San Francisco Opera’s fall season opened with a fabulous production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. I was lucky enough to see it three times (the final dress rehearsal, a simulcast at ATT ballpark, and the closing performance). The production updated the setting from medieval Spain to the Peninsular War, which of course I loved. The Goya-inspired setting fit well with a story of war, divided families, and one atrocity leading to another.
At the heart of Trovatore’s tangled, over-the-top plot are two brothers, separated at birth, now unknown to each other fighting for opposite sides and rivals for the love of the same woman. Watching the opera, I found myself thinking about brothers in literature. As I write this, I’m watching The Man in the Iron Mask, yet another take on brothers separated at birth who become rivals. Sibling relationships are fascinating, but in British historical stories the laws of inheritance make the rivalry between brothers particularly intense. Among the aristocracy the eldest son inherits the title and estates, while younger sons may at best receive a secondary property of their mother’s and in many cases have to make their own way in the world as soldiers, ministers, or barristers. In As You Like It, Orlando is living as a servant on the dubious charity of his elder brother Oliver who has inherited all the family lands and fortune.
Questions of legitimacy can further complicate this rivalry. In King Lear, the Duke of Gloucester’s illegitimate son Edmund sets out to destroy his legitimate brother Edgar, driven by the pent up jealousy of watching his brother be heir to their father’s lands and title due to the fact that Edgar’s mother was married to the duke while Edmund was born on the wrong side of the blanket.
The issues grow even more tangled when an acknowledged son and heir may actually be illegitimate. The rivalry between Lymond and Richard runs through Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles (including one of the best literary sword fights I’ve ever read in The Game of Kings). At the heart of that rivalry is competition for parental affection and the family estates, and the question of who is who’s son, who deserves what, who is loved best. What makes rivalry between brothers particularly interesting, is that it tends to be mixed, as in Lymond and Richard’s case, with strong love that goes back to the cradle.
I think I had Lymond and Richard in mind when I created Charles and Edgar in Secrets of a Lady. I know I was thinking of Edmund and Edgar, because I deliberately named my Edgar after the legitimate brother from Lear. I decided quite early on in the plotting process, over lattes with my friend Penny, that Charles was illegitimate, that Edgar knew this and Charles didn’t, and that part of Edgar’s motivation stemmed from feeling that everything Charles had inherited should rightfully be his. I also knew I wanted the bond between the brothers to be strong, so that Edgar’s betrayal would be a particularly intense blow to Charles (poor Charles gets betrayed a great deal).
Beneath a Silent Moon features another pair of brothers in Quen and Val. There’s a rivalry between them that their father has encouraged. Charles tells Mel about the boys trying to scale the Old Tower at Dunmykel when they were children. But I found as I wrote the book that, despite the fact that much of Val’s behavior is appalling, the relationship between the two brothers was more complex and had more affection in it than I had at first envisioned. Quen and Val’s relationship is also clouded by questions of legitimacy as the story progresses. I think that one of the reasons I write about legitimacy and illegitimacy in so many books is that so much of the social order among British aristocrats was build on birth. So that questions about legitimacy can strike at the very foundations of that world (foundations which Edgar, in particular, takes very seriously).
In Beneath a Silent Moon, the reader doesn’t see Val react to the revelations about Quen’s birth, but in the letters I wrote for the new edition, Quen writes to Aspasia that Val said their father “wouldn’t do violence to himself–Talbots have too strong a sense of self-preservation, as we both should know. I pointed out that I’m apparently not a Talbot, as I had explained to him before we left Scotland. Val shot me one of his looks and said I’d been raised as one, I couldn’t escape the legacy.” Val handles the revelation of his elder brother’s illegitimacy better than Edgar. But then, for all his faults, I think Val has more ambiguity tolerance than Edgar.
Do you like stories about brothers? What are some favorites? Writers, do you enjoy writing about brothers as rivals?
In honor of the National Equity March, this week’s Fraser Correspondence addition is a love letter from Simon to David.
October 12, 2009 at 9:58 pm
I like a good story of sibling relationships, not necessarily of rivalry. Some of my childhood favorites are of siblings relying on one another facing adversity or in a great adventure. I also like stories in which the differences of siblings’ personalities and character traits are part of the story, such as Misunderstood by Florence Montgomery and Little Women.
