“Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince”, by Lisa Hilton

400 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN-13: 978-0544577848

An old woman, watching Elizabeth pass by on progress, expressed astonishment that the Queen was, in fact, a woman…well, that’s the story anyway, used to illustrate the way in which “the ambiguous interplay between the natural and political bodies of the monarch” enabled Elizabeth I to govern and project herself to her people. In Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince by Lisa Hilton, the title is indicative of the point the author is trying to make, that the Virgin Queen saw herself first, last and in-between as a Prince; not as a male ruler, mind you, but as a monarch who established and maintained public order and security through the use of practical political behavior, sometimes amorally. Her sex had nothing to do with it. Elizabeth needed to do so as she spent much of her life battling to establish and maintain herself as the ruler of a country divided by major issues of succession, religious conflict and political threat from larger, richer countries around her, especially Spain and France. Renaissance Prince, then, is not so much a biography as a thematic history of, perhaps, England’s greatest ruler.

Hilton, then, spends a considerable amount of time explaining Elizabeth in terms of the iconography and conventions of courtly love during the period she was ruler of England. While the political winds were rapidly changing all across Europe, Elizabeth established herself as the symbolic, as well as the actual, ruler of her country, at least partly through the manipulation of the symbols legitimizing her divine right to govern (as the quote from the old lady above illustrates). Hilton describes the details in contemporary paintings and descriptions of elaborate tableaux and pageants as support, with references to then-common allusions to Greek and Roman mythology support her contentions. The other major support for Hilton’s portrait of Elizabeth lies in her description of the uses of the conventions of courtly love in Court relationships; this conventional behavior relied upon symbolic language and elaborate flirtation to develop and maintain relationships which actually had no recourse to ever being acted upon in private liaisons. While Hilton refuses to be categorical in this contention, she suggests that Elizabeth did, indeed, die a Virgin Queen while successfully establishing herself as being beyond gender…except when it suited her to appear weak and feminine.

In this way Hilton shows how Elizabeth’s long reign changed English politics and the country’s place in the world: “What Elizabeth did was to negotiate her way between two differing and incompatible ideologies, which we might call ‘chivalric kingship’ and ‘statecraft’, leaving England a markedly different place on her death in 1603 from her accession in 1558”. Hilton’s major point here is to show just how Machiavellian Queen Bess was (and she uses this term positively) in that Elizabeth grasped that which her great rival, Mary Queen of Scots, did not: that a ruler’s primary duty is not to herself but to the state that she governs, and that all other desires, needs and concerns must be subjugated to this. Furthermore, Hilton hammers away at the concept of Elizabeth – and, indeed, all monarchs – having “two bodies”; not literary, of course, but of there being her official, public self – the Prince, the ruler who, through wise counsel, oratorical skill, strong will and common sense strengthens her contested claim to the throne – and the private self – the woman who subsumed all of her baser instincts for the good of her people.

Oh, there are faults to be found, for sure. First are a fair share of convoluted sentences that any editor worth his salt should have parsed. Then there are instances of people suddenly appearing without being identified (i.e. Don John, who is probably the one from the Battle of Lepanto, but who knows?) Elizabeth’s principle French suitor first appears as the Duke of Alençon on page 233 with his older brother the Duke of Anjou, who scorned the prospect of courting the Virgin Queen; yet a few pages later, there’s Anjou paying court to Elizabeth (other books on Elizabeth’s suitors make clear that this is Alençon who had inherited the title of Anjou, but Hilton leaves us to guess). William Cecil, Lord Burghley, is referred to as one of the three most important men in Elizabeth’s life, but his death is barely mentioned (on page 312 he’s referred to as “evidently in declining health”, while five pages later it’s “with Cecil gone” with no comment on his death or its effect on Elizabeth; thereafter, “Cecil” apparently refers to his son, Robert). And Hilton’s deliberate anachronisms – such as referring despairingly to Fox News – can also get a bit wearing (although calling the matchmaking Katherine Ashley a “kamikaze Emma” was a hoot).

But make no mistake: Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince is a sharp and insightful look at Elizabeth I. Too often, I have found, English history feels isolated and often forgets how intricately bound, in some ways, European society was for quite some time. Most studies of Elizabeth have an Us-vs.-Them feel to them, partly stemming from the religious struggles and wars, as well as her sex and birth. With Hilton’s work, I found much more to the person of Elizabeth and her reign, and it was very interesting seeing the Virgin Queen defined not as the exception, in so many cases, but as a bit of an exemplification of the rulers of her day, as well – especially of the new-fangled, Machiavellian-type.

