regshoe | Further thoughts on Kidnapped

Well, then! With RMSE over I no longer need to maintain anonymity about having re-read and been writing fic for Kidnapped, and so I can now post some more thoughts about it—which I am very glad to be able to do, as during my re-read and fic writing I fell into just a bit of gleeful fannish obsession over it and very much want to write long rambling DW posts. Here we go...

This might not have been very clear before, but I really love Davie and Alan. The banter, the culture/political clashes, the deliberately annoying folk songs, the terribly serious gentlemanly honour, the deep and heartfelt care for each other underneath all the silliness, the derailing an argument through tactically provoking hurt/comfort instead... absolutely hilarious and adorable, all the time. I love them <333

I will refrain from posting a wall of quotes, but I think my actual favourite moment is this:

“This is a pity,” he said at last. “There are things said that cannot be passed over.”

“I never asked you to,” said I. “I am as ready as yourself.”

“Ready?” said he.

“Ready,” I repeated. “I am no blower and boaster like some that I could name. Come on!” And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself had taught me.

“David!” he cried. “Are ye daft? I cannae draw upon ye, David. It’s fair murder.”

“That was your look-out when you insulted me,” said I.

“It’s the truth!” cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. “It’s the bare truth,” he said, and drew his sword. But before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. “Na, na,” he kept saying, “na, na—I cannae, I cannae.”

'I can't possibly fight you!'—'Aha, but you're an eighteenth-century gentleman, and you insulted me which means you BASICALLY already agreed to a fight!'—'Oh no, you're right!' *draws sword* ...beautiful logic, I love it. And then Alan discards gentlemanly honour and declares he can't do it after all! Amazing. I love them both so much.

And, thinking about Jacobite slash in general, Davie/Alan is a really fun contrast to Ewen/Keith—insofar as Ewen attracts Keith by totally upending his stereotypes of what Highlanders are like, whereas Alan is, really, just as outlandish and weird and kind of terrifying as David expects Highlanders to be and Davie falls completely in love with him anyway. Great fun.

That twelve-inch height difference: is it really that much, or is Davie just seeing how much he can get away with in the aftermath of the quarrel when Alan is desperately avoiding anything like disagreeing with him? I can't decide which is funnier.

OK, a slightly more serious point—the language. David makes clear in several places that he speaks Scots, not standard English (It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech ... I have never grown used to it; nor yet altogether with the English grammar ...) despite both the narrative and (mostly) his dialogue being written in English. Meanwhile Alan's dialogue uses more Scots words, but (I'm fairly sure that!) it's not really authentic Scots; and he's a native Gaelic-speaking Highland gentleman, a population who from what I've read tended to speak standard English (as Ewen does, and Keith remarks on, for instance). My speculation is that what David as narrator is doing is 'translating' his own speech into standard English for the benefit of English-speaking readers, while using Scots vocabulary to create the same sense of foreignness in Alan's dialogue that Alan as a Highlander has for him.

How old is David? The book opens in June 1751, and he says he's seventeen; but when he's talking to Mr Rankeillor at the end he says he was born in March 1733, which—unless my maths is wrong—means he ought to have turned eighteen before the beginning of the book.

I recently learnt that some versions of the folk song I know as 'Wild Mountain Thyme' are called 'The Braes o' Balquhidder', and feature references to that place in the lyrics. I'm sure this could be used in a slash fic somehow.

Speaking of which, I love that both Davie and Alan are canonically into folk music. I can make as many ballad references as I like in fic and it'll be totally in character! :D

This book has been adapted a lot! Do people who've seen any of the various adaptations have any thoughts on them, would you recommend any in particular?