Book: The Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherford

[Krishna]

The story starts in ancient times. We learn that when Ireland separated from Britain, some of the species did not make it to the smaller isle of Ireland from Britain. Ivy is one; snakes are another. There were no snakes at all in Ireland. 

The story proper starts a bit later, when Deidre is unhappy that her father is planning, as is custom, to sell her as a slave. The races began and in Ireland of old, they rode naked – even to war. She sees young Conall riding with just a loincloth. 

Conall is a young, handsome, prince and skilled in war and yet he also mingled with druids and had learnt the ancient art. Even his close friend from childhood, Finbarr, could not take the full measure of Conall.  When Conall says he wants to become a druid, forsaking the valiant ways of soldiers, the High King intervenes to say ‘No’. 

Deidre, in the meanwhile is the daughter of  Chief Fergus son of Fergus, a local chiefton living in a godforsaken place. The place has a pool forming at the bend of River Boyne, and the place itself takes its name from the site, and is called Blackpool. Or in Celtic language it is called Dubh Linn. 

We also learn that the people are followers of Eriu, the Goddess of the land. Irish came from Eriu, through a later morphing of the usage. 

Goibniu, who lived there was not afraid of the place where there were mounds of the dead. In fact he was ugly and bald and had a permanent squint in the only eye he had – the other was lost in a fight when he was younger. People feared him and called him Balar behind his back, referring to the one eyed king of the giants of legend. He was smart and a master craftsman. 

When Goibniu comes to the fair and meets Fergus and sees the tasty morsel of Deidre with him, approaches him at the fair. Fergus is planning to marry Deidre to a suitable boy for substantial dowry, a part of which he is entitled to keep. He has debts up to his neck and so that money will come in handy. Gibniu convinces Fergus to have Deidre marry Gobniu’s nephew. However, at the exact moment, Deidre meets Conall and Finbarr who had come to show off their prowess in the art of chariot acrobatics and stylish warfare. Deidre seems to attract Conall’s interest, which pleases Finbarr who does not want Conall to be a druid (and an unmarried man)

The High King decides to send Conall to ‘retrieve’ a prize bull from a recalcitrant chieftain who defies him. 

When Goibnu comes back with a groom for Deidre, she persuades her father to wait until spring and the father, realizing her love for Conall, lets Conall know that he only has a month or so to make up his mind. 

Meanwhile, in the fair arranged for picking matches, Finbarr contrives to get Conall meet Deidre again. He still is in two minds. Deidre is now reconciled to marrying the man whom Goibnu picked for her. When Goibnu accuses Fergus of lying about her daughter, Fergus flies into a rage and the High King makes peace with them – by asking each to suck the nipple of the other man as is the old Irish custom. They are now bound to each other and could not quarrel at all. 

The High King announces that Conall will go and raid a recalcitrant chieftain who refuses to pay him his dues. Conall is shocked as he was told before that he will be consulted. The second announcement by the High King knocks everyone off their feet in their unexpectedness. He announces that he has decided to marry again and has chosen Deidre! 

His motives are to cut the imperial queen to size but Deidre shudders inwardly at the thought of living with the flabby, hairy smelly, old man that the High King is. But no one can defy the powerful ruler and Fergus is ecstatic at the unexpected windfall! Goibnu was also bought off secretly earlier with money. 

But the queen manages to waylay Deidre and threaten her that she will be killed if the marriage goes through. She advises Deidre to run if she wants to live. Conall hears her story at the stroke of dawn and they both decide to elope. The High King asks his soldiers to find them, kill Conall and bring Deidre back.

Meanwhile Conall hopes to keep her a virgin so that he could persuade HIgh King to take her back untouched and let him go in exile but Deidre has other plans. She seduces him. So he goes incognito with her in the guise of a druid and she as a slave (he with a tonsure of a druid and a change of clothes and she with a shaven head denoting slave status) and hide successfully. Finbarr is asked to go find him by the High King and he tries for a year without success – his family and he in mortal danger if he does not obey. 

They hide close to Fergus’s home, though Deidre does not tell him she is there. They live in bliss for several years and Deidre becomes pregnant. Now, the High King is frustrated with failing crops and floods and fears that people associate the bad luck to him mainly due to his weakness in not being able to find Conall and Deidre all these years. He goes to his druid Lanall and that person divines the location for him – he only knows that Fergus, Deidre’s father, “knows” where they are. 

