I finished The Constant Princess! I feel like finishing a novel is getting to be more and more of an event for me, because there are so few fictional pieces that can keep me sufficiently absorbed until the end. Half-finished books are literally building a tower next to my pillow. Woe to the distractions of technology -- i.e. internet and television. Anyway, The Constant Princes isn't the best of Philippa Gregory's works; it seems to lack a proper focus or message. But her excellence at characterisation still shines through at moments, and I can still appreciate her complex portrayal of relationships, ambitions and desires.
Some nice parts I've dog-eared:
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"We are both Spanish and a long way from our homes. Doesn't that matter more than the fact that I am black and you are white? That I worship my God facing Mecca and you worship yours facing west?"
"I am a child of the true religion and you are an infidel," she said, but with less conviction than she had ever felt before.
"We are both people of faith," he said quietly. "Our enemies should be the people who have no faith, neither in their God, nor in others, nor in themselves. The people who should face our crusade should be those who bring cruelty in the world for no reason but their own power. There is enough sin and wickedness to fight, without taking up arms against people who believe in a forgiving God and who try to lead a good life."
Katherine found that she could not reply. On the one hand was her mother's teaching, on the other was the simple goodness that radiated from this man. "I don't know," she said finally, and it was as if the very words set her free. "I don't know. I would have to take the question to God. I would have to pray for guidance. I don't pretend to know."
"Now, that is the very beginning of wisdom," he said gently. "I am sure of that, at least. Knowing that you do not know is to ask humbly, instead of tell arrogantly. That is the beginning of wisdom."
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Though I still love my mother, I don't worship her any more. I suppose, at last, I am growing up.
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Think, I say to myself fiercely. Don't feel with a tender heart, think with a hard brain, a soldier's brain. Don't consider this as a woman with child who knows there are many widows in Scotland tonight, think as a queen. My enemy is defeated, the country lies open before me, their king is dead, their queen is a young fool of a girl and my sister-in-law. I can cut this country into pieces, I can quilt it. Any commander of any experience would destroy them now and leave them destroyed for a whole generation. My father would not hesitate; my mother would have given the order already.
I check myself. They were wrong, my mother and father. Finally, I say the unsayable, unthinkable thing. They were wrong, my mother and father. Soldiers of genius they may have been, convinced they certainly were, Christian kings they were called - but they were wrong. It has taken me all my life to learn this.
A state of constant warfare is a two-edged sword, it cuts both the victor and the defeated. If we pursue the Scots now, we will triumph, we can lay the country to waste, we can destroy them for generations to come. But all that grows on waste are rats and pestilence. They would recover in time, they would come against us. Their children would come against my children and the savage battle would have to be fought all over again. Hatred breeds hatred. My mother and father drove the Moors overseas, but everyone knows that by doing so they won only one battle in a war that will never cease until Christians and Muslims are prepared to live side by side in peace and harmony. Isabella and Ferdinand hammered the Moors, but their children and their children's children will face the jihad in reply to the crusade. War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.
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That last bit reminds me of something else I'd heard before - that U2's Bono said something like, "What happens when grace meets karma?"
:)
Also, I've been meaning to get hold of David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace but so far, only the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library has it and therefore cannot be borrowed. -_-
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