#the banquo legacy

[theeighthdoctoradventures]

What is Tumblr’s EDA Ranking?

the EDA ranking tournament you’ve not been waiting for! this is not an elimination bracket! this is to determine a ranking of 1st to 73rd place.

ROUND FOURTEEN: POLL EIGHT

Earthworld by Jacqueline Rayner

vs…

The Banquo Legacy by Andy Lane & Justin Richards

[mysticarcanum]

i would like to thank the council for their input. i have purchased three more EDAs

UGHHGHHHHH. i want to buy more edas. i just bought a bunch of vnas i haven't read yet and im. im chewing on plastic i need more edas

[johannesviii]

Hi, I've been using your EDAs recommendations to guide my reading, and I'm currently really enjoying Unnatural History, and I was wondering if you have either a rec list or a "skip list" for the next series story arc so I can avoid any really bad books that aren't necessary to read? No worries if not though! Thanks!

Ok so there's two ways to look at the arc you're currently reading. The first one is that it stops at Interference part 2. The second one is that it stops at The Ancestor Cell.

Now, regardless of that: the list.

Autumn Mist: Skippable. Also, pretty bad. The only important information here is that Sam wants to go home.

Interference (Book One): Not skippable. Good, but the second half is even better.

Interference (Book Two): Not skippable. Very good and I think the coda on Dust is even better than the main plot.

The Blue Angel: Technically skippable, but if you skip it, you miss what's possibly the most insanely meta book in the entire series. Some people hate it. I love it. I'd say read it just to decide which side you're on

The Taking Of Planet Five: Not skippable, and also, pretty good.

Frontier Worlds: Skippable. Very, very meh.

Parallel 59: Debatable...? Technically skippable and meh but I'm gonna say don't skip it

The Shadows of Avalon: Not skippable in the slightest

The Fall of Yquatine: Not skippable in the slightest either I'm afraid

Coldheart: Skippable. But I like it. But still skippable

The Space Age: Entirely skippable. We're talking about one of the most boring books in the entire range. Devoid. Devoid of anything.

The Banquo Legacy: Debatable. I'm gonna go with skippable. I'm not fond of this book but I know some fans love it so I feel like it's an important thing to mention. And it's a murder mystery, if you're into that

The Ancestor Cell: Not skippable. It's a giant mess, but definitely one you can't skip

[gen-is-gone]

As requested by absolutely no one, my personal skiplist recommendation for the Eighth Doctor Adventures:

[ *Books that are more or less universally agreed to be excellent.

+Books I personally quite like that don't tend to make the top ten lists

-Books that are important enough that you shouldn't skip them, but imo kind of suck (don't yell at me if a book you like is on here, this is just my opinion)

Bolded books are arc important. ]

2. Vampire Science* 4. Genocide+ 6. Alien Bodies* 9. Longest Day- 11. Dreamstone Moon 12. Seeing I* 15. The Scarlet Empress* 17. Beltempest 19. The Taint- 21. Revolution Man+ 22. Dominion+ 23. Unnatural History* 25. Interference pt One: Shock Tactic 26. Interference pt Two: Hour of the Geek 27. The Blue Angel* 28. The Taking of Planet 5* 30. Parallel 59+ 31. The Shadows of Avalon 32. The Fall of Yquatine- 33. Coldheart+ 35. The Banquo Legacy 36. The Ancestor Cell 38. Casualties of War 39. The Turing Test* 41. Father Time- 42. Escape Velocity- 43. EarthWorld* 45. Eater of Wasps+ 46. The Year of Intelligent Tigers* 49. City of the Dead* 50. Grimm Reality* 51. The Adventuress of Henrietta Street- 52. Mad Dogs and Englishmen 54. Anachrophobia* 56. The Book of the Still* 58. History 101+ 59. Camera Obscura* 60. Time Zero 62. The Domino Effect- 63. Reckless Engineering 64. The Last Resort+ 65. Timeless 66. Emotional Chemistry 69. The Tomorrow Windows 71. The Deadstone Memorial+ 72. To the Slaughter 73. The Gallifrey Chronicles- PDA 73. Fear Itself* (Takes place between EarthWorld and Vanishing Point)

There are a number of books that are perfectly fine but nothing particularly special that didn't make the cut, as well as some kind of shitty books that did, as this is a skiplist to sort of whittle down the series to a somewhat more managable number while still keeping all of the arc essential books on the list. In my opinion, you could read every book on this list and not only not be confused by any of the arc stuff, but also come away not feeling like you've missed anything quintessential to the series.

