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DerynifanK

March 17, 2024, 03:48:44 PM
Happy St Patrick's Day. Enjoy the one day of the year when the whole world is Irish.

Camber MacRorie

Started by DesertRose, March 25, 2018, 02:41:31 PM

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DesertRose

I'm splitting this off from the discussion of Donal Haldane under the Childe Morgan section, because I think it's worth discussing independently.

revanne said:  (The scene to which she is referring in the first sentence of the quote below is when Donal, with Jessamy MacAthan's assistance, plans to drug Alyce and rape her to try to conceive another half-Haldane Deryni protector for Donal's sons, after the death of Krispin MacAthan, who was Donal's illegitimate son by Jessamy.  I have formatted the part I thought was worth a separate discussion in bold text.)

Quote from: revanne on March 25, 2018, 01:27:59 AM
The scene is unspeakably monstrous but it does not make Donal into a monster. He is a man walking an impossible tightrope and he becomes obsessed. I also think it possible that he is so horrified by the manner of Krispin's death and his inability to mourn him as his son that he ceases to function rationally or morally. Yes of course there are other better options but not necessarily obvious to him. I think Alyce understands and pities him which is why she reacts as she does. And Donal both avenges Krispin and protects Alyce ( as far as he is able) at considerable cost to himself.

One of KK's great talents is that she portrays a believable world in which good intentioned people do monstrous things, which is the tragedy of our world.

(I know this is off-topic but rereading the Camber era books I think that Camber's treatment of Cinhil is equally monstrous and I wonder whether his future appearances are less evidence of his special sanctity than his penance).

In my opinion, Camber was definitely very high-handed, and I think some of his behavior leaned toward (or outright crossed the line into) "the ends justify the means," particularly his dealings with Cinhil Haldane and Camber's assumption of Alister Cullen's identity after the latter's death at the hands of Ariella.

It seems to me that Camber fell into a fairly common trap of thinking that because his goals were the betterment and safety of the kingdom and people of Gwynedd, that anything he did to try to achieve those goals was moral, or at least more moral than it might seem.

Certainly Imre and Ariella were making life very difficult for the human subjects of Gwynedd and would have continued to do so had Camber and his children/associates not engineered the Haldane Restoration, but it also seems that the backlash starting in subtle ways while Cinhil was still alive and becoming (much) more blatant after the king's death was nearly as bad. 

Gwynedd in the centuries following the Council of Ramos was absolutely worse for the Deryni, and honestly not great for humans, either, since indoctrinating people into thinking that other people who have a different in-born trait/set of traits are not really people is generally harmful--for example, Gilrae d'Eirial and his fairly innocent thinking that the Deryni are evil because the church in his lifetime taught that Deryni are evil, a teaching Gilrae doesn't really question fully (though he doesn't seem to accept it fully either) until Simonn heals the injury on Gilrae's arm.

So going back to revanne's parenthetical above, perhaps part of the deal between God and Camber (when Evaine, Joram, and Queron attempt to reverse the Forbidden Spell only to find that Camber can't be brought back to mortal life but he can be released to the service of God from a place on the border between mortal life and immortal reward) is that Camber is to help whenever he reasonably can, as both a penance for his behavior during his mortal life and as (sort of) a hand guided by God in the mortal world.  (I hope that makes sense.)

Thoughts?
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)

revanne

Thank you for this DR and for moving the topic. Your suggestion as to what happens to Camber post-mortem is what I had in mind. His final use of a forbidden spell seems to sum up his ability to convince himself all along that something is right just because he does it. I am hoping someday to finish my Joram fanfic though it will take far more time than I have at present, because Joram was clearly fairly unhappy about much of what his father, and to an extent Evaine, did and I would love to explore how much Joram may have seen the calamities which befell the Deryni, and Gwynedd in general as divine retribution.

The persecution, almost to the point of annihilation, of the Deryni post Ramos was catastrophic. Obviously some humans were better off, those who had had tyrannical Deryni masters and those who like the Regents and their cronies were able to profit during and after the reign of Cinhil's sons, but I suspect life for many was harder. For a start there would have been little or no medical care for the poor once the healers were gone (at the beginning of Camber of Culdi we see a moving picture of Rhys - a healer with noble connections at that - working amongst the poor) and the religious orders were obsessed with finding Deryni. And Gwynedd was condemned to a couple of hundred years of on/off war with Torenth.

