#in that octavian wasn't trying to kill him and was crushed when he died and caesar did literally view him as a son | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

navree · 2 years ago

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if fictional interpretations of the historical time period surrounding the ides of march and philippi and all that insist on going with the shakespearean framing of brutus and caesar having an almost father-son sort of relationship, they need to put their money where their mouths are and make the core emotion of the narrative be about octavian-caesar-brutus, sons who aren't really sons of the father who are on diametrically opposed sides of the conflict with two different versions of not only what they think is the right call but also of who caesar should have been. that's the only way.

#personal #roman history #i have always maintained that any attempt to do a historical fiction out of the ides #is always going to ring a bit hollow if there's not a good amount of focus on caesar and octavian's relationship #since it's much more different than the ones caesar had with other prominent romans that we know from that period #in that octavian wasn't trying to kill him and was crushed when he died and caesar did literally view him as a son #so if you do that with that whole shakespeare 'brutus is also like a son to caesar' type of thing #then you've got this amazing pseudo brotherly rivalry that's not even a rivalry #just fundamentally opposite viewpoints and people hurting each other with degrees of separation #brutus hurts octavian by killing caesar #octavian hurts brutus by killing the republic (and cicero)#and you can do great stuff with the will and the relationship octavian and brutus could have had BEFORE the ides #and the ways they're both haunted by caesar's ghost around that time #they can be foils to each other and their relationships with caesar can be foils too #and hell make it gay have brutus's relationship with cassius and octavian's relationship with agrippa also parallel and foil #you can go SO fucking ham

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