And remember, this is my personal list, not speaking for anyone else's opinions about any of these, sorry if I included one of your favorite books among the 'shitty but significant' list, sorry if I skipped a book you love, yadda yadda yadda.

Happy reading! :D

[a-wartime-paradox]

My Doctor Who (-related) collection of books

Read my ongoing review of The Book of the Snowstorm (this should hopefully be the most up-to-date link but if not, check the reblogs)

Shown here is:

[top shelf, left to right]: The Novel of the Film (unread), Alien Bodies, Seeing I, The Scarlet Empress, Unnatural History, Interference, Dead Romance, Phoenix Court trilogy (Marked For Life, Does to Show?, Could It Be Magic?), The Blue Angel, The Taking of Planet 5, The Shadows of Avalon, The Banquo Legacy, The Ancestor Cell, The Burning, The Infinity Doctors (unread), The Tomb of Valdemar (unread)

[middle shelf, left to right] This Town Will Never Let Us Go, The Boulevard: Volume One

[bottom shelf, left to right] Timewyrm: Apocalypse (unread), Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible (unread), Set Piece (unread), The Day of the Doctor, The Essential Terrance Dicks vol.2 (unread), City of Death, The Essential Terrance Dicks vol. 1, Dr. Who in An Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (unread)

My obverse wishlist

[natequarter]

thoughts on the production of richard iii i watched on saturday:

elizabeth woodville. in sunglasses. you agree.

their richard was great. the bleach blonde look was a bit jarring, but great! honestly he looked a little bit like the victorian portrait of the princes in the tower

no idea what was going on with the outfits, but it worked. basically about half of it was traditional elizabethany (that's a word now) and the other half was modern. it worked really well on richard and richard, but occasionally it was slightly odd

the actor playing george was great!

i was fine with the choice to have an abled actor play richard. i seriously do not care. after all, they cast a disabled actor to play anne! what did annoy me far more was the choice to strip references to his disability from their script. it's one thing to play around with casting (awesome), but another thing to handle it by shying away from the actual content of the play. shakespeare's plays are complicated and, in this case, profoundly ableist. to me it feels worse to shy away from engaging with the nuance of his legacy than to simply cast abled actor (especially since this is hardly the first time it's happened!)

there was a skit where a pigeon kept on flying onto the stage and richard kept pointing at it, which is exactly what he should do because i firmly believe shakespeare's richard is, at heart, a massive troll

the play was, well, played less as a tragic history and more as a wacky comedy, which made it fun but a little bit jarring, since richard in a fake plastic six pack and a shiny green jacket is not quite as intimidating as a moody man dressed all in black

having watched a macbeth production last year which did something similar with how it was staged, it was strangely reminiscent of the scottish play; there were very strong echoes of the structure of that version of macbeth, especially in how the murder of the princes (contrasted with the murder of macduff's children) and the murder of george (contrasted with the murder of banquo) played out. macbeth also showed up half-naked (HOT) in that play, which i don't think helped! then again they are loosely similar plays even without the similarities in staging, so...

margaret of anjou is real and she can hurt you. i say this because when they brought out henry vi's body it was cartoonishly unrealistic and i laughed when they dumped it down the trapdoor in the middle of the stage

the actor who played elizabeth woodville (marianne oldham) was so hot oh my god your hand in marriage please ma'am. still thinking about her

on the other hand elizabeth of york was doubled with the (clearly preteen) edward v, which was. creepy. arguably it works but i really wish they'd just doubled her with anne instead

they cut out (young) richard being an incredibly creepy child and making his grandmother go "wtf" :(

richmond was, as per usual, incredibly boring, buuut he had a jacket with lots of patches/colourful bits of sewing! on the back of it he had the red rose, the white rose and a golden rose, which was fun!

