Musings of the Obsessive Kind

I am reading The Stranger Prince by Margaret Irwin. Rereading, actually. It is one of my favorite books and is a novel dealing with Prince Rupert, one of my biggest historical crushes.

It doesn't really deal with all of his life (it would have to be a heck of a thick book, though if anyone know of any books fiction and non that do so, do let me know), but is mainly focused on his role in the English Civil War. Mmmmmm. Rupert. The book is wonderful: chock-full of cool characters, complicating politics and fighting, angst, and even an OTP between Rupert and Mary Richmond (which is doomed, doomed, doomed). It's a totally brilliant book.

The only other fiction book dealing with Rupert that I've read was Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson, a fantasy novel which took place in an AU where Shakespeare's plays were actually real. It was a funny, clever, twisty book, with Rupert as the protagonist, creating plans of action with the fairies from Midsummer's Night, taking locomotives at the end of the battle, and falling in love with the Puritan daughter of his jailer (which is, actually, sort of taken from the real background for Rupert who was a prisoner of war in Germany before the English Civil War had his jailer's daughter go nuts for him). It's a really great book. Not as great as The Stranger Prince though.

Also, it turns out that my disc of Kamisama Mou Sukoshi Dake is defective. Ep 10 won't play! :( Since this is the one with the sex scene, I will just assume Takeshi's hotness melted the DVD portion. But now I need a new version. Pronto. Am deprived.

Will catch up on VM 3.2 and all of SPN tonight if I can.

I've also gotten my copy of Love 2000. The subs are excellent and I watched the ending in the process of checking out whether all discs work. Heeee. It was supposed to be dramatic but made me giggle. ( Spoilers for ending )

I am reading The Stranger Prince by Margaret Irwin. Rereading, actually. It is one of my favorite books and is a novel dealing with Prince Rupert, one of my biggest historical crushes.

It doesn't really deal with all of his life (it would have to be a heck of a thick book, though if anyone know of any books fiction and non that do so, do let me know), but is mainly focused on his role in the English Civil War. Mmmmmm. Rupert. The book is wonderful: chock-full of cool characters, complicating politics and fighting, angst, and even an OTP between Rupert and Mary Richmond (which is doomed, doomed, doomed). It's a totally brilliant book.

The only other fiction book dealing with Rupert that I've read was Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson, a fantasy novel which took place in an AU where Shakespeare's plays were actually real. It was a funny, clever, twisty book, with Rupert as the protagonist, creating plans of action with the fairies from Midsummer's Night, taking locomotives at the end of the battle, and falling in love with the Puritan daughter of his jailer (which is, actually, sort of taken from the real background for Rupert who was a prisoner of war in Germany before the English Civil War had his jailer's daughter go nuts for him). It's a really great book. Not as great as The Stranger Prince though.

Also, it turns out that my disc of Kamisama Mou Sukoshi Dake is defective. Ep 10 won't play! :( Since this is the one with the sex scene, I will just assume Takeshi's hotness melted the DVD portion. But now I need a new version. Pronto. Am deprived.

Will catch up on VM 3.2 and all of SPN tonight if I can.

I've also gotten my copy of Love 2000. The subs are excellent and I watched the ending in the process of checking out whether all discs work. Heeee. It was supposed to be dramatic but made me giggle. ( Spoilers for ending )

If you want to read SEVERE Battlestar spoilers for the finale (and by that I mean detailed ep summaries), go here. I can't wait. There is no mention/discussion of these spoilers anywhere in this post, so feel safe. If anyone mentions anything in comments, I will add a note to that effect.

Also, I think I am anime-d out. There are only so many bambi eyes I can take at the moment (probably because Marmalade Boy really annoyed me. It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't 76 freaking episodes. It's as much as Cowboy Beebop, Trigun and Ayashi No Ceres put together. And those three manage to deal with redemption, pacifism, scifi conspiracies, not to mention love and family relationships and other complicated plot stuff in the time it takes MB to get very dull people dully together. The pace (the one that was non-existant) was killing me. This show even managed to make sibcest angst boring) so I am taking a little break.

In other news, I am re-reading Margaret Irwin's The Stranger Prince, which is a novel about Prince Rupert I read years ago and it's just as good as I remembered: intelligent, tightly plotted, angsty (and indirectly relates to kitsa's question: yes, I like stories with angsty heroes without OTPs, as if there is OTP I haven't gotten to it. Btw, ancarett, I did find and read Poul Anderson's The Midsummer Tempest and it was delightful.

I have also been thinking about Veronica Mars and the bus crash clues. Here is all we have so far. (I am sure someone else has done it, but this is for my logical thought process anyway).