Linking back to Donal Camber overrides Cinhil's free will every bit as much as Donal does Jessamy and attempts to do with Alyce, and it is hard not to see the stripping of his innocence and purity as akin to rape. Maybe there was no other way, and Camber is acting out of desperation but there is an arrogance and self-justification that I find hard to stomach.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
(Psalm 46 v1)

DesertRose

Yes, Joram seems particularly uncomfortable with a number of Camber's decisions (and increasingly so over the years post-Restoration).

When Evaine goes to Bishop Niallan for final confession and extreme unction, she outright tells the bishop that she knows the working with Camber's suspended body (though she doesn't get specific with Niallan) will be very dangerous and possibly fatal to her and that she doesn't want to tell Joram or Queron that she knows she may very well die during the ritual; I believe she even specifically says she doesn't want to tell either of them because she thinks (probably accurately) that one or both may try to dissuade her and/or refuse to perform the working at all if her life is a possible price.  So one might infer that Evaine and Joram have clashed (obviously not badly enough to strain their sibling relationship) over the ethics of Deryni abilities and specific applications thereof.

I think Evaine and Camber both are sometimes so excited over the prospect of being able to do some action that they don't stop to consider whether they should (both for their own safety and for general ethical concerns).

If Cinhil hadn't been a monk from his late adolescence, or even if Cinhil had married, fathered children, and been widowed before taking holy orders, I think that Camber, Rhys, Joram, Evaine, et al. would probably have looked to his children for the throne upon realizing the depth of Cinhil's devotion.  But of course he hadn't, and he evidently had no siblings or cousins in the "lost" Haldane line to be alternative candidates for the throne.

Camber's dismissal of Cinhil's actual vocation and his general lack of willingness to become a king really does hit that "the ends justify the means" problem I mentioned above; Cinhil's emotional/spiritual well-being seems to be an acceptable bit of collateral damage in Camber's calculus, and that really isn't remotely fair to the Cinhil as a person or indeed to the people of Gwynedd (particularly Deryni but also humans, both in the ways I mentioned in my first post and in the ways revanne mentioned, such as the loss of Healers and Healer training) in the ensuing couple of centuries.

To be entirely fair, Camber doesn't dismiss it out of hand or without consideration, but it does seem that Camber doesn't fully understand how important a vocation is until he himself is ordained, well after the ship of Cinhil's fate had sailed.
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)

Raksha the Demon

Great topic! 

Much as I admire Camber's commitment to returning the governance of Gwynnedd to the human dynasty that had ruled it for centuries before the Festillic conquest, I am not completely sure that his motives were totally unselfish.

Despite the obvious cruelty of Imre's regime and the suffering of humans, Camber doesn't shift into active conspiracy-to-unseat-Imre mode until Imre murders Camber's son and heir Cathan.  It's been awhile since I read Saint Camber, but I think that Camber's resolve to play Kingmaker is less about saving the suffering humans and more about safeguarding his own family and dependents - Imre's obviously an unstable murderer; if he could murder Cathan, who was his best friend, Imre could easily turn on the rest of the MacRories, especially with Ariella to urge him on. 

Camber definitely had huge and rather unwarranted faith that once Imre was killed and Cinhil enthroned, there would be human-Deryni harmony in the newly liberated kingdom, all would proceed as it should, and his cute little human ward Megan would be the blissful mother of future Haldane kings for human and Deryni...

We all know how that turned out. 

I wonder what might have happened if Camber had returned Cinhil to his monastery, and gathered a Deryni rebellion of fellow lords concerned about Imre's excesses, and installed himself as the new king after killing Imre?  I wonder if he would have forced Joram from the priesthood and made him marry the human Megan for symbolic reasons or eventually made little Tieg Thuryn his heir. 

Or, Camber could have anticipated, a year or two prior to Cathan's death, that Imre was a washout; arranged a marriage between Imre and Evaine, and had Imre quietly killed in a way that looked like illness as soon as Evaine managed to produce a couple of sons.  (Presumably Ariella would still have fled)  Maybe I've been watching too much Game of Thrones; but I think Camber could have pulled that off and lived long enough to steer a more gradual reconciliation between human and Deryni...

But (A) Camber has to force the serene priest Cinhil to become the very unhappy King Cinhil so that Kelson will be born into the situation we see in Deryni Rising, the result of two hundred years of persecution and oppression of Deryni under Haldane rule, (B) Camber may have little compunction at having Cinhil kidnapped, mind-probed, mentally coerced and emotionally manipulated into the kingship, but he would never dream of pushing his children into doing anything contrary to their vocations or desires.

Raksha the Demon

Quote from: DesertRose on March 25, 2018, 04:20:33 PM


I think Evaine and Camber both are sometimes so excited over the prospect of being able to do some action that they don't stop to consider whether they should (both for their own safety and for general ethical concerns).