he was also basically the only man in the play, in the sense that the rest of the actors were either women or nonbinary (the actor playing rivers)

beautiful butch buckingham. no really he was in a waistcoat the whole time. it was great. AND he and richard (the elder) slow danced at one point! fun plotting with your lesbian murder boyfriend

the gender going on was great fun. also they put edward iv in roman armour. that happened.

seriously elizabeth was gorgeous stunning beautiful pretty every word under the sun for the most beautiful woman ever. look at her. send tweet

[i-am-become-a-name]

Sir, how MANY LAYERS TILL I GET TO THE BANQUO LEGACY??

[familyparadox]

Pre-War, Wartime, Post-War

A few months ago I compiled a complete list of Daleks Stories in chronological order. Now they where not all pure Daleks stories but stories in which the Daleks sometime cameoed or stories which are important to the Dalek narrative. And I noticed something, the war in heaven in relation to the Daleks is not linear. It does not go pre-war wartime post-war. It does not even go in a rigged order. In fact it goes pre war, wartime, pre-war, wartime, Post War, Pre War, Wartime, post-war, pre War. So I did a little experiment I compiled similar lists for several characters in the war focusing on there links to the war and I found that a similar pattern of the post war not necessarily fallowing the war and wartime not necessarily fallowing pre-war

In fact here is the lists

The Doctor and the War

Infinity

The Infinity Doctor

Three

Verdigris

Interference Book 1 and 2 what happened on Dust

Four

Beneath the Planet of the Spiders

Six

The Time Wrestlers

Seven

Christmas on a Rational Planet

Unrecorded encounter with the Faction Paradox

Lungbarrow

Eight

The TV Movie

Alien Bodies

Unnatural History

Interference Book One and Two what happened on earth

The Blue Angel

The Taking of Planet 5

Valentines Day pre war draft

The Enemy of the Daleks

Shadows of Avalon

The Ancestor Cell

Father Time

The Adventuress of Henrietta Street

Sometimes Never…

The Gallifey Chronicles

The Infinity Doctor

Canaries

Lumley 13

The War

The Shift (head of State)

Head of State

Infinity

The Infinity Doctor

Requiem

Riviera Manuscript

Death of Dronid

Lethian Campaign Assassin

True Death

Whittiker 13

The Paradox Moon

The Daleks and the War

Alien Bodies Homunculette’s Story

Alien Bodies Main story

A Star's View of Caroline

A Bloody (And Public) Domaine

The Apocalypse Element

The visit by the Doctor to Skaro after Lungbarrow

The TV Movie

The Quantum Archangle

Enemy of the Daleks

Valentines Day

Dead Romance

Sometime Never...

The Tomorrow Windows

The Gallifrey Chronicles

The Test of Time Part 1

Eulogy of the Daleks

A Prelude to a Prelude (short story)

Father Time

Miranda (Comic)

The Infinity Doctor

Miranda and the War

Father Time

Miranda (comic)

White Canvas

Sometime never…

Compassion and the War

Interference book one and two Fitz’s Story

Interference Book one and two what happened on earth

Blue Angel

Shadows of Avalon

Banquo Legacy

The Ancestor Cell

The Tomorrow Windows

Sabbath Dei

the Year of the Cat

Movers

Labyrinth of History

Warring States

As the City of the Saved

Death

Rebirth?

Christine and the War

Dead Romance

Twilight of the Gods

Of the City of the Save flashback of Porsena

The Five Christinas

The two audio series

The Magistrate and the War

Toy Story

The TV Movie

The Gallifrey Chronicles

The Scream of the Shalka

The Infinity Doctor

The Adventuress of Henrietta Street

Life as one of the Four Elementals

Returns to the Homeworld to warn of the coming war

Becomes War King

Judy’s War

The Taking of Planet 5

Body Politic

Worlds from Nine Divinities

Overture to Sabbath and the King

Sabbath and the King

In the case of the War it does not seem that effect follows cause. And in fact it is not just the wartime bleeding into pre war or the post war but also the post war bleeding into the pre war and the pre war bleeding post war (and those two also bleeding into the war).