As to sibling rivalry, they are especially fascinating because so very often sibling relationships are entangled with parent-child relationships and become a complicated web. Without their parents’ involvement, especially their mother’s, I don’t think the rivalry between Esau & Jacob would be half as interesting. To me, Edgar’s betrayal is essentially Lady Elizabeth’s betrayal. In revealing the truth to Edgar and not Charles, she betrayed both brothers at once. For sure, she was probably out of her mind at the point, but I still find her actions unforgivable. And because of that, I feel sorry for Edgar and have wondered what the story would have been like from his POV.
October 13, 2009 at 12:29 am
Good points, Sharon. Reading your comments, it occurs to me that I perhaps focused the post too much on sibling rivalry. I think perhaps because the inspiration came from seeing “Trovatore.” I too love stories about sibling who aren’t rivals or at least not predominantly rivals. Jane Austen writes sisters really well. And even with the rivals, as I said, it’s the layers of love and shared memories that often make the relationships really interesting.
I think parents are always somewhere in the tangle of sibling relationships, and perhaps particularly when there’s rivalry. Charles thinks about the role Lord Glenister played in the rivalry between Quen and Val. I completely agree about Lady Elizabeth. I do place a share of the blame on Edgar–he made his own choices. But Lady Elizabeth placed an intolerable burden on him, both by telling him a truth that changed the way he thought of his brother and that he felt he couldn’t share with his brother, and then by killing herself in front of him. And in doing so, she drove a wedge between her sons just at the point where they needed each other more than ever. Telling the story from Edgar’s POV is a fascinating idea. It would be an interesting exercise…
October 18, 2009 at 3:18 am
Ah, how could I have forgotten Jane Austen? Much of the plot in P&P is driven forward by Lizzy’s affections and concerns for Jane. Speaking of sisterly love, if there is one type of sibling stories that I don’t particularly care to read, it’s that of the devoted sister who sacrifices much for the ungrateful and selfish other sister. One of the reasons that I prefer the recent BBC adaptation of Sense & Sensibility to the movie version is that the Elinor in the movie for me has too much a trace of a suffering saint. 🙂
October 18, 2009 at 3:27 am
That’s interesting, Sharon–I just rewatched the Emma Thompason S&S movie a couple of nights ago, and I don’t find Elinor a suffering saint at all. I do find her very sympathetic, but while she holds her in feelings and cares deeply for her family, I don’t get the sense that she sacrifices for Marianne or for her mother and Margaret. Her love affair is a stark contrast to Marianne’s, but it’s not as though she gives up Edward for Marianne for some reason. That would have me rolling my eyes. What she does do is not confide in Marianne about the reasons she and Edward can’t be together. But I can understand. I do love her eventual outburst to Marianne though!
October 18, 2009 at 3:28 am
p.s.
I think it’s so interesting how different people react differently to books and to adaptations of them!
October 18, 2009 at 4:33 am
I jumped from one thought to another skipping some in between. I didn’t mean Elinor sacrificed for Marianne. I meant to say that I dislike those storylines, and although S&S isn’t one of those (far from it), the movie version somehow reminds me of those. I think it has to do with the combination of both actresses’ performances. I remember perceiving Kate Winslet’s Marianne as more spoiled than romantic. In contrast, Emma Thompson’s enduring her unhappiness quietly on her own make her seem like a suffering saint.
What I got from the BBC version but didn’t get from the movie is that the sister with sense is the more unconventional one, whereas the one with sensibility is actually more conventional and in tune with the value of the time. (Their reactions to their cousin and his family tell a lot.) That’s why I think Marianne ends up with the much older Colonel and it’s a good match for both.
October 18, 2009 at 5:17 am
Thanks for explaining, Sharon! I think sensible Elinor is actually more empathetic than her emotional sister, because she’s less consumed by her own feelings and more able to see things from others’ perspective. I think, as you say, this also makes her better able to see beyond the restrictions and rules of society–great insight.
I enjoyed the BBC adaptation a lot, particularly the first part, but I still prefer the movie if I had to pick–it’s one of my favorites.