Archive for the ‘Explanations’ Category

Matthew West’s Library

Saturday, September 15th, 2012

There are several passing references within the series to Matthew West’s library.  Because he had lived in parallel universes and in other times, he had read many books that had not yet been written in 1700 when he arrived in the story’s timeline.  One of his powers was an eidetic memory that allowed him to reconstruct a book he had once read, or even that he had once touched.  Thus, he filled his library with works that had been important to him in one form or another through his long life, and most of them originally had been published after he officially “died” in 1778 or in a timeline that he had altered.

In the first volume in the series, some of these books are mentioned as he ponders whether to interfere in events at the time of the Tuscarora War.  There are other passing references throughout the series to books that were from Matthew West’s library.  When he started the Fortress, he created a copy of his library as part of the institutional library.  He also had copies of his library at each of his homes, which were many.

In the third volume of the series, we will find a descendant of Matthew West who is inspired by Anthony Hope Hawkins The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Henzau.   This fellow renames himself Rudolph Elphberg and founds a new nation, Ruritania.  That’s quite some influence Hawkins had to inspire a new nation a hundred years before he wrote his books.

German versus English

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012

I was just looking over past posts and realized there might be another thing I’ve done that could confuse readers.  In the table of titles that I posted a month or so ago, I used German place names for the titles in the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), but I believe in the books that I usually use the English.  The two most glaring examples are Franconia/Franken and Swabia/Schwaben.  I also use Churfürst in the table, which is an older German version of “Prince-Elector.”

The Germans also had separate terms for ruling prince versus the son of a ruler.  The ruling prince is a Fürst.  This is also seen in the title Kurfürst/Churfürst for (ruling) prince-elector.

Lord This and the Honourable That

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012

If one is not familiar with the protocols and styles of British and other nobility and royalty, some of the rules and usages might be confusing.  For instance, one of the characters in the series is Lord Francis Campbell.  He is a younger son of the Duke of Argyll.  As the younger son of a British duke, his style is Lord Francis, using his first name.  His elder brother, John, uses one of their father’s courtesy titles, since he is the heir.  So he is known as the Marquess of Kintyre and Lorne, or more colloquially addressed as Lord Lorne.  There are actually small variations in the way a Marquess would be addressed versus the son of a duke using the courtesy title, but I don’t think that has come up yet in the series.  The point here, though is that the non-inheriting son of a duke or marquess is called Lord (First Name) in direct address, as was the case with Winston Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill.

A title holder or heir using a courtesy title will be called Lord Y or Lord X of Y where X is the family name and Y is the associated place name for the title.  So, to give a real example, there was a twentieth century British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden who was created Earl of Avon with the subsidiary title of Viscount Eden, of Royal Leamington Spa in the County of Warwick.  So, from that time until his death, Anthony Eden was addressed as Lord Avon.  His son, during this time, was addressed as Lord Eden.

Non-inheriting sons of  an earl or less are styled, “The Honourable.”  So, another character in the series is Lord Francis Campbell’s maternal uncle and Royal Navy Captain, The Honourable Sir Sidney Kentigern Godolphin, younger son of the Earl Godolphin.  He had earned a knighthood before he was introduced in the series, thus the “Sir.”

So, that is a brief overview in case anyone was wondering why Lord Francis was Lord Francis when everyone else who was “Lord” somebody was using a title or last name.

Real People Used as Characters

Friday, August 3rd, 2012

The Hidden Angels series is set in a world similar to our own except for the changes that happen due to Matthew West and his progeny.  As those changes spread out, it becomes less and less likely that something or someone corresponds exactly to who was there and what happened in the real world.  For instance, we might meet Karl Marx, but he might be a lawyer and committed monarchist.  Or Nietsche might have different forenames (since he was named for his king whose birthday he was born on) and he might be a Lutheran minister and theologian because his father lived to guide him to adulthood.  But by about 1900, it is unlikely that anyone born will be the same as in the real world, unaffected by the changes induced by Matthew West and his progeny.

That said, there are many historical characters who make cameos or have greater appearances in the series.  Robert Walpole, the first British Prime Minister, appears briefly.  Many nobles appear or are referenced since Matthew West becomes a nobleman, which means his children are more likely to marry into other noble families.  The Duke of Shrewsbury and Earl of Derby are examples who appear in the first volume of the series.  George III appears in several chapters in multiple volumes, as does his uncle, the Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, etc.

