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Count Robert of Paris: The Works of Sir Walter Scott

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There was an historical Count Robert of Paris. He is described by the Byzantine Princess and historian Anna Comnena. Count Robert offended her father Emperor Alexius by casually sitting on his throne during a showy ceremony in 1097 in Constantinople of fealty by Crusaders en route to the conquest of Jerusalem. This novel is the ailing Sir Walter Scott's final tribute to a spunky Imperial Greek lady whose writings he drew on heavily for the age of chivalry.

The novel is a sprawling cross-cultural tribute to brave Anglo-Saxons, called Varangians, who make up the bodyguard of the Greek emperors; to French knights and nobles both Norman and pre-Norman caught up in the intricate etiquette of chivalry; and to Eastern Romans surrounded by and grudgingly succumbing to Muslim, Turkish and other enemies.

It is also a novel of political mercy as the wily Alexius first outwits then forgives enemies in his own family and cabinet who plot against him.

And it is a novel about women who push envelopes, especially Princess Anna Comnena, who idolized her father and wrote of his many deeds, both glorious and less glorious. There is her mother, the nattering Empress Irene. There is Brenhilda, the Amazonian warrior wife of Count Robert. There is her wise English Saxon serving maid Bertha, beloved of the Varangian guard hero Hereward.

The backdrop of COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS is clearly the epic ALEXIAD, by Anna Comnena. From it and other contemporary sources we learn of the exotic animals in the Emperor's "museum," including an elephant, a crocodile, an orangutan, a giraffe and many others to dazzle the "barbarian" Western Crusaders. It seems likely that Scott's imagination made the seven foot tall orangutan named Sylvan able to understand if not speak Anglo-Saxon.

If one reads Sir Walter Scott's poems and novels as imaginative introductions to real history, then COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS is a good starting point for a series of Scott novels bearing on the Crusades, of which the best known is IVANHOE. -OOO-