1. Bus crashed on going back from stadium and seven students, plus a journalism teacher, plus driver died

1a. Meg actually survived to be in a coma (the only passenger not to die on the spot), have coma baby of Duncan's and then die. She also had crazy religious parents, but I'd imagine the chances of them crashing the bus are slim to none as they wanted daughter to repent not to keel over.

( Rest behind the cut )

I am madly in love with The King’s Touch by Jude Morgan. It’s the best novel I’ve read in months. I am also fascinated because its protagonist is the Duke of Monmouth, and I’ve never read a book solely about him before. All I know about him are the very general facts: eldest illegitimate son of Charles II (and for all I know, the only one) who, after Charles died without any legitimate children and Charles’ brother James II ascended the throne, started a rebellion which was put down and the Duke was executed (must have made for an interesting family reunion that year). Of course, James himself was wildly unpopular and kicked out for William and Mary some time later. I do have to say that I’ve known about Monmouth a lot longer than I did about most English historical figures because his rebellion is the event that lands Peter Blood on the slave docks and later leads to piracy, and I read and adored Sabatini’s Captain Blood, since I was 9 or so (and developed a quite irrational dislike of James II ever since), as Blood, even though he does not participate in the rebellion, gets dragged in as a rebel because as a physician he was helping a wounded man and tried under one of those huge sham trials James did after the rebellion.

Here is a portrait of the guy. According to wikipedia, rather gruesomely, following his execution, it was realised only too late that there was no official portrait of the Duke - for someone who had claimed the throne, albeit in vain, this was unheard of. So his body was exhumed, the head placed back on the body, and it was sat for its portrait to be painted.

( Duke of Monmouth. Lookin' good for a dead guy )

Anyway, whatever the real Duke of Monmouth was, I am quite in a fictional crush state on his literary counterpart in the novel. And reading this book actually made me remember and locate another novel about a secondary figure in English history, The Stranger Prince by Margaret Irwin, about Prince Rupert who really had one of those legendary crazy lives you wouldn’t believe happened if it wasn’t fact. I read the book ages ago and loved it, even if it deals only with a small portion of the guy’s life.

Anyway, here is a completely random historical digression about Prince Rupert. He was the nephew of Charles I (and the Uncle of Charles II) who was the son of one of the Electors and Charles’ sister and fought in the Eighty Years War (talk about a nasty conflict) and was captured and imprisoned. Then he came over to Charles I’s court and when the Revolution broke out he was the leader of the Cavalier cavalry.

( Life that is too crazy to be fiction. And also, princes become pirates too )

ETA: Two portraits of Prince Rupert ( Behind the cut )

I am madly in love with The King’s Touch by Jude Morgan. It’s the best novel I’ve read in months. I am also fascinated because its protagonist is the Duke of Monmouth, and I’ve never read a book solely about him before. All I know about him are the very general facts: eldest illegitimate son of Charles II (and for all I know, the only one) who, after Charles died without any legitimate children and Charles’ brother James II ascended the throne, started a rebellion which was put down and the Duke was executed (must have made for an interesting family reunion that year). Of course, James himself was wildly unpopular and kicked out for William and Mary some time later. I do have to say that I’ve known about Monmouth a lot longer than I did about most English historical figures because his rebellion is the event that lands Peter Blood on the slave docks and later leads to piracy, and I read and adored Sabatini’s Captain Blood, since I was 9 or so (and developed a quite irrational dislike of James II ever since), as Blood, even though he does not participate in the rebellion, gets dragged in as a rebel because as a physician he was helping a wounded man and tried under one of those huge sham trials James did after the rebellion.

Here is a portrait of the guy. According to wikipedia, rather gruesomely, following his execution, it was realised only too late that there was no official portrait of the Duke - for someone who had claimed the throne, albeit in vain, this was unheard of. So his body was exhumed, the head placed back on the body, and it was sat for its portrait to be painted.

( Duke of Monmouth. Lookin' good for a dead guy )

Anyway, whatever the real Duke of Monmouth was, I am quite in a fictional crush state on his literary counterpart in the novel. And reading this book actually made me remember and locate another novel about a secondary figure in English history, The Stranger Prince by Margaret Irwin, about Prince Rupert who really had one of those legendary crazy lives you wouldn’t believe happened if it wasn’t fact. I read the book ages ago and loved it, even if it deals only with a small portion of the guy’s life.

Anyway, here is a completely random historical digression about Prince Rupert. He was the nephew of Charles I (and the Uncle of Charles II) who was the son of one of the Electors and Charles’ sister and fought in the Eighty Years War (talk about a nasty conflict) and was captured and imprisoned. Then he came over to Charles I’s court and when the Revolution broke out he was the leader of the Cavalier cavalry.

( Life that is too crazy to be fiction. And also, princes become pirates too )

ETA: Two portraits of Prince Rupert ( Behind the cut )