What do you think?

[justnethra]

THE UNCHOSEN CHOICE

Chapter 1

The orchestrated change from the fierce battles to these shades of red and brown soothed our aching wounds. There was something in the autumn air that brought a sense of calmness over our frantic and exhausted minds. The cool breeze, the relaxing rustles and my dear companion beside me, all of it reduced the pain of the devastating effects of war by a margins

“So foul and fair a day I’ve never seen my dear Banquo. I cannot bring myself to think back to those grotesque battle scenes while we’re walking through what seems like a museum-worthy artwork.” I looked at my faithful companion walking beside me, face scrunched with agony and exhaustion. A slow fog started to seep in, obstructing my vision. “Cheer up my friend! Rejoice! Our day and night’s hard work has been successful. Now we only have to wait a few more hours till we are reunited with our kin.” Banquo chuckles and slowly turns to me “I’m not sad, my friend, I’m merely relieved that the battles are finally won. Our kingdom and its legacy continue to thrive, under the rule of our great King Duncan. I hope-” He comes to a sudden halt, staring into the distance. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing? What’s that faint orange glow?” As we moved closer to the glow, we could hear strange mutterings. Banquo slowly unsheathed his sword and I shouted “Who’s there, show yourselves.” The thick fog cleared out as if on command, revealing two distinct figures. The half-dead tree above us rustles and suddenly a short, stout red figure lands in front of us with a loud thud. “Who are you? Are you Macdonwald’s spies?” Banquo called out, his face wary. Even though they looked almost like normal people from afar, upon my closer inspection I realized they might be not actually ‘humans. The lady, with completely gray hair, a bizarre red drape, with wrinkled skin grinned at us slyly. The red demon-like figure, wearing just a green rag, ran over to the man, who seemed to be doing some kind of witchcraft over the fire. The man also donned a blue drape, similar to that of the lady’s. He had an evil smirk and would burst out in spurts of cackles. “ALL HAIL MACBETH”,” ALL HAIL MACBETH”, the demon started chanting, with a spear in his hand which immediately made Banquo raise his sword again. “What is the meaning of this? How do you know Macbeth?" The man finally looked up from the fire and boomed "HOW DO WE KNOW MACBETH? THE GREAT, VALIANT MACBETH? SOON TO BE THANE OF CAWDOR? HOW CAN WE NOT KNOW HIM?" His words sent a jolt of shock through me. "How can that be? The Thane of Cawdor is alive and well. Explain yourselves. "Cawdor, cawdor, thane of cawdor" the red demon started chanting. "And if it was not for Lady Macbeth’s betrayal, you could have become King" I heard Banquo's sword fall on the forest floor as both of us stared at the strange intruders with shock and horror. "What- why, how-?" I stammered but before we could react much on their comment, there was a loud bang and all three of them vanished into thin air.

[ineffably-smote]

Few days later now an as the adrenaline and insanity is wearing off I remembered a couple more moments I really liked:

I’ve seen a couple of other people talk about this but honestly the chemistry between Tennant and Jumbo, the way they present the Macbeths as passionate with each other, but so loving is on point. Espcially with the scorpions speech, the way Macbeth hides his head is Lady M’s shoulders and then whispers the line almost sobbing was just so perfect.

The scene where Macbeth decides to kill Banquo was delivered in an appropriately ruthless but also slightly heart wrenching manner. The way Tennant delivers the line “I sullied my soul for his children” (not the real quote but yeah that line) is so interesting. He’s obviously struggling with the guilt of what he has done, but there is also anger there. He wishes he could have a reason, an excuse, to tell himself he did it for his children and is leaving a legacy behind. Instead, it is the children of another man who will reap the benefits of his horror. And I think I never really got that before from Macbeth. There’s also another line about being left with a barren sceptre. There is still the anger and the lost legacy here, but I feel especially in light of the performances’ approach to the Macbeth’s losing their child and postpartum depression, the way this line is delivered has something more. It’s this pain of losing a child, and the fear that not only will he not sire a line of kings, but there will be no children of his at all to take up a throne. I think the vulnerability and the guilt in the delivery playing on the anger was just so beautiful, and it was a bit more subtle so I didn’t realise it on the spot but it stayed with me.

