Dream - Historical adventure
This was a dream of high adventure. A lost prince returning to claim his birthright.
It was pretty obvious that the old king best husband around. The queen his wife must have gotten fed up with his philandering ways and left him - while pregnant? I don't know, definitely with the child, though. Since the boy - Prince William - was raised in secrecy with no one knowing who he was, I would guess that she was pregnant at the time and that she wasn't around while he was growing up. Neither the king nor the queen were evident in the dream - so I'm going to guess that she was pregnant when she left the king, she had the child, left him to be fostered, then was herself found and forced to resume her position - never telling anyone about the child until she lay on her deathbed.
From the uncertainty of the position, there was some question as to exactly where the young prince was and which young male was he.
William had learned weapons from a barbarian weapons master (named Shahin - I saw it written once in the dream) who was a bit of a berserker. He was also someone who had served the queen which would explain why there had been a plot to execute him at one point since he could attest to the boy's parentage. When William was told that his father wanted him, he and Shahin left the country estate and started traveling toward the capital.
They met up with a number of people - stayed with minorly noble family where the daughter of the house was pretending to be her disabled brother ... that is, her brother the heir was disabled which would have eliminated him from inheriting so she was pretending to be him in public while he was learning to administer the estate on their majority. She was well trained in fighting and well-educated and when William left, she went with him as one of his courtiers.
At one point, they tried to rescue a young male (named Mikey or Michael) from a life of servitude in a troupe of traveling performers but they lost him again. William was convinced that Mikey was his half-brother. This was when they first encountered Forkill and it was Forkill who winkled Mikey away from them.
While stopping in a city once, Shahin picked up an admirer - a little blonde-haired girlchild, prepubescent, a street-dweller. She was enchanted to meet a real barbarian and she decided that she was a barbarian as well. She began to wear the fur skirt - belted high on the chest but under where her bosoms would be if she had any - and a necklet of large flat rectangular beads - smaller on the ends, the largest at the mid-point. When Shahin was accused and consigned to death (at the scheming of Forkill), she managed to stay the hand of the executioner long enough for William and his courtiers to find out the truth.
By the time they arrived at the capital city, William had between 5 and 10 people in his service - which sounded like a lot but as it turned out, the others at court had similar or larger groups in their service. He was enrolled in the military college as a son of minor nobility - until his status could be clarified. Forkill was another enrolled in the school, in the entourage of another pretender to the throne. There were some shenanigans there - Forkill's group manipulating matters to make it look like William's people were the trouble-makers.
The little barbarian girl managed to get herself into the women's section of the dorms and chose one of the girls there to befriend. And thus we met the "queen" of the college - who was or wanted to be the chosen consort to the pretender to the throne but seemed more like Forkill's born match than the other boy's.
(I should, perhaps, mention that the cross-dressing young woman was in the dream as William's best friend and as far as I could tell in the dream, she had no romantic interest in him all. When the barbarian girl selected her friend from among the other court girls, it was the cross-dresser who thought that the friend might be a suitable consort for William and helped barbarian girl to groom her and teach her to stand up for herself.)
It was a fascinating dream, filled with details and adventure - sword fights and intrigue. I suspect that the inspirations for the dream were the reference to King Arthur I made in an earlier post, the cover of the book Octavian Nothing (picture of a man in an iron mask which made me think of the Three Musketeers and the P.C. Hodgell "Rathillien" series which I finished a few weeks back. I slept far too late, because I found the dream so interesting and in fact, several times, I woke briefly and then went back into the dream but at a different point.
It was pretty obvious that the old king best husband around. The queen his wife must have gotten fed up with his philandering ways and left him - while pregnant? I don't know, definitely with the child, though. Since the boy - Prince William - was raised in secrecy with no one knowing who he was, I would guess that she was pregnant at the time and that she wasn't around while he was growing up. Neither the king nor the queen were evident in the dream - so I'm going to guess that she was pregnant when she left the king, she had the child, left him to be fostered, then was herself found and forced to resume her position - never telling anyone about the child until she lay on her deathbed.
From the uncertainty of the position, there was some question as to exactly where the young prince was and which young male was he.
William had learned weapons from a barbarian weapons master (named Shahin - I saw it written once in the dream) who was a bit of a berserker. He was also someone who had served the queen which would explain why there had been a plot to execute him at one point since he could attest to the boy's parentage. When William was told that his father wanted him, he and Shahin left the country estate and started traveling toward the capital.
They met up with a number of people - stayed with minorly noble family where the daughter of the house was pretending to be her disabled brother ... that is, her brother the heir was disabled which would have eliminated him from inheriting so she was pretending to be him in public while he was learning to administer the estate on their majority. She was well trained in fighting and well-educated and when William left, she went with him as one of his courtiers.
At one point, they tried to rescue a young male (named Mikey or Michael) from a life of servitude in a troupe of traveling performers but they lost him again. William was convinced that Mikey was his half-brother. This was when they first encountered Forkill and it was Forkill who winkled Mikey away from them.
While stopping in a city once, Shahin picked up an admirer - a little blonde-haired girlchild, prepubescent, a street-dweller. She was enchanted to meet a real barbarian and she decided that she was a barbarian as well. She began to wear the fur skirt - belted high on the chest but under where her bosoms would be if she had any - and a necklet of large flat rectangular beads - smaller on the ends, the largest at the mid-point. When Shahin was accused and consigned to death (at the scheming of Forkill), she managed to stay the hand of the executioner long enough for William and his courtiers to find out the truth.
By the time they arrived at the capital city, William had between 5 and 10 people in his service - which sounded like a lot but as it turned out, the others at court had similar or larger groups in their service. He was enrolled in the military college as a son of minor nobility - until his status could be clarified. Forkill was another enrolled in the school, in the entourage of another pretender to the throne. There were some shenanigans there - Forkill's group manipulating matters to make it look like William's people were the trouble-makers.
The little barbarian girl managed to get herself into the women's section of the dorms and chose one of the girls there to befriend. And thus we met the "queen" of the college - who was or wanted to be the chosen consort to the pretender to the throne but seemed more like Forkill's born match than the other boy's.
(I should, perhaps, mention that the cross-dressing young woman was in the dream as William's best friend and as far as I could tell in the dream, she had no romantic interest in him all. When the barbarian girl selected her friend from among the other court girls, it was the cross-dresser who thought that the friend might be a suitable consort for William and helped barbarian girl to groom her and teach her to stand up for herself.)
It was a fascinating dream, filled with details and adventure - sword fights and intrigue. I suspect that the inspirations for the dream were the reference to King Arthur I made in an earlier post, the cover of the book Octavian Nothing (picture of a man in an iron mask which made me think of the Three Musketeers and the P.C. Hodgell "Rathillien" series which I finished a few weeks back. I slept far too late, because I found the dream so interesting and in fact, several times, I woke briefly and then went back into the dream but at a different point.