Accordingly Finbarr is sent to Fergus to find and bring back Conall and ‘if he fails, the consequences would be severe’. With no alternative, Finbarr goes to meet Fergus. When he describes what the druid saw, Fergus knows exactly where Deidre may be – that was her favourite spot anyway – and goes in the cover of the night to warn them. 

When he gets back, he realizes that Finbarr has tricked him and now knows where Conall is. Conall is challenged to a duel and is forced to accept a duel with his closest friend. Conall kills him and is remorseful. When Deidre asks him to flee (and Fergus promising to come with him) he refuses. Lanre, his druid friend returns, and Conall makes a devil’s bargain with him. 

When Deidre and Conall go back to the High King for a reconciliation, Deidre is shocked to hear of the price that Conall is to pay. He ‘sacrifices himself’ for ending the drought and bringing the rain. She goes back with her father and a baby in her womb and feels intense anger. 

The boy is Morna and he grows up as a happy child, very quick on the uptake and wanting to be a warrior ‘like his dad’. When the High King dies in the meanwhile, Deidre relaxes thinking that she will now be left alone. Twenty years pass. 

When the new High King invites Morna to a feast, Deidre lies that he has gone away and hides the invitation from Morna too. But Larine catches up with them, and claims that now he is a Christian, converted by St Peter, who is proselytizing in those parts. He wants to make Morna a Christian too, and reveals the truth about Conall, his father. 

But Deidre guesses that his real intention is to convert Conall and send him to the High King so that he can try and convert the High King himself, callously putting Morna’s life in danger as he equally casually sacrificed Conall before. She is furious. Patrick intervenes and takes Morna with him, thereby solving Deidre’s worry. 

The story simply moves on several years later when everyone you know so far is dead and gone. There is Harold, a Norwegian boy who came from a Viking invasion and who is crippled by a clubfoot – a birth deficiency –  but very talented. He finds out – by a chance overhearing – that the girl – emotionless, but thin and pretty – came from Norway  simply because their parents paid money to get him married, he gets disgusted, refuses to marry her and goes to a port. There he meets the descendent of Fergus called Osgar and befriends him. 

Harold is a master craftsman and well respected. He meets the woman that his friend McGowan arranged for him – Astrid and marries her. But when he is out on a long voyage, the Viking kings come attacking and he flees to the monastery in Dublin for protection. Astrid refuses to come and takes refuge in a smaller church near her house but McGowan learns that that place has been attacked. 

Meanwhile, the story moves on to Osgar who refuses Caolinn even though they were childhood friends and becomes a monk. But he remembers her always and feels a sense of loss. You realize that all these characters in this story are weird and totally irrational. They behave in unpredictable ways and do unexpected things – but not in a surprising way. I’d say that these are so random that they seem out of character and irritating. 

Osgar accompanies Morann, a friend of Harold, back to the village even though he knows that King Boran with high ambition is invading his village. He is captured and taken in front of the king – he seems to stupidly have gone right to the army of the king to gape. 

King Boran surprises him with an offer to be his ally in the village. 

Years later, they have found accommodation and when Carolin is looking for another husband, she starts to like Harold. However, his necessity of kowtowing to Boran for survival angers her and she breaks off the relationship. 

The story just moves in fits and starts. Yes, it is interesting in its own way but you feel it lacks a coherent whole like there are in the stories of James Michener or even Pauline Gedge (See Alaska for an example of the former and The Scroll of Saqqarah for an example of the latter)

Now Brian Boru is collecting the armies to quell the rebellion. Harold goes back to his farmstead to sit out the war but Morann goes to Brian Boru: he had no choice, being summoned. 

Meanwhile Sigurd is back and is still seeking to kill Harold, as he did all those years ago. He plans to either kill him in the battle if Harold fights for Brian Boru but if not, he will go to his farmstead (as he has learnt about Harold during his investigations after returning) and kill the entire family. His family feud will be finally over and his honour restored. 

When Moran sees that his son had fallen in the battle, he seems to give up and both Morann and Brian Boru are killed by a small group of enemy warriors who break through. 

Thus, though Brian won the battle, both he and his son lost their lives. Meanwhile Osgar runs from the battle holding an axe and when he reaches Harold’s place, he sees Caolinn there and is pursued by Sigurd, who finally has come over, after looting the battle scene for his revenge. 

Osgar is nearly killed by the experienced Sigurd, but at the exact moment when Sigurd decided to remove the pesky priest, Harold appears in the view and the moment’s distraction is all it takes for Osgar to swing the axe and change the ending. 

