(Untitled)

[3scoremiles_10]

Well, the whole point of this journal was for me to keep all my scribblings in one place. So this can go here as well. It's just me, mucking around.

Title: A Worthy Foe
Rating: G. Perfectly work safe.
Summary: Darius wonders who his enemy is.
Feedback: Yep.

Comments

[shezan]

Oh, very very very nice! I love the account of the Persian embassy from a different point of view. Excellent!

[3scoremiles_10]

Thank you. I took a bit of a liberty, dumping Memnon in the middle of it, but I had to give him something to say to Darius.

[writewrongwords]

There were times when Darius suspected he was told only what his lords and generals and chamberlains thought that he wanted to hear.
heh, i just remembered a story by tibor fischer. the protagonists, on holiday in efes/ephesus, decide that toadying is the oldest profession after killing.

Darius was much more direct. It was to the good. Memnon preferred a man who got to the point.
one thing he has in common with his adversary, then?

I would know, what manner of man is he?
and *that* is the question, isn't it.

you make all your characters incredibly interesting. i was going to say, 'likeable', but what i mean, i think, is they earn my respect, as characters and as people. and i like that very much.

[3scoremiles_10]

Interesting is much better than likeable, I think. Likeable gets dull after a while, but interesting characters ask that much more of us. So yay that.

I think Memnon had a few things in common with his adversary actually, and not just getting to the point. He led Alexandros a merry chase for a while there, made life rather difficult for him. A good general, Memnon - just backed the wrong horse.

I love that line about toadying, by the way. ;)

[susa_938]

I had a fantasy moment whilst reading this, as my first thought was, what a great scene it would have made in the movie

[3scoremiles_10]

Hehehe ... cool, you direct, I'll write, and we'll have a movie of our own. ;)

Memnon was a bloody effective general, he kept Alexander's hands full for a while. I don't think that he made the mistake of underestimating the man that he was up against, but I do think that Darius - or at least Darius' nobles and officers - did fall into that trap. I'm not sure I really do Memnon justice here, but you'll meet him again in my other work, more fleshed out than in this quick piece.

[florachan]

Very nice portraial of Darius, here.

Here you are again with the "never bi-dimensional characters!" thing!^^

I absolutely agree with your portrait of Darius. I don't think he was the incompetent coward that is often described by history books.
He may as well has been a competent man entrapted in a surrounding so much bigger than him, a surrounding in which he could hardly carry out his ultimate saying - as you say: "The Great King did not carry out his own will. He simply let his will be known, and others ran to carry it out for him. Pragmatism didn't fit the Great Kings of Persia

[3scoremiles_10]

Two very different styles of kingship, when we look at Alexandros vs Darius. To be a king in Macedon does not make one less of a man, or more of one ... Alexandros at the end of the day is just another trooper, it's just that he gets to call the shots. While there are certain duties and constraints of kingship that apply, he is largely just "one of the boys", and Macedon is a kingdom geared for war. Darius on the other hand, has to fulfil a role of celestial, divinely sponsered kingship. In his role as Great King, he lays off being only a man and becomes something far more institutional and ceremonial than Alexandros ever has to worry about. So yes, I do think that to a degree Darius was hampered by protocal and expectation - and I think that, to start with at least, he underestimated his opponent. I don't think we can judge him too harshly for that - underestimating Alexandros must have been easy. No one could have expected anyone like him

[shiralyndee]

I have often wondered just what was Darius thinking each time he ran from Alexandros.