“The Nazi Olympics”, by Richard D. Mandell

363 pages, Ballantine, ISBN-13: 978-0345025708

The Nazi Olympics by Richard D. Mandell was one of my Dad’s books. When German Athletes triumphed so at the 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad, and the corresponding IV Olympic Winter Games, the Nazi triumph at the ballot box three years earlier seemed to vindicate their ideology, as the “seamless garment of happiness” was proof-positive that Hitler had indeed mobilized the psychic energy of the nation and had brought out the best in German youth. Kraft durch Freude – Strength through Joy – was all the rage for the duration of the games in Berlin in the summer and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the winter, and the sheer pageantry of the Olympics were rivaled only by the infamous Nuremberg rallies. As for the youth of the world, summoned to compete, a “pressure for amiability” allowed the regime to make the 4000 assembled athletes bask in a warm fraternal glow, while no expense was spared to make them feel at home, from national cuisines, to American mattresses for Americans, feather comforters for Swiss and Austrians, and floor mats for the Japanese – oh, and all Jew-baiting was suspended for the duration of the games and all anti-Semitic placards disappeared from public view, all at the personal behest of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

Mandell records the results of all the athletic competitions, telescoping in on the individual crowd-pleasers, notably Jesse Owens (whose legendary snub by Hitler is apocryphal) and the Korean marathon winner, Sohn Kee-chung (or Kitei Son, as he had to compete on the Japanese team, his native land annexed by them in 1910) and the fact that Germany had every reason to be proud of her athletes, who dominated the events with 95 medals total, 36 of which were gold. For Mandell, though, the chief focus is on the iconography of the games, so lasting and prevalent that they have influenced every Olympiad since – for instance, the ’36 Olympics saw the introduction of the torch relay, following on from the reintroduction of the Olympic Flame at the 1928 Games, and sports cinematography can be said to have been invented by Leni Riefenstahl and Olympia, her 1938 film of the Games. To say nothing of using sports as a vehicle for political ideology, something the commies would perfect during the Cold War, for as Mandell concludes, despite the aura of international fraternity which surrounds the Olympics, “it is absurd to think that an amalgam of competing patriotisms will result in peaceful idealism” and points to 1936 as the year that confirmed the trend “to view athletes increasingly as national assets”, allegorical battlers whose bodies are the tools of national ideologues “to be used until they are spent husks”. And it began with the Nazi Olympics.

“Caesar’s Women”, by Colleen McCullough

696 pages, William Morrow & Company, ISBN-13: 978-0688093716

Caesar’s Women by Colleen McCullough is the fourth book in her “Masters of Rome” series and spans the years 67 to 59 BC. The series has a thesis (first introduced in 1939 by Sir Ronald Syme in his epic historical treatise “The Roman Revolution”): as Rome became more powerful within the Mediterranean world, the old ways of doing things – through the deliberation of various interests, mainly aristocratic and mercantile – became impossibly cumbersome. It became more and more difficult to govern an empire with institutions originally designed to administer a city-state. Certain powerful leaders (especially Marius, Sulla, and Caesar) tried to create a state in which they had autocratic power but also preserved the externals of the old ways. They were opposed by the conservatives (called the optimates by classical historians, though they themselves preferred the title boni or “good men”). The obtuse or simply ignorant resistance of these reactionaries, who are all (except for Cato) presented as degenerate or self-serving, made the creation of an autocracy necessary. The result was the birth of an imperial monarchy, and a radically different organization of power. Each book in the series features a detailed glossary, hand-drawn illustrations of the major characters, and notes by McCullough detailing her reasoning for portraying certain events in certain ways.

The novel is set during a ten-year interval, from 68-58 BC, which Julius Caesar spent mainly in Rome, climbing the political ladder and outmaneuvering his many enemies. It opens with Caesar returning early from his quaestorship in Spain, and closes with his epochal departure for the Gallic campaigns. Some of the pivotal moments include Caesar’s marriage to Pompeia; his curule aedileship; his narrow election as Pontifex Maximus in 63 BC; his praetorship in 62 BC; his divorce from Pompeia; his governorship of Further Spain; the first time he was hailed imperator on the field by his troops, the blocking of his triumphal parade by Marcus Porcius Cato; the creation of the First Triumvirate, which Caesar formed with Marcus Licinius Crassus and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in 60 BC; his betrothal of his daughter Julia to Pompey; his marriage to Calpurnia; and his first consulship, in 59 BC. Reflecting the title, Caesar’s divorce and remarriage come into play, as does his daughter’s marriage, his lengthy affair with Servilia and his close relationship with his mother, Aurelia. However, most of the plot is concerned with the political struggles of Caesar’s rise to power, his conflict with the conservative boni faction, and his election to each post on the Roman ladder of government.

Of her entire Masters of Rome, series I found Caesar’s Women to be one of the best because the women characters in this epic story are finally pushed to the forefront. If you are looking for gratuitous deeds of stereotypical Hollywood Rome with orgies, murder and the like, this is not the book for you; but the serious lover of Roman history will find the exploits of the women in this novel so believable that it feels like absolute historical accuracy. The classes of each woman drives their ambitions, from Servilia (Caesar’s mistress) who rules her household with an iron fist – but knows she cannot rule Caesar, whose class far surpasses her own; to Cleopatra, the young and immature Queen of Egypt who seeks to rule both Egypt and Caesar; to Julia, the daughter of Caesar who meekly accepts whatever destiny her father deems best for himself…the women of this novel come to life in vivid color and distinct behavior and each, in her own way, guides the life of that (perhaps) greatest Roman, Julius Caesar. Caesar’s Women, like all of the Masters of Rome, is an immersive voyage back 2000+ years in time that introduces readers to the inner workings of Roman government and ably explores the psychology of towering figures from the past. If it can be slow-moving (as most installments in this series are) it is also rich and rewarding and tells its tale on a daring scale. Simply put, there is nothing else out there like this series.