lord Darcy series, which I started a few days ago. It is a series of Detective Stories whose gimmick is that it takes place in an Alternate History where magic is a real, well-defined phenomena. The historical Point of Divergence was in the year 1199, when Richard the Lionheart didn't die in France but instead recovered from his wounds and from there settled down as a benevolent and (most importantly) competent ruler of the Angevin Empire. Succeeded by other competent rulers, the Plantagenet dynasty has remained on the throne into the 20th century and the Anglo-French Empire is now composed of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, and the King is also Holy Roman Emperor so they also claim the various German and Italian states (but don't actually exercise much direct authority there).

Despite the presence of magic, the stories are all Fair-Play Whodunnits: The magic works by specific and internally consistent rules that are spelt out to the audience, and all of the information is presented to the audience at the same time the characters receive it. I was able to solve some of the mysteries myself, but not all of them. The magic of the series is primarily used as a stand-in for the forensic science of our own world, and deuteragonist Master Sorcerer Sean O'Lochlainn is specifically a Forensic Sorcerer.

More than the Alternate History aspect, I'd say what separates this series from most other detective fiction is that Lord Darcy isn't a one-man operation. Though he's the main character and definitely the Leader of the pair, he wouldn't be able to function nearly as well without Sean O'Lochlainn. Sean is the one who investigates the crime scenes, explains what magic was (Or more importantly wasn't) used, and generally functions as an equal to Darcy. It is explicitly described internally as Sean giving Darcy all the pieces to the puzzle, and then Darcy fitting the pieces together to get the answer. Each one says on numerous occasions that they couldn't fill the role of the other. In some stories a third member of the team, a medical doctor, is also present to provide knowledge that neither of the other two leads have, but he's not as significant as Sean.

I'd read "The Napoli Express" years ago, and was reminded of the series a few weeks ago when I read "Murder on the Orient Express" for the first time (Yes, I've seen the movies and already knew the plot, but this was my first time reading the original story itself). "The Napoli Express" contains a pretty sharpy jab at the plot of MotOE, and the reminder got me curious about the rest of the series. There are nine other short stories, plus one full novel. There are also other novels written by other authors after the death of the original author, but I'm not very interested in exploring those.

In addition to the plain murders, a few of the stories also verge on Spy Fiction. The Anglo-French Empire's main rival in Europe is the Kingdom of Poland, which has a vast spy network that Darcy frequently encounters during his investigations. This also gives us the groanworthy-named spy Sir James le Lien (har har har).

#Lord Darcy #Randall Garrett #Detective Fiction #Detective Series #Alternate History #Sean O'Lochlainn #Master Sorcerer

0 notes

hender-ka · 2 months

Text

Idk why, but this is so Bridgerton/Pride and Prejudice coded. Now nothing can stop me from writing this story about a single and grumpy lord, bye

(edit: the reader will be curvy, bye)

#pedro pascal #joel miller #delulu #pedro pascal tlou #sag awards #bridgerton #lord #javier peña #fake scenarios #stories #fanfiction #pedro pascal characters #joel miller x reader #anthony bridgerton #bridgerton netflix #pride and prejudice #mr darcy #pride and predjudice 2005 #lets go mr Darcy

390 notes · View notes

glitterghost · 8 months

Text

The "DID YOU KNOW VIGGO MORTENSEN ACTUALLY BROKE HIS TOE WHEN HE KICKED THAT HELMET?"

The "DID YOU KNOW MATTHEW MACFADYEN IMPROVISED THE HAND FLEX SCENE IN 2005's PRIDE & PREJUDICE?"

BOTH give off the exact same excitable energy when being said, you can't change my mind.

#lord of the rings #pride and prejudice 2005 #2005 pride and prejudice #jane austen #Tolkien #elizabeth bennet #fitzwilliam darcy #the fellowship of the ring #the two towers #the return of the king #viggo mortensen #aragorn #theyre both always said so emphatically #with such awe and wonderment #does that make sense?#we love these kings

324 notes · View notes

burningvelvet · 6 months

Text

Some thoughts on the topic of Byronism, Byronic Heroes, Byron himself, and Mr. Darcy, Mr. Rochester, and their respective authors...

