The words of a gentleman: another allusion in the King of Attolia

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

At the beginning of Costis' first interview with Eugenides, he is reminded by the king's neat flip of cups into the air that not only did he attack the king whom he swore to defend, but he punched a man who was not capable of punching back:

   Costis closed his eyes in shame. All the events of the day, which had been so nightmarish and unreal, were terribly terribly true, the mark beside the king's mouth unmistabkel and incontrovertible, every knuckle of Costis's fist indelibly represented there.
     Eugenides said, "You did swear less than two months ago to defend my self and my throne with your life -- didn't you?"
     He'd gone down like a rag doll.
     "Yes."
     "Is this some Attolian ritual that I am unaware of? Was I supposed to defend myself?" He had one hand; he couldn't have defended himself against a man both taller and heavier, a whole man.
     "I beg your pardon."
     The words were those of a gentleman. They sounded odd, even to Costis, under the circumstances, and the king laughed briefly, without humor. "My pardon is not a matter of civil pleasantry, Costis. My pardon is a very real thing these days. A royal pardon would spare your life."
     A royal pardon was impossible. "I just meant that I am sorry," Costis said, helpless to explain the inexplicable. "I have never, I would never, I--I..."
     "Don't usually attack cripples?"
     Costis's shame closed his throat.
(M.W. Turner, The King of Attolia (Greenwillow Books: 2006), 5-6.)

Costis reacts to the knowledge that he has committed a socially unforgivable act (attacking someone who cannot fight back) by instinctively retreating to what gentlemanly politesse has taught him: "I beg your pardon." As Eugenides enjoys informing him, it's an incongruous and futile move: this is not a matter of "civil pleasantry," of polite convention among gentleman equals (that is, private citizens, civilians): Costis is actually begging (on his knees, no less) for a "very real" pardon, with, perhaps, a faux-etymological play on "re[g]al" (as in Real Academia) and "royal". But although inapt, Costis' gentlemanly apology is still important for us as readers. On the one hand, it encapsulates the mistake that almost every Attolian character will make before the end of the novel (and which is not easy for Eugenides himself to calibrate): to what extent is Eugenides constrained and weaker-than because of the loss of his hand, and to what extent are his constraints due to his position as king? On the other hand, Costis' impulse to apologize and try to make things right with Eugenides not only as the ruler owed his duty but also as one (gentle)man to another prefigures the genuine, personal affection he will eventually come to feel for the king.

But why the characterization "the words of a gentleman"? Many etiquette books, past and present, it is true, will inform you that "I beg your pardon" is the quintessentially gentlemanlike apology. But "gentleman" is not a term that appears, as a rule, in the series. There are a lot of terms for social class in the Attolia books: we hear about barons and ordinary people, courtiers and commoners; this book has just introduced the class divisions "patronoi" (landowners: elite) and "okloi" (non-landowners: non-elite). "Gentleman", however, shows up nowhere else in the Attolia books. (The collective address "gentlemen" appears once, also in King of Attolia, but the context does not suggest that it carries much, if any, sense of class distinction.) Turner even makes Costis draw attention to the incongruity: "[it] sounded odd, even to Costis, under the circumstances." In a kind of "Alexandrian footnote," the character signals that this is something that is slightly alien to the text -- because it is borrowed from another.

I propose that the line is a nod to Frances Hodgson Burnett's lesser-known children's novel The Lost Prince, where the same idea occurs, via a similar, although more extended, authorial intervention, in a scene that also touches on class, disability and the appropriateness of the "gentlemanly" paradigm. In this scene from early in the novel, Marco Loristan the young hero (think Costis), has come late to the game organized by "The Rat," a semi-vagrant disabled boy about his age with a brilliant mind and a military obsession (think Miles Vorkosigan) who has organized the neighborhood boys into a regiment:

