Mark of the Horse Lord is my other favorite Sutcliff. It is essentially The Prince and the Pauper, but with serious consequences, and about the decisions that make a man who he is, which are often forced by circumstances, with a bad choice and a worse choice. It is also (like all of Sutcliff's books) about loyalty and honour and responsibility, particularly the responsibility of a king to his people.
This last is most interesting because Phaedrus, a former slave-gladiator of Corstopitum who has won his wooden foil, has become king of the Dalriadain not by birth but because he resembles the true prince, Midir, who was deposed and thought killed by the usurper queen, Liadhan. The story is about how he is found by the men who oppose Liadhan, taught what he needs to know, and then put forward as the lost Midir - and how he does his best to lead the people who have become 'his' people.
As always with Sutcliff, Roman-era Britain comes completely to life, with a level of detail that is both evocative and yet not at all dense. This book has more of the numinous than many of her others, more of a feeling of the supernatural world that underlies the world of men, but it is a very real-feeling animistic supernatural, believable in context. This is also one of her rare books in which women have more of a role, and I loved reading of the warrior women of the Dalriadain. I liked the princess Murna a lot.
There is also tremendous subtext supporting a relationship between Conory, one of the Dalriadain warriors, and the prince Midir. When Phaedrus is learning about the people of the tribe he'll have to pretend to remember:
There were other things [Phaedrus] knew about Conory, a great many other things, including some that Midir had never told him. But he did not recite them now. They had had to be learned, but though the Arena years had hardened him to most things, he still disliked trampling more often than need be in another man’s private territory.
Later someone says of Conory and Midir that "they were closer to each other than most brothers," and Conory is described through Phaedrus' eyes as a "wasp-waisted creature with hair bleached to the silken paleness of ripe barley, who wore a wild cat for a collar, and went prinked out like a dancing girl with crystal drops in his ears and his slender wrists chiming with bracelets of beads strung on gold wires!"
This is not a particularly cheery book, though, and there is a very high body count, because, you know, war.
Mark of the Horse Lord
This last is most interesting because Phaedrus, a former slave-gladiator of Corstopitum who has won his wooden foil, has become king of the Dalriadain not by birth but because he resembles the true prince, Midir, who was deposed and thought killed by the usurper queen, Liadhan. The story is about how he is found by the men who oppose Liadhan, taught what he needs to know, and then put forward as the lost Midir - and how he does his best to lead the people who have become 'his' people.
As always with Sutcliff, Roman-era Britain comes completely to life, with a level of detail that is both evocative and yet not at all dense. This book has more of the numinous than many of her others, more of a feeling of the supernatural world that underlies the world of men, but it is a very real-feeling animistic supernatural, believable in context. This is also one of her rare books in which women have more of a role, and I loved reading of the warrior women of the Dalriadain. I liked the princess Murna a lot.
There is also tremendous subtext supporting a relationship between Conory, one of the Dalriadain warriors, and the prince Midir. When Phaedrus is learning about the people of the tribe he'll have to pretend to remember:
Later someone says of Conory and Midir that "they were closer to each other than most brothers," and Conory is described through Phaedrus' eyes as a "wasp-waisted creature with hair bleached to the silken paleness of ripe barley, who wore a wild cat for a collar, and went prinked out like a dancing girl with crystal drops in his ears and his slender wrists chiming with bracelets of beads strung on gold wires!"
This is not a particularly cheery book, though, and there is a very high body count, because, you know, war.