This was inspired after I was tagged in a post (thank you @bethanydelleman !) asking whether Mr. Darcy should be considered a Byronic Hero or not. I start with my response before delving off, but I refer back at the end and it all ties in.

On Mr. Darcy: to Byronic, or not to Byronic? That is the question...

Whether or not Mr. Darcy should be considered a Byronic Hero is a complex question, as is the concept of the Byronic Hero itself.

I think there two versions of Darcy, and general pop culture tends to conflate them. There is Misunderstood Darcy (pre-"redemption" arc; aka what many think of him pre-Elizabeth's discovery of his true personality) and then there is True Darcy (post-"redemption" arc; "oh he's not rude, just socially awkward and proud"). Misunderstood Darcy has aspects of the Byronic, whereas True Darcy isn't Byronic at all.

Is Darcy Byronic? I recognize that he has Byronic elements that would make the general populace view him as Byronically aligned, so it doesn't bother me too much if people call him such, but without fully going into the debateable qualifications of the Byronic Hero, I don't think he is truly Byronic.

My interpretation of "Byronic" as a concept:

"Byronic" is not an easily defined term. A lot of academics have their own preferred methods of classifying the Byronic and there is no one fixed definition or interpretation. "Byronic" originally referred, of course, to the themes and tropes presented in the characters of Byron, who was one of the best-selling and most influential writers of the 1800s.

However, even applying the term "Byronic" solely to Byron's own corpus is an act of over-generalization. Many of Byron's purported "Byronic Heroes" are drastically different from each other or have little in common, as Byronist Peter Cochran noted in his review of Atara Stein's "The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction and Television" (https://petercochran.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/stein-green-lapinski-ii.pdf).

I believe there are two main types of Byronic Hero: the Broad Byronic and the Byronist's Byronic.

The Broad Byronic is the modern pop cultural conception of Byronism which has been applied to practically every rebellious anti-hero. You can find thousands of articles analyzing why thousands of characters are or aren't Byronic, from Jack Sparrow to Batman to Luke Skywalker and ad infinitum. If you try hard enough, anything can be Byronic.

The Byronist's Byronic is like the Orthodox Byronic, the more traditional sense of the term. Academics who take the stritcer Byronist's Byronic approach mainly focus on Byron's direct literary descendants, like the Brontës and Pushkin, who were thoroughly obsessed with Byron and whose works/characters are directly and obviously inspired by Byron's own works. Heathcliff and Eugene Onegin are the most commonly cited examples and are Byronic by all standards.

Over time, "Byronic" has taken on a life of its own, leading to what I dubbed as "the Broad Byronic." I personally believe there is sort of a Byronic spectrum wherein I would place Heathcliff on one end and maybe Mr. Rochester on the other, considering his salvation plotline, which I feel is huge to his character and which Heathcliff lacks (as he openly declares at the end, he has no regrets for his actions).

Peter Cochran's interpretation of the Byronic Hero

Peter Cochran was a writer, professor, & one of the best Byronists (scholars of Byron) & I often defer to his opinion. His website is a haven for Byronism. His interpretation of the Byronic Hero is very much representative of the orthodox Byronist's Byronic.

In his essay "Byron's 'Turkish Tales': An Introduction," Cochan provides a brief analysis of the Byronic Hero, which I have sectioned out the most relevant parts of:

"Much has been written about him; what few writers say is that he has so many facets that it's misleading to treat him as a single archetype. [..] The Byronic hero is a human dead-end. He is never successful as a warrior or as a politician [..] he is never successful as a lover. [..] The Byronic Hero is never a husband, never a father, and never a teacher [..] He bequeaths nothing to posterity, and his life ends with him. He is to be contrasted with the Shakespearean tragic hero, who has to be something potentially life-affirming, such as a father (Lear) or a witty conversationalist (Hamlet) or a great soldier (Macbeth, Coriolanus, Antony) or a lover (Romeo, Antony). If they were not such excellent people, their stories would not be tragic. The Byronic Hero is not tragic: he's just a failure, and leads on to the Superfluous Man of Russian literature - as Pushkin demonstrated, when he created the Byronically-fixated Eugene Onegin. [..] The Byronic Hero must never be witty, or be brought in contact with a critical intelligence [..] if he were, his tale would lose its imagined grandeur [..] In his gloom, failure, and rejection of humour The Byronic Hero aligns not with the heroes of Shakespearean tragedy but with the villains of Shakespearean comedy: Shylock, Malvolio, and Jacques. [..] I would suggest that The Byronic Hero is either a closet gay, or a poorly-adjusted bisexual - a problem that Byron would have known all about."