     Then The Rat moved sharply and turned to look at him.
"I thought you were n't coming at all!" he snapped and growled at once. "My father said you wouldn't. He said you were a young swell for all your patched clothes. He said your father would think he was a swell, even if he was only a penny-a-liner on newspapers, and he wouldn't let you have anything to do with a vagabond and a nuisance. Nobody begged you to join. Your father can go to blazes!"
     "Don't you speak in that way about my father," said Marco, quite quietly, "because I can't knock you down."
     "I'll get up and let you!" began The Rat, immediately white and raging. "I can stand up with two sticks. I'll get up and let you!"
     "No, you won't," said Marco. "If you want to know what my father said, I can tell you. He said I could come as often as I liked — till I found out whether we should be friends or not. He says I shall find that out for myself."
     It was a strange thing The Rat did. It must always be remembered of him that his wretched father, who had each year sunk lower and lower in the under-world, had been a gentleman once, a man who had been familiar with good manners and had been educated in the customs of good breeding. Sometimes when he was drunk, and sometimes when he was partly sober, he talked to The Rat of many things the boy would otherwise never have heard of. That was why the lad was different from the other vagabonds. This, also, was why he suddenly altered the whole situation by doing this strange and unexpected thing. He utterly changed his expression and voice, fixing his sharp eyes shrewdly on Marco's. It was almost as if he were asking him a conundrum. He knew it would have been one to most boys of the class he appeared outwardly to belong to. He would either know the answer or he wouldn't.
     "I beg your pardon," The Rat said.
     That was the conundrum. It was what a gentleman and an officer would have said, if he felt he had been mistaken or rude. He had heard that from his drunken father.
     "I beg yours — for being late," said Marco.
     That was the right answer. It was the one another officer and gentleman would have made. It settled the matter at once, and it settled more than was apparent at the moment. It decided that Marco was one of those who knew the things The Rat's father had once known — the things gentlemen do and say and think. Not another word was said. It was all right.
(Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Lost Prince (The Century Co: 1914) 69-70.)

It's telling, of course, that Turner, a modern author, emphasizes the insufficiency of what is for Burnett an absolute (and absolutely valid) marker of class distinction by which our two protagonists recognize that they stand apart from (and above) the rest of their peers. But Marco and The Rat here are not just transcending the rest of the boys in class distinction. At this moment, they behave like "officers and gentleman" not as part of a game but to each other in all sincerity. Just as what is only a game of soldiers and officers, secret missions and loyalty for the rest of the boys will become a reality for them when they embark on their secret mission for the Order to help restore the true king of Samavia, in the course of which they will actually become "officers and gentlemen."

It makes sense that The Lost Prince would be acknowledged as a predecessor to the King of Attolia: both deal with loyalty and duty and the many ways in which they are manifested, not to mention kingship, destiny, and heartwarming friendship. (If you like The Eagle of the Ninth, you will probably like The Lost Prince.) In many ways, Turner flips her model: violence is only threatened, not actually carried out; the status of the two characters, and the direction of the apology, is reversed, and, as noted previously, the gentlemanly apology is insufficient.  Rather than bring Costis and Eugenides together and elevating them as participants in a shared social code that is "more real" and "more serious" than the situation they are in (in the case of Marco and The Rat, a spat between boys), Costis' apology shows how divided (at least for now) he and Eugenides are, both socially and temperamentally, and how the words of a gentleman are insufficient to resolve the "real" and "serious" situation Costis is in.

I am inclined to take this one step further. Burnett is writing a "Ruritanian Romance", the genre that is par excellence that of the gentleman-hero who saves fictional central European kingdoms with valor, honor, and unfailing courtesy. It's certainly an ancestor-genre of the modern fantasy novel, especially the sort that centers on court intrigue. But modern intrigue fantasy is also proud not to be a 19th century romance, and one of the ways in which modern fantasy authors like to distinguish themselves is in the harsh Realpolitik of their fictional countries and courts, where gentlemanly codes of honor are not the basis for policy and will not save those who put their trust in them. The Attolia books do this more delicately (and, to my mind, successfully) than many novels, but, nevertheless: "we are not philosophers; we are sovereigns," says Eddis. "The rules that govern our behavior are not the rules for other men, and our honor, I think, is a different thing entirely" (A Conspiracy of Kings (Greenwillow: 2010) 295). In this kind of universe -- in this kind of novel -- being a gentleman is not bad (far from it), but, Eugenides' dismissal of Costis's gentleman's words implies, here, kings, countries, and courtiers operate by rules that are much more complex and far less kind. Costis would be ready to be the hero of a Samavia or a Ruritania, but here in Attolia, he has a lot to learn. Costis's sense that a gentleman's apology "sounds odd" doesn't only alert us to the presence in the text of a predecessor fantasy novel about loyalty and kingship, it comments on the way that the heroic-romance values of that novel are not quite sufficient to survive in the harsher world of this one.