Macbeth, David Tennant - A very subjective, spoiler and emotion filled review

Just walking out of seing Macbeth at the Donmar and I have Feelings. Unsurprisingly, I primarily went to see it because David Tennant was in it. I love the play, big fan of Shakespeare but the trip to London was most certainly motivated by a very specific actor. Hence the highly subjective review. Fortunately, I also happen to quite like Macbeth. We studied it at school, and it holds a special place in my heart (back then, Hamlet was my favourite Shakespeare play but honestly, after tonight, I’m not so sure anymore. Anyway, I digress). It was my first time actually seeing an actor I’m a fan of in real life, so obviously the entire time my brain was just going oh my god that’s David Tennant oh my god that’s David Tennant like I actually could not comprehend it. The man I’ve spent hours staring at on a little screen is suddenly real, and right there. So yeah, that took me a hot second.

(Excuse the piss poor image quality, I took this with shaky hands without looking or bothering to focus the cam)

The Staging

Still starstruck and a bit dazed, one thing really really stood out to me: the staging. It was so, so good. I knew it was going to be minimal from the pictures I had seen, and it was, but it was also so insanely real. There were barely any decorations, and half the cast and the musicians were hidden behind a glass screen doing background noises and gestures. From where I was sitting I could not see them much, but could definitely hear them which added to the overall atmosphere. The stage was also really tiny, and the play benefitted incredibly from it. All the action was happening in one tight space that had been put to use incredibly well, particularly the banquet scene but I’ll come back to that because it deserves its own paragraph.

The way they chose to do the soliloquies was so fitting - all the actors start to move in slow motion - everyone else slowing down and just the characters speaking moving was so good, it made sense.

The Headphones

I’m a bit mixed about the headphones. They were amazing for the vibes, we could hear whispers and they really heightened some of the emotional speeches in the play - because when someone is struggling with guilt and trauma it makes sense for them to be mumbling rather than yelling. So that was really great. However, especially in the scenes where the actors where yelling/ loud I preferred to take them off a bit cause it felt more real that way. I’m so used to hearing actors voice on recordings, it does hit different when you can hear them for real. But, as I said, personal preference and that’s what’s nice, you can take them on and off as much as you want.

Famous Speeches

There were three speeches I was quite interested to see how they were going to be adapted - scorpions and dagger for Macbeth, and out damned spot for Lady Macbeth. These are classic, everyone knows the words, the plot but they managed to make it feel real in a new and touching way. I think here the headphones were quite helpful because they allowed the actors to actually whisper parts of those lines. They were so subtle, so embedded in the text they felt so natural which imbued them with all their power. I saw in a review Cush Jumbo’s out damned spot speech be described as “haunting”, and I wholeheartedly agree.

The Macbeths

I didn’t like Macbeth, the character, very much when I first learnt about him. His actions didn’t make sense to me, I couldn’t quite comprehend in my 21st century little brain how he went from I’m super loyal to the King to I will freely murder children for shits and giggles. But now, now I understand. It makes sense, it’s believable. And that’s a mix of the acting choices and teh overall setting. Like the opening scene, instead of presenting Macbeth as a glorious hero, he is presented to us as a traumatised hero. He spends the first few minutes washing the blood of his clothes, haunted by noises from the battlefield. And that sets the themes quite nicely, not ambition, as Tennant specified in an interview, but guilt and trauma. There are so many ways to interpret Shakespeare, that’s the beauty of it, and I think this version of Macbeth just resonated more with me (maybe because ambition I don’t quite understand but guilt I am intimately familiar with? Or maybe because it was David Tennant? I don’t know, probably a bit of both). Tennant delivers a convincing Macbeth. Yes, you can see his ambitions play out, but also his fears, his guilt, and that makes him into a complex three dimensional character that you want to understand.