By the third book, Matthew West has taken a new identity and purposefully faded into the background.  He will still appear now and then, but he becomes a fairly minor character, just one among many Angels in the series.  Instead, there is a new character who comes to the fore, a character who was real, but whose life has already started veering from his original path before he even appears in the third book.  His path will continue to diverge from the original, and he will be a central character moving to the peripheral as time goes on in the series until 1845.  The upcoming volumes will still be constructed of many independent or semi-independent stories with a large number of characters, but the events around this one character will become central.

Part of the reason that most of the real characters have been cameos up to this point is that it is difficult to say what a real person would or would not do.  It’s like using characters that another author created.  (In this case, the author is God.)  People who read the original author have very strong opinions about what a character would or would not do.  Readers might even get irate if they feel some character has been corrupted from the original into something unrecognizable.  So it might be with historians when historical personages are made to do the will of some hack fiction writer.  As an author, I am trying to avoid such things.  If a historical person is used relatively extensively, it is only if their lives have already been significantly altered.

For instance, let’s look at King George III.  In real history, he started showing the first signs of some sort of disease that affected his mind, possibly porphyria,  in 1765.  It will be revealed in 1787, presently intended for the third volume, that Matthew West healed him and his family at that point, cleaning up the genetic diseases.  Of course, Matthew West had already been changing things and interacting with the House of Guelph for more than forty years.  So by that point the changes are so great that George III would not be the same man he would have been in our universe.  The same is true of his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland.  William Augustus first meets Matthew West when he is only a boy, and then he goes to the military university Matthew West started and continues to be mentored by West.  West even counsels him on his diet and exercise regimen, which leads to his living a longer life than he did in reality.

The Prophecy of the Popes

Sunday, June 17th, 2012

A silly thing about authors is that sometimes they think simply everyone must know everything they know.  Such it is with the Prophecy of the Popes.  This author has long been interested in such things, and being interested can cite a thousand times this prophecy has been in the news over the last thirty-four years.  It has been brought to my attention that not all of my readers know about it.  For an easy update, I refer those to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes.

As that entry mentions, the provenance of the “prophecy” is uncertain.  It may even have been propaganda to support the candidacy of a certain cardinal to reach the Papacy.  As author, I chose to use the Nostradamus explanation of the prophecy’s origin.  I pictured him as he slowly wrote it out by hand, but then he reaches the new Pope in 1769.  He wrote down the code phrase, but had a sudden inspiration that things had changed, that a new phrase was relevant.  This was because even though the character who would later be known as Matthew West had yet to arrive on Earth, already his presence in the universe was propagating change waves through time.

So, what are the changes?  The prophet scratches out the Latin phrase “Ursus uelox,” or “Swift bear,” (251 on the list on the Prophecy page on Wikipedia) and writes the Latin words for “Innocent of War.”  This is a reference to the chapter of the same name in the second volume (Angels Revolting) where Cardinal Infante Carlos de Bragança of Portugal becomes Pope as Innocent XIV.  The name honored the real Pope Innocent XIII, who had spent time in Portugal before he was Pope.  (See entry 246 on the list on the Prophecy page.)

Of course, if one Pope is chosen differently, subsequent Popes will probably be different.  The Pope may appoint different cardinals.  He will almost certainly die at a time different than the real pope did, just as the fictional Innocent XIV dies in late 1783 as opposed to the real Clement XIV, our Swift Bear, who died in 1774.  So, there are a different crop of candidates in 1783 after the fourteen year reign of the fictional Innocent XIV than were available after the five-year reign of the real Clement XIV.  Of course this means that instead of the Prophecy’s continuing with the line 252 that we know, Apostolic Pilgrim, it has a different phrase, “Western Shores,” which just coincidentally is the title of a chapter in the upcoming third volume in the series.  So, old Western Shores will take us up to 1810.

The next entry in the revised prophecy is, “Long Warrior, Long Time.”  Would any be surprised if that referred to a tall and long-lived descendant of Matthew West?  Of course not.  So, that Pope will take us to 1902.  Yes, a gentle reign of 92 years.  But you won’t see him in action until the fourth volume and his ascendence to the Papacy until the fifth or sixth volume, depending on how things split as I fill in some of the chapters I am still writing.