Comments

[imbecamiel.livejournal.com]

That is a fascinating analysis. It does lend a very interesting color to the phrasing used there. While I've read The Lost Prince, it was long enough ago to be hazy in my memory, and the connection had never occurred to me. Makes me want to go back and re-read both books.

[filkferengi]

Be sure to get the unabridged version. The abridged version leaves out some of the best bits.

[ejmam.livejournal.com]

I like this. I'm not sure I buy it as a direct reference -- the phrase itself is in more common use, and in general can serve as a class reference, reminding us that Costis comes from a richer family. But the Attolia series is definitely in that Ruritanian tradition, and I like how it first sets a stage, and then upends it, because Eugenides isn't a gentleman anymore; he's a royal, and the rules are different for him. But then Eugenides has his own take on these rules, both the ones for kingship and the ones for gentlemen, and the ones for cripples.

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I did do a bit of googling to see how distinctive it is for a novelist to tag "I beg your pardon" as specifically the words of or the behavior of a gentleman -- etiquette books like to point out that a gentleman always says "I beg your pardon", but I couldn't find any other novelistic situation where one character unexpectedly says "I beg your pardon" to another and the author intervenes to gloss this as specifically gentlemanly behavior that is at odds with the situation the characters are in. (That's not to say that others don't exist, of course, but I don't think it's a common trope in quite this form.)

This combined with the shared themes of disability (a concern in both immediate contexts) and loyalty/kingship (a concern of both books as a whole), makes me suspect a closer connection. The question of intention I can't answer, of course, but MWT is a very careful writer, and her books frequently include playful allusions to other works.

But that's just my inclination!

[ccwtaylor.livejournal.com]

thanks for this--very thought provoking! I'll wait for MWT to confirm or deny the specifics of the gentleman usage, should she feel so inclined, but I love the tie in to Ruritnian fiction.

I didn't much like The Lost Prince as a child, but found that it improved lots on re-reading.....

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

I found the Lost Prince much later than I did the "canonical" Burnett novels, just at the point (middle school) where I was getting into fantasy and Arthurian romance and stories about knights and loyalty and derring-do. I think it's fairly over the top in a lot of ways (in particular: is it really plausible that someone as supposedly bright as Marco never gets what is going on?) but I do love it.

[filkferengi]

This is brilliant! I imprinted on FHB at a young age and on mwt just as strongly in middle age. Thanks for linking two great, transformative loves together so insightfully!

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I was also really happy to find a way to link the two together.

[jessre.livejournal.com]

I've LOVED this exchange between Costis (poor Costis) and Gen since the first time I read it. Fascinating analysis - beautiful phrasing and your affection for both works is transparent. You've convinced me to read The Lost Prince so I can see for myself :)

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

Thank you for such a lovely comment! The Lost Prince is dated in some (many ways), but it's a straight-shot ancestor of that other Sounis favorite, Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth, and falls (at least for me) into the same complex of stories about loyalty-friendship-feudalism as the Attolia books, the Vorkosigan and Chalion books, etc. If this post of mine can get more people to read it, I'll count that a win!

[meltintall3.livejournal.com]

I wish I could say I had a nagging feeling that the scene reminded me of something when I read Lost Prince last summer, but I'm not sure I did what with all the general delight I felt at finding another Ruritanian-type novel to devour. The comparison of the two scenes was really interesting.