On Mr. Rochester and Mr. Darcy

In his introduction to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: Modern Critical Interpretations, legendary literary critic Harold Bloom explained that Mr. Rochester is Charlotte Brontë taking the Byronic Hero, killing him, and then rebirthing him. I fully agree with Bloom's interpretation:

"[Rochester's] transformation heralds the death of the Byronic hero [..] Rochester is, in this sense, a pivotal figure; marking the transition from the Romantic to the modern hero [..]"

I would argue that what Austen does to Mr. Darcy is a lighter, pre-Byronic attempt at doing what Brontë did with her transformation of the Byronic in Mr. Rochester. Women growing to sympathize with rude men and then (directly or indirectly) inspiring them to change for the better. Women taking the Byronic and not just going "I can fix him," but instead "I'll tell him off, and then maybe he'll fix himself." Like Darcy, Rochester has two versions, pre-redemption and post-redemption. This is not Byronic, but their pre-redemption selves are, with Mr. Rochester being much, much more so than Darcy, and being considered an archetypal Byronic Hero (rightfully so in my opinion, his come-to-God ending aside).

Also, what Darcy and Rochester are redeemed for differs greatly; I'm not equating their moral or personal failures, and I know that Rochester clearly has more of them (if any anti-Rochester, pro-Darcy fan is out there, pls don't kill me for comparing them).

On Austen and Byron:

Austen started writing P&P when Byron was 8-years-old, so she definitely wasn't influenced by the actual Byron in creating Mr. Darcy. However, Austen did read Byron's work later on, or at least his poem The Corsair, which was his best-selling work at the time and which is one of his most cliché "Byronic" works. She did write some works, like Emma and Persuasion, after reading The Corsair, but I haven't read these yet and I'm not the biggest Austen scholar, so I don't know if she was ever actually influenced by Byron or not. I'm positive that people have analyzed this before. Lots has been written on Austen/Byron. They also shared a publisher, though they never met.

On Byronic (the writer) VS Byronic (the writer's characters):

To further confuse us, "Byronic" by its literal definition can refer to the Byronic Hero OR Byronic as in Byron the Man. Many conflate these things, but they are separate. This adds to the case of the Broad Byronic. Many of Byron's contemporaries created characters that were direct and obvious tributes or parodies of him, including Mary Shelley's The Last Man, Percy Shelley's Julian and Maddalo, and Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey. They all knew Byron personally. Mary Shelley openly put Byron into several of her novels, as explained in "Byron and Mary Shelley" by Ernest Lovell Jr. and "Unnationalized Englishmen in Mary Shelley's Fiction" by William Brewer. Other notable examples of this are Caroline Lamb's Glenarvon (Lamb was Byron's ex) and Dr. John Polidori's The Vampyre (Polidori was Byron's doctor) in which both titular characters were/are clearly known by readers to be caricatures of Byron. The Vampyre was the first vampire novel, and was not only a caricature of Byron but also based on Byron's short story Augustus Darvell. So all modern "Byronic" vampires, including Dracula, are really Byronic as in Byron the Man, although they sometimes may overlap with the Byronic Hero. As I said, easily confusing!

As many academics (and Lord Byron himself) have noted, many of Byron's fans wrongly conflated his characters with himself. Although many of Byron's works were indeed semi-autobiographical, he himself said that they were not intended as actual depictions of himself, and that he was annoyed when people thought so. Many fans who met him would write they were shocked to find he was nothing like the Byronic Heroes of his works. He was humorous, he smiled often, he was somewhat of a dandy and much of a rake (self-confessedly), he was an aristocrat, he was considered by many to be effeminate, etc. -- all elements that are not typically expected of the Byronic Hero.