They're certainly not the only Deryni to become so enraptured by the performing an unanticipated or new bit of magic/deryni enchantment that they don't really consider the ramifications of what they're doing.  Think about Tiercel de Claron, Boy Genius and Enfant Terrible of the Camberian Council:  Wow and gee whiz, he can give the Haldane power to a Haldane heir while the king lives!  He thinks that his fellow Camberian Councillors are a bunch of hidebound old fogies for telling him he can't do it; but hah-hah; he's already well along his teaching of Haldane Power 101 to the delighted Conall.  Unfortunately, Tiercel doesn't stop to think, even after getting to know Conall pretty well, that he's giving the keys to the Haldane kingship to a kid who has even less impulse control than he has...

A bit of irony - the person who considers the consequences of her exercise of Deryni powers the most carefully is Jehana, because she is terrified of being Deryni and using those powers.  It's interesting that she goes ahead anyway, for the best reasons - to save Nigel's life, to use handfire to light her way, to strike out at the sorceress threatening to kill her son (though that act was totally instinctive, Jehana did not hesitate). 


DesertRose

Good points!

I mean, Camber obviously had enough reservations about Imre to retire upon Imre's accession to the throne, but he wasn't spurred to do anything until Imre killed Cathan.

Now, it could be that Camber was kidding himself about how bad a ruler Imre was shaping up to be, and the murder of Cathan shocked him out of his delusion, but even so, it wasn't until his family was directly affected by Imre's and Ariella's excesses that he took action.

Had Camber left Cinhil in the monastery (or returned him there) and mounted a rebellion with other like-minded Deryni lords, he would have had an option other than forcing Joram to marry or leaving the throne to the children of Rhys and Evaine; Cathan left two young sons, Davin and Ansel, so if Camber had taken the throne himself, Davin would have been the logical heir since Cathan had already been killed.

But he would have had even less justification to mount a rebellion without a Haldane than he did even with one, and, even though Camber could definitely be high-handed and even arrogant at times, I'm not sure he'd have seized the throne for himself and his heirs.
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)

Raksha the Demon

#6


Whoops; I forget about Cathan's sons.  But Camber might have wanted an heir, i.e. Joram or Evaine in her own right or as regent, who was mature and strong enough, in terms of Deryni power and political savvy, to take over the rule of Gwynedd. 

Right; Camber is too self-righteous to take the throne for himself and his heirs; but I think it might have better for the kingdom (for humans and Deryni) if he had.  I feel terribly sorry for Cinhil, though he ultimately screwed up, it wasn't deliberate, I think he did the best he knew how in a role that was alien and repugnant to him.  Of course, if Camber & Co. had patted scared-priest Cinhil on the head and returned him to the monastery with Deryni-induced forgetfulness, then we wouldn't have had Brion, Nigel, Kelson and (possibly) Alaric, and their friends and enemies and their glorious stories.

Does anyone know if Rhys and Evaine married before the wedding of Cinhil and Megan?  If I were Camber, I'd have separated Rhys and Evaine and made sure that Evaine married Cinhil (he liked her, too); therefore binding the fragile Haldane kingship to his own powerful Deryni family.

DesertRose

#7
Okay, thank goodness for (searchable) Kindle editions!

The wedding of Cinhil and Megan took place on Christmas Day; Rhys and Evaine were married on Twelfth Night (less than a fortnight later).

Come to think, re: Camber taking the throne himself, it seems like I remember Camber, Joram, Rhys, and Evaine having a discussion about that, that Camber had the necessary education and many of the traits to make a fairly decent king, but Camber said that he was too old and that since Cathan was already dead, the throne could quite easily end up on Davin's head while Davin was still a child, and he didn't want the throne for himself nor did he want that burden to fall to his grandson.

It might have been interesting to see a Queen Evaine, but I don't think that would have necessarily ended any better than Cinhil's marriage to Megan.  Evaine and Rhys had been betrothed for years, they'd effectively known each other their entire lives, and it's fairly apparent that theirs was a marriage of true minds and love.  I'm not sure Evaine would have thanked Camber for breaking her betrothal to Rhys, for a marriage to man who proved unable to allow himself to settle into being a husband and king very well, even if there were the crown in the bargain.  The crown would have proved to be cold comfort, I should think, to a woman who had been looking forward to a loving marriage to a man she'd known since childhood.

