Dorothy Dunnett: Gemini (2000)

Edition: Michael Joseph, 2000
Review number: 710

I found the final novel of the House of Niccolo series almost as disappointing as the one which preceded it, Caprice and Rondo. The series comes to a climax with the fifth novel, To Lie With Lions, in which the identity of the secret partner in the Vatachino trading house whose rivalry is attempting to destroy that of Niccolo is revealed. This is surprising and almost crushing; the last two novels of the series amount to around 1500 pages trying to wrench the situation round to a happy ending. Both contain new hidden enemies, but the revelations about them are not as well prepared and the repetition of the same plot ceases to be interesting, and becomes more far fetched - surely there must be a limit to the number of secrets related to Niccolo's origins.

The story this time takes place in Scotland, scene of some of Niccolo's earlier adventures. This location is necessary for the promised connection to Dunnett's Lymond series. Niccolo becomes involved in the complicated Scottish politics of the 1480s, born of the crisis caused by the incapacity of the Stewart royal family. Basically, King James III and his younger brother both have personalities in which there are strong elements of stupidity, vanity and bad temper, and difficulties between them are fertile ground for exploitation by the old enemy of England. Niccolo is still also involved in a vendetta with the St Pols of Kilmurren and another old enemy, David Salmeton, is now based in Scotland, making the already dangerous situation personally antagonistic to Niccolo.

The series draws to a disappointing end; a pity, when its first five novels are so good. Gemini is also likely to be Dunnett's final novel, and it is even given a literary introduction, as though she were already dead. The Lymond and Niccolo series will ensure that she is remembered, but not this novel itself.

Dorothy Dunnett: King Hereafter (1982)

Edition: Michael Joseph, 1982

Dorothy Dunnett's novel of Scotland in the Dark Ages concerns the historical Macbeth - or does it? She certainly knows more about the situation in eleventh century Scotland than Shakespeare did (Macbeth ruled just before the Norman conquest of England), but her plot relies on an identification between two historical characters. Macbeth, she assumes, was in fact the baptismal name of the Viking Earl of Orkney, Thorfinn II.In some ways, this works quite well: Macbeth is a likely candidate for a Gaelic baptismal name (it means "son of life"), though a saint's name might have been more likely; Thorfinn was descended from the kings of Scots and would have had at least as good a claim to the throne as the line which eventually established itself (both related to earlier kings through descent from daughters of Malcolm II); the interest in Orkney makes him plausibly involved in an attempt to unify Scotland, which provides an interesting political aspect to the novel; his Viking background paves the way for a clash of cultures, also of interest to the reader.

There are, however, arguments against the identification of Thorfinn and Macbeth, and the subsidiary identification of Ingeborg, Thorfinn's Norwegian wife, with Gruoch, more commonly known as Lady Macbeth (which is also done with the baptismal name device). The way the Scottish kingship generally worked at this time was that the succession alternated between groups of cousins, patrilineal descendants of Kenneth MacAlpine, who had originally united the kingdom. This system meant that minorities, the perilous rule of underage kings, was avoided, at the cost of making murder by a cousin the most likely way for a Scots king to die. Macbeth was one of the last kings to gain the throne in this manner; Malcolm III, who killed Macbeth, basically managed to stabilise the succession in his own descendants (barring short usurpations by Lulach - a relation of Gruoch's - and Donald I - Malcolm's brother). This was partly achieved because Malcolm held onto the throne for a considerable period, during which he killed most of the other potential candidates for the throne.

Now, both Macbeth and Gruoch are provided by the Scots chroniclers with lineages connecting them with the Scottish crown, which do not match with those existing for Thorfinn and Ingeborg. While it is clear that such lineages would be invented by usurpers to give them a claim to the throne (there are several instances of this in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for example), the way that Dunnett has set things out in her book makes Thorfinn's main claim to the throne his mother's descent, while the chronicles imply that Macbeth's is his father's, whether real or spurious.

Another objection to this identification is that Macbeth is known to have died in 1057, while Thorfinn is thought to have lived rather longer, until about 1065 (though the exact date of his death is not known). I don't know what the evidence is for assuming the later date, but it is that given by Tapsell's Monarchs in the table listing the Earls of Orkney.

The methodology of an academic historian would require that an assumption such as the identification of the two men is not made without supporting evidence. The less you assume, the less you can get wrong. As a historical novelist, you can make any assumption you like which can help your story, so long as it is reasonably plausible. The assumption Dunnett makes here drives an interesting novel, though a very long one - Macbeth reigned for seventeen years after all, not the few months that is the impression left by Shakespeare.

Less acceptable is the way that Dunnett attempts to force Thorfinn/Macbeth into the mould of the heroes of her historical series, Lymond and Niccolo (both of whom are fictional characters). Thorfinn is made to have almost exactly the same characteristics as these heroes. The character may be fascinating, and equally something of a superhero, but the three men should certainly be different from each other.

Dorothy Dunnett: Caprice and Rondo (1999)

Edition: Michael Joseph, 1999
Review number: 211

The seventh Niccolo book starts as his various businesses are trying to recover from the revelation of his activities in Scotland and their probably effect on the country's economy, he himself being exiled from Western Europe on pain of having these activities made public. So he goes to Poland, where he embarks on a life of debauchery until the arrival of his old friend Julius, seeking to set up a business of his own there, distracts him. After he accidentally nearly kills Julius, Niccolo sets off on a journey of expiation, joining Julius' wife and the friar Ludovico de Bologna on his mission to stir up trouble for the Turks who pose such a threat to Christian Europe (during the second half of the fifteenth century).

The scenario is a fairly familiar one to those who have read earlier instalments in the series. Niccolo is gifted (to a positively unnatural degree), but flawed by a lack of moral purpose. He lives life as though he is playing a game in a rather self-indulgent way, very much for the moment regardless of the long-term consequences. Now that the long battle of the previous books is over, he is now fighting with himself to some extent, to overcome the consequences of his rather Pyrrhic victory.

Niccolo is remarkably like Dunnett's other major hero, Lymond. Both are immensely gifted (to an extent that they are difficult to believe in if you stop and think about it); both are willing to go outside the normal methods of living accepted by society; both have really difficult family backgrounds; both (particularly Niccolo) spend considerable time in parts of the world which form unusual settings for historical novels of their periods - Russia, Turkey, Africa. They are really one character rather than two, the main difference between the settings of the two series being that the Lymond novels are more romantic, the Niccolo ones more gritty.

Dorothy Dunnett owes a great debt to the works of Fernand Braudel dealing with the growth of commerce at the end of the medieval period; at some points, the Niccolo books read almost like a novelisation of some of his historical writing. This is a reasonable way to write a historical novel, to set characters (real and unreal - the series has an immense cast of both) walking through some of the most well known academic histories of the time. It also provides a way to test the historical theories, if the novelist is as good as Dunnett; if it seems wrong for your characters to act in a particular way, then the history shouldn't make them act that way.

One more criticism of this generally excellent novel (which doesn't apply to the other Niccolo books) is that Dunnett indulges in the rather pointless anachronism of the title of the novel and its parts which refer to pieces of music or plays (assuming that Circassian Circle is intended as a reference to The Caucasian Chalk Circle) hundreds of years later in date. I found this rather irritating, particularly as there seems to be no reason for it.