And I absolutely loved this version of Lady Macbeth. Not just a powerful woman who bullies her husband into become an evil murderer (because again, here we can see traces of that in Macbeth from the start), but an ambition woman in love, with her husband, with power, and not quite healed from the trauma of loosing her child. Again another review said she is more of an enabler than a manipulator and I quite liked that description.

My Favourite Scenes

God the banquet scene. The one with the ghost of Banquo. An absolute masterpiece. I did not expect that scene to hit that hard. It was raw, it was powerful and even if Tennant was facing away from where I was sitting, even without seeing his face I could feel the emotion, the whole audience could. In a video essay on Tennant, @davidtennantgenderenvy highlighted how in almost every role he played, there is it is the classic Tennant breakdown moment, and breakdown moment it was. Not with tears, not as expressive as he sometime is but just enough for a King trying to hold it together but fear and guilt breaking through. I was absolutely overwhelmed and it was beautiful. The set up for the scene was amazing too - there were ceilidh, celebrations, I adored the contrast between these fast pasted scenes and guilt ridden whispers of the couple. And the way everyone sat down around the stage and suddenly it looked like a banquet table ? Just perfect.

Another really cool moment, less on the emotional side but more on the visuals was when Macbeth goes to get the second prophecy from the witches. Almost the whole cast is there, running around, moving, almost dancing and it gives the whole thing a mystical atmosphere. There’s smoke, Macbeth falls, is carried up high Jesus style, cowers, rises, it’s so busy and insane all the while there are whispers and whispers in the headphones - it manages perfectly to feel like a mystical moment.

Descent Into Madness & other cool things

For Macbeth, having the kid running around scene after scene, haunting him, and then scene where he kills him - GOD it’s powerful. Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness was so well characterised, I also loved the glass on the background that locked away some of the cast. Just wild. The actor that played Malcom actor was also really cool, and Macduff and Ross, big fan of all of them.

Overall I am overwhelmed with emotions. Tennant is truly one of my favourite actors - from Good Omens to Staged, Jessica Jones, even Harry Potter but also Mad to be Normal, Nativty, There She Goes, Around the World in 80 days, Doctor Who (god I’ve started a list, never start lists cause you’ll forget people) and so, so many more, I was truly beside myself with excitement and expectations for tonight. And it did not disappoint. I do not want to leave the theatre and I pray they release a recording of this because I want it imprinted on my soul.

(Side note: I don’t know how to use tumblr very well, for some reason whenever I try to reply to ppl it posts from my other blog? Anyway @raquel-and-sergio is in fact me)

[theeighthdoctoradventures]

What is Tumblr’s EDA Ranking?

the EDA ranking tournament you’ve not been waiting for! this is not an elimination bracket! this is to determine a ranking of 1st to 73rd place.

ROUND FOURTEEN: POLL SEVEN

The Taking of Planet 5 by Simon Bucher-Jones & Mark Clapham

vs…

The Banquo Legacy by Andy Lane & Justin Richards

[a-wartime-paradox]

Books I've read (or more accurately, media I've consumed that's relevant to this blog)

Doctor Who prose

Target novelisations

The Essential Terrance Dicks vol. 1 (will add individual stories when I check), The Day of the Doctor, The City of Death

Eighth Doctor Adventures

Vampire Science (well, a fan audio), Alien Bodies, Seeing I, The Scarlet Empress, Interference, The Taking of Planet 5, The Shadows of Avalon, The Banquo Legacy, The Ancestor Cell

Virgin New Adventures

Protagonist: Seventh Doctor

None, yet

Protagonist: Bernice Summerfield

Dead Romance (does not feature Bernice Summerfield), none yet

Faction Paradox

Novels

This Town Will Never Let Us Go, Of the City of the Saved

Anthologies

A Romance in Twelve Parts, The Boulevard (vol.1), More Tales of the City

Iris Wildthyme

Phoenix Court

Marked for Life, Does it Show?, Could it Be Magic?

