Never underestimate the benefits of a very talented Roman spin doctor! Anchises is not the only one who benefitted there, but the comparison is illuminating.
While you seen to have a fandom-specific dynamic well-described above, I do think you're onto something with the ubiquity of Daddy issues, which feels to me like a symptom that has washed over to fandom from media. (Possibly irrelevant to your Gaunt observation: It always feels like the same Daddy issue, rather than reflecting the infinite ways that parent/child relationships between men can go awry.) I find this vaguely disappointing, as someone who would love to read more about complex and not entirely positive mother/daughter relationships.
My own views of John of Gaunt are entirely colored by my reading and adoring Anya Seton's Katherine (which not surprising follows Swynford's life and casts him as an attractive love interest) at a formative age. I'd be hard-pressed to evaluate her treatment as an adult, though a Chaucer professor I know always protested that Seton made Chaucer too cuddly & not dangerous or sarcastic enough.
Roman spin-doctors were the best in the ancient world. :)
I've never read Anya Seton's novel, but my own (more positve than not) views on John of Gaunt were shaped by a novel as well, Wheel of Fortune by Susan Howatch. (Which has a great Katherine character, too.) Which, btw, avoids that "always the same Daddy issues" trap you accurately mention as a multi fandom phenomenon; Howatch's John has parent issues and is himself the cause for daddy issues in both the Richard and the Henry Bolingbroke character, but not because he can't show affection, and they're not the same issues for both, either.
While you seen to have a fandom-specific dynamic well-described above, I do think you're onto something with the ubiquity of Daddy issues, which feels to me like a symptom that has washed over to fandom from media. (Possibly irrelevant to your Gaunt observation: It always feels like the same Daddy issue, rather than reflecting the infinite ways that parent/child relationships between men can go awry.) I find this vaguely disappointing, as someone who would love to read more about complex and not entirely positive mother/daughter relationships.
My own views of John of Gaunt are entirely colored by my reading and adoring Anya Seton's Katherine (which not surprising follows Swynford's life and casts him as an attractive love interest) at a formative age. I'd be hard-pressed to evaluate her treatment as an adult, though a Chaucer professor I know always protested that Seton made Chaucer too cuddly & not dangerous or sarcastic enough.
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I've never read Anya Seton's novel, but my own (more positve than not) views on John of Gaunt were shaped by a novel as well, Wheel of Fortune by Susan Howatch. (Which has a great Katherine character, too.) Which, btw, avoids that "always the same Daddy issues" trap you accurately mention as a multi fandom phenomenon; Howatch's John has parent issues and is himself the cause for daddy issues in both the Richard and the Henry Bolingbroke character, but not because he can't show affection, and they're not the same issues for both, either.
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