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Anne of Geierstein

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In 1832, three years after writing ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN, Sir Walter Scott died, broken in health, having written more than one frenzied pot-boiler to stave off financial ruin. ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN OR THE MAIDEN OF THE MIST is a late flowering: one of Scott's five or six master works. It foreshadows the clue-strewing, puzzle unraveling later genre of the detective story. Who are these English traders, father and son Philipson? Who is the Black Priest of St Paul's? Was Anne of Geierstein's magician grandmother really non-human?

ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN is also a novel about real history. The main action takes place in 1474 and 1475 and moves from Northern Italy through the Swiss Alps into southern and eastern France. The theme is the end of the English Civil Wars (Wars of the Roses) as played out by the apparently definitively defeated Lancastrians (Red Rose) loyal to England's former Queen, Margaret of Anjou. She had kept Red Rose hopes high after the capture of her feckless but saintly husband King Henry VI. In ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN, a simple minded but admiring young Swiss mountaineer who sees the old lady at her father's court in Aix en Provence compares her to something he knows better from his Alpine meadows: "But the Queen is a stately creature. The chief cow of the herd, who carries the bouquets and garlands, and leads the rest to the chalet, has not a statelier pace." (Ch. 32)

There is the complex King René of Provence, last of the minstrel kings, fun-loving octogenarian, described by Shakespeare and later listed by Pierre Plantard and HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL as one of the Masters of THE DA VINCI CODE's Priory of Sion. Queen Margaret of Anjou is his daughter. The son of another daughter is a bitter foe of Duke Charles of Burgundy who lusts for King René's land and titles. Duke Charles is Brother in Law of the Yorkist King of England, Edward IV. Walter Scott moves these famous people like sinful but powerful giants across his exciting stage.

As in Scott's novels THE MONASTERY and THE ABBOT, two brothers go their separate ways -- one holding on to the dying old, the other moving into future mega-trends. In ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN, Anne's father insists on his noble prerogatives and holds fast to the worst features of knighthood as a Robber Baron in the Holy Roman Empire of the declining middle ages of Europe. His brother becomes a humble Swiss farmer and leader of the new Alpine democracy. The father stands and fights in solidarity with the heavily armored mounted knights who go down in the end before Anne's uncle and the citizen foot soldiers of the Swiss mountains.

Along the borders of the German Empire and a weak Kingdom of France, justice is rendered by a Ku Klux Klan-like shadow government of Secret Tribunals enjoying some support from bishops and even a Pope. The disguised Earl of Oxford is tried on charges of slandering this brotherhood but is acquitted in a below ground chamber full of his hooded judges. Walter Scott comments: "Such an institution could only prevail at a time when ordinary means of justice were excluded by the hand of power, and when in order to bring the guilty to punishment, it required all the influence and authority of such a confederacy." (Ch. 20)

In addition to the political themes, Scott rehearses another favorite of his: the virtual impossibility of married love between persons of different social ranks: noble and commoner. Fortunately for the noble but simply reared (by her uncle) Anne of Geierstein, her lover, the ostensibly commoner merchant Arthur Philipson, turns out to be Arthur de Vere, son of the Earl of Oxford.

Another facet of the late 15th Century: superstition, alchemy, foretelling the future. Anne's maternal grandfather was a great student of Zoroastrian and Muslim wisdom. He married a Persian sage's daughter, Hermione, who bore Anne of Geierstein's mother, the Baroness Sybilla. All these women appear possessed of preternatural powers.

Some of ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN's historically true characters first appeared in Scott's 1823 novel QUENTIN DURWARD. These include most notably Louis XI, wily King of France, his trusted barber and his two hangmen and also Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Louis's most dangerous foe.

You can read and enjoy ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN without knowing much European history. But you may not finish the book without hungering for much more and even deeper real history. -OOO-

Sir Walter Scott basically invented the genre of historical fiction, and usually his works clip along at a pretty good rate, but this foray into European history is slow and diffuse. I am about 7/8 through, but don't think I will finish. I am stuck in the court of King Rene, in Provence, with the humorless and wooden prig who passes for Our Hero while the Duke of Burgundy is off getting himself killed. I don't care enough about any of the characters, including Our Hero* and the eponymous Anne, to see the action through.

*I put the book down a few weeks ago and now I can't even remember the hero's name.