Doctor Who audios

Eighth Doctor audios

All Charley audios, all Lucie audios, Dark Eyes, Doom Coalition, Ravenous

Faction Paradox audios

The Faction Paradox Protocols, The True History of Faction Paradox, Sabbath and the King

Additionally: Dionus's War, The Confession of Brother Signet

Non-Who media with connections (incl. authors)

Douglas Adams

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Life, the Universe, and Everything has Krikkitmen)

[anstaar]

Thirty feet below us, down in the artificial hollow where George Wallace was intending, next summer, to sit with his bottle of crusted port, the Doctor’s body lay crumpled, face down. His arms had been broken and twisted grotesquely by the impact with the ground, his legs seemed to be buckled beneath him, and his head was hidden by his hunched shoulders. 

‘No!’ Kreiner cried, and threw himself towards the edge. Baker and I grabbed hold of his arms. 

‘It’s too dangerous!’ Baker shouted as Kreiner scrabbled closer to the almost sheer drop. ‘The sides are covered with ice and snow. You’ll never get down in one piece.’

‘It’s true,’ I said, knowing that Baker was, in part, talking to me as well as to Kreiner. I grabbed him by the shoulders and stared deeply into his eyes until his gaze locked on me and not on the wild phantoms of his own grief. ‘It’s true. Mr Kreiner – Fitz – you have to keep control. We need you.’ 

‘But –’ His struggles began to subside. ‘But the Doctor. . . the Doctor. . . ’ 

‘He’s dead,’ I said. 

‘You can’t know that. We need to get down there. We need to –’ 

‘Kreiner, trust me. He couldn’t survive more than five minutes in this weather without protection. The fall must have broken most of the bones in his body. He’s dead.’ 

A great sob racked Kreiner’s body, and as I let go his shoulders he slumped to his knees, heedless of the white blanket covering the ground. Turning to Baker, I said quietly, ‘Can we get down there?’ 

‘There are other routes round to the bottom, sir, but they’re all pretty treacherous. I wouldn’t want to risk it, sir – not without proper equipment. Simpson might be able to help, but we’ll probably have to wait for a thaw. I suggest we get back, sir – we’ve found what we came for.’ 

Slowly, the first flakes of a new snowfall began to drift from the silent clouds above us. As they settled, tears began to run down Kreiner’s face and mingle with the snow.

The Banquo Legacy by Justin Richards

[i-am-become-a-name]

DOCTOR PLEASE.

[priest-iuput]

[theophan-o]

Thank you for sharing it here! To be honest, it was Amelia M. Glaser, who pointed me out, that Henryk Sienkiewicz in the end of the 19th century was not the first writer, who introduced Bohun (as well as Bohdan Chmielnicki) into the Polish literature. Before him was Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz (1758-1841), who in 1817 created a drama entitled Bohdan Chmielnicki (yes!), where he presented the character of Bohun as one from the closest friends of Chmielnicki, "a paragon of knighthood and valor" (Amelia, Amelia, I love you so much for stating that!), who after some tragic events transforms into the "Slavic Banquo"!

Bohun as the Slavic Banquo, I like this idea very much!

Stories of Khmelnytsky. Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising, ed. Amelia M. Glaser, Stanford 2015, p. 65-66.

As far as I know, this piece of writing has been only partially published (the entire text has been preserved only in a manuscript stored in Paris), but I have somewhere a transcription of these edited parts. It is high time to look for them!

“I think part of what literary scholarship does is it helps us to be comfortable with discomfort: it helps us to sit with something that cannot be easily answered in black and white. Can I unwrite the history of 1648? Absolutely not. Can I take out the fact that the Khmelnytsky uprising was deeply important to Ukrainian nationhood and also has made its way into Jewish liturgy as one of the tragedies of Jewish history? I can’t take that out. It’s simply a fact of history that remains.” (Amelia M. Glaser)

I've just remembered this video about the Khmelnytsky uprising in literature - and simply have to share it as an addition to the songs about the uprising for whoever might be interested. Listening to Amelia M. Glaser is such a joy! And her book about the topic is just as amazing!