Edited to correct a typo, or else I'm more Cockney than I think (I had "ave" for "have" in that last sentence!  ;D )
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)

Raksha the Demon

Evaine definitely wouldn't have been too happy about marrying Cinhil for the good of the realm.  I think she would have been happier than Megan, though, because she was more mature and would not have been as unhappy if he neglected her; since she had interests of her own apart from having babies.  And Evaine might have held on until Cinhil died and she still could have married Rhys, if he'd waited. 

It doesn't surprise me that Camber, on reflection, decides that he was too old to be a king and he didn't want to inflict the burden of kingship to fall on his young grandson; but it was fine and dandy to shove that burden onto the shoulders of a man untrained in kingship or authority and possessing a strong priestly vocation who definitely didn't want to be king.  Sigh.

DesertRose

Well, to be fair to Camber (regarding deciding not to attempt to take the throne himself), it doesn't tend to bode well for a kingdom (particularly one wherein the dust is still settling from a coup d'etat/Restoration) to have a little kid on the throne, which consideration I do think entered into Camber's mind.  Not only would it not have been good for Davin to have the crown fall to him while he was still a child, it wouldn't have been good for Gwynedd, and here again we have Camber's Achilles heel.  He does what he does (mostly) out of concern for the best interests of Gwynedd as he sees them, and for good or ill, he seems to think that if his motivations are moral, so are his actions.  Ain't necessarily so, to quote a Gershwin opera.
"If having a soul means being able to feel love, loyalty, and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."

James Herriot (James Alfred "Alfie" Wight), when a human client asked him if animals have souls.  (I don't remember in which book the story originally appeared.)

Raksha the Demon

Perhaps Camber just had a blind spot about Cinhil's longterm stability and potential effects on the Deryni population of Gwynnedd; he just doesn't seem to anticipate (and Camber is clever enough to anticipate a lot) that Cinhil is not going to rule in everlasting gratitude to all MacRories and Deryni and maybe not resent both for (A)tearing him away from his priesthood (B)the murder of his firstborn child (accomplished by an innocent man who was magically brainwashed via Deryni spells by Imre - if I'm remembering right). 

I don't think Cinhil anticipated or wanted the horrible persecution of all Deryni that followed his death; and he certainly did not anticipate the way his human regents would exploit, threaten and kill his children.  But Cinhil's heart was hardly ever in his kingship, and that, I think, was a major problem. 

drakensis

IIRC Camber had served in the government of Festil III and would have been on hand, if in a junior position, when Festil's older son died and it became necessary for the next living son, Blaine, to become the heir around 867. Blaine was an ordained priest - in fact he was Archbishop of Rhemuth - but he renounced those vows and actually became quite an effective support to his father and eventually quite a decent king.

And Camber himself almost became a priest but inherited Culdi before taking his vows.

So Camber had personal experience and reason to believe someone could set aside their vows and function as a king. Of course, how much of a vocation Blaine had is hard to say, but the shared clerical experience may have been one reason Blaine brought Camber into positions of authority.

So Camber's plan for Cinhil is vested in his own experiences.

revanne

I can see why Camber might have thought it would work but there is a world of difference between a Prince who was an Archbishop, an Earl's son who had been a deacon and a cloistered monk from adolescence which Cinhil was with no experience of the outside world let alone the world of power. And I don't think it excuses Camber's emotional and magical bullying of Cinhil.

Ironically the MacRorie who comes out of this best is Cathan, not just because he was murdered before any of this began but because the trigger for his murder ( helped along by his brother-in -law's machinations) is his refusal to accept the judicial murder of 50 human peasants, with no shred of evidence against them - in reprisal for the murder of a Deryni noble. The monk who shows Kelson and Dhugal the MacRorie tombs in QfSC says that local legend says that Cathan should have been the one to be made a Saint.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
(Psalm 46 v1)

Raksha the Demon

Cathan was definitely a strong and compassionate man.  He seemed to feel the injustice of the killings of the peasants more keenly than the other MacRories, which is odd, considering that they were people of Caerrorie and Camber's tenants.  It's also worth noting that Cathan's widow Elinor and friend Jamie, after they marry, name their son after Cathan (and he becomes a man very worthy of the name).

whitelaughter

While Joram earns his keep as Camber's morality chain, there is another consideration; as Haldane heir, it is Cinhil's duty to be king. Camber has already been through Cinhil's situation, having to give up becoming a priest after his elder brother dies; it is unlikely that he saw any reason to consult Cinhil - after all Camber wasn't consulted!
And of course, Camber has had 2-3 decades to consider the implications of his fate; it may not have occurred to him that Cinhil would need some time to process the decisions that Camber now considered instinctive.