In reference to his drama The Deformed Transformed (which contains the characters Satan and Caesar) Mary Shelley wrote to him in a letter:

"The Critics, as they used to make you a Childe Harold, Giaour, & Lara all in one, will now make a compound of Satan & Caesar to form your prototype, & your 600 firebrands in Murray's hands will be in costume." [John Murray was Byron's publisher]

Here, Mary mentions how many of Byron's readers expected him to be just like his characters Harold, Giaour, & Lara, who fans assumed were his self-insert characters, as they each had strong similarities. However, these characters were more similar to "alter-egos" than actual "self-portraits." My personal interpretation is that Byron was writing these very similar dark anti-heroes and villains in order to channel the darker aspects of his subconscious, or what Jung would call his Shadow Self, to try to purge or subdue it. Though he lived before the field of psychology officially existed, Byron was very interested in all things psychological, and he used his writing as a method of self-therapy (see: Touched with Fire written by psychologist Kay Jamison, which contains one of the most thorough & reliable psychoanalyses of him).

As Bloom explains in the essay I mentioned, and as countless other academics have explained, Charlotte Brontë and many other women in the early 1800s were obsessed with Byron and his works. Byron's English-speaking fan base has always been primarily female, especially in the beginning of his career. Byron's fans wrote him letters revealing their differing interpretations of him and his Byronic Heroes (but again, most didn't really differentiate between the two).

Likewise, I think the Brontë sisters may have conflated Byron with his Byronic Heroes. Mr. Rochester is such a strong example of Byron the Man and has so many similarities to him that when reading Jane Eyre I felt like I was reading Lord Byron fanfiction. It's clear that Charlotte Brontë was familiar with his biography. For example (one of countless), in chapter 17 Rochester sings what he calls "a Corsair song" -- as I mentioned earlier, The Corsair was one of Byron's greatest hits, and Jane Eyre is set around the time The Corsair was published, and Byron also wrote songs and was also known for his good voice.

Although the Brontë sisters were each influenced by him, they took their own individual spins on the Byronic, and their works reveal the dynamicism of these themes. In my opinion, Emily employs the Byronist's Byronic most raw and faithfully (and maybe even takes it further), Charlotte punishes, redeems, and transforms the Byronic with much influence from Byron the Man, and Anne presents the Byronic most critically and realistically, asking "what if the Byronic Hero were real, and really got married -- what would that look like?" and having perhaps the most (Broadly) Byronic heroine ever, who is also later redeemed by the end, and has her veil of Byronic mystery removed much like Darcy did.

104 notes · View notes

fictionalfawning · 1 year

Text

I need someone to look at me the way tewksbury looks at Enola while teaching her how to dance.

Also the "I am concerned for you" and "I only have eyes for you" are giving me life

*I know Pride and Prejudice and the Enola Holmes movies aren't in the same era but Tewkesbury and Enola somehow remind me of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth but with reverse personalities

#enola holmes #enola x tewkesbury #viscount tewksbury #lord tewksbury #bridgerton #regency #jane austen #period piece #historical fiction #pride and prejudice #mr darcy #elizabeth bennet

923 notes · View notes

rambleonwithrosie · 1 month

Text

Inspirational female representation is not flawless girl-bosses. It never has been. That's another one-dimensional unattainable version of perfection same as the 50s Housewife was. We can't all be Aunt Bea or Black Widow those are caricatures of what it means to be a woman and only highlight limited aspects of femininity without character growth or nuance. Assassin is no more of a personality than cook is.

Inspirational female representation in media is women who make mistakes and are still given value even after blundering. It's Anne falling off a roof. It's Evie wrecking a whole library and nearly ending the world. It's Eowyn in a suicidal depression riding into battle with the goal of dying. It's Lizzie believing everything Wickham says about Darcy.

It's Anne learning that you shouldn't fall for a bully's bait and pride has its place and it should be kept there. It's Evie learning that maybe don't assume something is safe because sometimes it definitely isn't, whether that's ladders or big black books. It's Eowyn learning to love herself and that she doesn't have to prove anything to anyone. It's Lizzie learning not to jump to conclusions about people's character.

It's the space for mistakes and growth. These characters are loved and lovable before, during, and after their mistakes. While they learn from the mistakes they make there is no pressure that from that moment on they are perfect and do nothing else less than perfectly (the mummy sequel doesn't exist here because they made Evie into a cardboard cutout of who she had been in the first film and stripped her depth and warmth). These women are allowed to fail, learn, and grow. They are also some of the most resonant characters in the history of women in literature and film. Who here consumed the media where they are represented and didn't feel akin to at least one of them in some way?