After marrying Carolinn and Harold, Osgar returns to his church. 

Several years pass and Ireland is a squabbling mass of petty kings until the British arrive. In comes a King who was driven out, seeking to get his kingdom back. A mercenary soldier called Peter Fitz David joins his army and is befriended by a priest called Father Gilpatrick. 

You learn quite a few things, In Celtic, the dark swarthy man was called Dubh Ghall which got corrupted to Doyle – the original meant ‘Dark Stranger’ in Gaelic.  Like McDonald means ‘son of Donald’ in Scotland, so ‘FitzGerald’ means son of Gerald in Celtic. 

GilPatrick’s father was related to royalty, Peter learns but he is a priest as well. GilPatrick wants Peter to meet his pretty sister called Fionnuala. . HInt is ignored by Peter. 

Time to meet Fionnuala herself. She is a wild girl, not respecting restrictions and limits of girly behaviour and exasperating all the elders who do not know how to control her 

You learn another tidbit. In the old days of Christianity, people from Ireland used to go to Irish churches. Some with means went to bigger churches like the one in Compostela in Spain. Very few got to go so far as to visit Jerusalem, that fount from which Christianity arose. When they did, they held a palm in their hand as was prescribed. They came back and got the title ‘Palmer’. Interesting. 

With Ireland in turmoil and the king’s throne being empty – the man who was allied to the English King suddenly – others were eyeing it, people were feeling very uncomfortable. The king actually took Ireland by stealth, by negotiating with the priest in front when the soldiers entered by the back door. Una’s father escaped on time, leaving Una safe inside the church. When Una goes to get a look at their house later, she finds it has been occupied by English soldiers. Seeing it deserted, she tries to find the family treasure buried there but finds it has been taken away and that his family has lost everything other than what her parents carried with them – even though her father, away, does not know it yet. She too, gets captured by a soldier and is rescued last minute from certain rape by the priest (Gilpatrick’s father) who comes in time. 

Meanwhile, Gilpatrick’s sister Finnocula, the very pretty one, is utterly wild and untamable. When their parents despair of ever getting her married, FitzDavid visits the house and seems to be infatuated with her. The father, who hates English – since the King Henry’s folks killed Archbishop of Canterbury misinterpreting his lament for an order to kill – is mollified that this soldier is actually Welsh not English. 

Finnocula thrusts herself on Peter and they have many nights of clandestine sex with her almost being found out, and with her using primitive methods of contraception. She uses all her guile to disarm suspicious Una and keeps on seeing Peter, no matter the danger – in fact the danger seems to excite her!

Finally, when Peter betrays her to defeat the Irish High King (based on information she unwittingly gave), she finally breaks off with him. Later she falls in life with one of the Byrne brothers, Brendan. The other brother, quieter, more thoughtful, piques the interest of Una but he goes away not to return. Finnocula announces that she is pregnant, by the quiet brother!

King Henry comes and takes over Ireland, sending priests and getting the Pope on his side. The Irish fume to see all their traditions changed. All priests are English and the English religious policies are enforced in the Emerald Isle. Gilpatrick is sad but bows to the inevitable and follows the lead of the English priests. 

The story again moves several years into the future. A regular feature of the book is that the characters you have come to know well suddenly cease to exist and the story starts with their descendents. This does not feel like the smooth transition of Michener’s books (for instance Texas) or of the endless adventures of two families in Wilber Smith’s African adventures (The Courtneys and the Ballantynes). It feels abrupt. You can argue that this is more true to life than the others, because life is abrupt. But when you read it as fiction, which this is, it is startling and a little unsettling. 

Tim Tidy is a priest and he uncovers a plot to overthrow the English King who has established his domain in that part of Ireland. He sees a young girl who is plotting but does not know the identity of her co-conspirator. He accidentally heard the conversation when they thought that the church chamber was empty. (He was on the other side of a partition). He knew that revealing himself would  be great harm so he stays hidden until they departed. He goes to Harold, a local chief, to discreetly tell him what happened. 

Then finally he confides in McGowan who has a level head. This reaches the ears of the elders and they have MdCowan suggest that Tim go to Dublin as he, McGowan, heard that someone was enquiring after him. But Tim refuses to stay in Dublin and comes back. When the final plot is revealed to us, it is just brilliant because there is a plot twist within a plot twist within another one. Brilliantly constructed, and the mastermind of this whole thing is revealed to be an unexpected person (Unexpected to us readers – and not an unknown person. This is not a deux ex machina solution).  

The story simply then leaves them all alone and moves forward again, where a succession battle for Pantaganets in which Ireland supports Edward while Henty plots to keep the throne he already has. The family of Margaret, with her well born but poor parents loses her brother John to the battle but the Kildare clan who instigated the violence was left unharmed by King Henry, the victorious king of England because they were too powerful to offend. 

In the meanwhile, there are two major families in Dublin, the Fitzgeralds and the Butlers and it is a Butler who had cheated Margaret’s father of his wealth, earning his enmity. However, when he tries to get Margaret to a castle for a ball, and the son of the noble family takes a passing interest in Margaret, the mother arrives and, after she sends his son on an errand, snubs the family quite openly, causing her father to weep. Margaret is incensed. 

The feud based on a series of misunderstandings between Margaret, the red haired girl who is married to a Butler and Joan who is from the Doyle family is interesting. Margaret completely misconstrues what Joan says every time and insults her badly when Joan had come to her house by accident, seeking refuge from a raging storm. When finally Margaret overhears that her husband is having an affair with Joan and ‘confirms’ it by watching her husband enter the Butler mansion when everyone was away, she realizes that she now needs to kill Joan. 

Her chance comes when Joan is being taken in secret to a safe place when an ex Irish King plans to invade Ireland and betrays her plan to Sean O’Flynn who goes with a small force to capture her. Too bad that McCowan, his friend, would be with Joan. Margaret is OK to have Joan killed if the ransom demanded by Sean is not paid by Doyle. However the plan goes horribly wrong because McGowen had a force of mercenaries for protection and against Sean’s instincts, his son Fintan decides to attack and they are roundly defeated. Fintan is killed in the battle and Sean goes back in defeat. 

However, McGowan suspects Margaret’s involvement in the tipoff even though her husband has no idea. Meanwhile the husband reveals that Joan was helpful to him in a loan transaction and Margaret is horrified to realize that she may have planned the murder or punishment of Joan on totally false assumptions!

There is also another thread with a fiercely pro Irish girl called Cecily marries a practical merchant called Henry Tidy. Even before the wedding she seemed to flout her ‘Irish partiality’ by openly flouting the restrictions in English ruled Dublin and getting into repeated trouble. Finally when she openly invites and supports the Irish troops under Silken Thomas laying  siege outside the locked Dublin, Henry finally loses his patience and slaps her. She refuses to follow him to a safe haven within the area protected by the English army  and their relationship slowly deteriorates in the midst of the standoff between Earl Silken Thomas  and fortress Dublin which is loyal to the English King Henry. What adds fuel to the fire of her anger is how King Henry turned against the Pope and defied Catholicism, which went against everything she believed in. 

The story is not about princes at all, except in the earliest part where the ‘princes’ were sons of chieftains managing a tiny territory and so if you expected a royal story of Irish kings and queens, you will be very disappointed. The kings, both English and Irish, simply form a backdrop to the real story of multiple families through generations. Much of that is interesting, really, due to the power of the author Edward’s narration but it is annoying, as I mentioned, when the scene abruptly shifts from one generation to another. 

Margaret meets Joan when the Doyles decide to marry Joan’s daughter to Margaret’s son and realizes that she has been misunderstanding everything about Joan. Is it too late? Will her part in the kidnapping of Joan (though it failed) will come to light? 

It ends as it moves – abruptly. 

In summary, here is what I felt. First a disclaimer. This is the only book by Edward Rutherford that I have read so far, and so these remarks only pertain to this book. He may have done other things with the other books and so this is not intended as a general comment on the author’s multiple stories. With that said, let me speak of my impression. 

Edward has tried to do what Michener normally does in so many of his books. (Alaska, for instance). He has taken a panoramic view of the entire history of a place – in this case Ireland – and tried to tell history through invented people and their various descendents populating the place. But the style is far different and you get a very different vibe in their books.  This is an interesting book to read, but unless you are used to the author veering off after some episodes of a few people’s life before you can fully absorb their triumphs and tragedies, it feels a wee bit odd. 

But the history is all there, with real historical people (Fergus and St Patrick for instance). It is history and not thriller in historical background (as, for example Bernard Cornwell does well with his books – see The Winter King for one example)

All in all, I am glad I read it. 

6/10

   = = Krishna