Further thoughts on Kidnapped

[regshoe]

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?

Comments

[muccamukk]

I need to catch up on your fic for this! Hooray for not being the only one in the tag anymore!

[sanguinity]

God, I love that quarrel on the moor so much. SO MUCH. SO FUCKING MUCH. Alan falling to his knees crying, because no matter the insult, he cannot bring himself to kill or injure Davy!

And then the bit immediately after, where Davy realizes the magnitude of what he's done, and the only way he can think of to walk it back is to PRETEND THAT HE'S DYING. (This was a VERY formative book for me, and that was my principal take-away: the best way to salvage a friendship is to PRETEND YOU'RE DYING.)

(Okay, yes, yes, he really was sick! But he ABSOLUTELY hammed it up for Alan!)

*collapses on my fainting couch while I take a moment*

12-inch height difference: I suspect they're playing it up in that moment, just for the pleasure of being friends again, but I'll bet you anything it's still something absurd. A good nine inches, at least, if not more.

I have seen no adaptations, although someone shared on tumblr a snippet of one from the 60s just a short while ago... (Here.) I'd like to see the one that has Paul McGann as a redcoat, because Paul McGann, but there's a part of me that's loathe to see ANY adaptation, because I have loved this book too long and too hard to risk someone else's casting getting stuck in my brain.

[theseatheseatheopensea]

I remember loving the 60s Disney adaptation when I was a kid, but that might just be my nostalgia speaking! XD I also really liked the one with Michael Caine as Alan. I can't remember if you've read "Catriona", but I think this movie spoils some parts of it? Again, I don't know if it holds up, but as a kid, I thought it was great fun!

Every time I think of "Kidnapped", I think about how it was one of my earliest m/m ships, except that 10 year old me didn't know it was called shipping! XD

[oursin]

I haven't read it, so I'm not sure if I'd recommend it, but apparently it was a pioneering work of m/m erotic romance in its day: Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped has long been considered a masterpiece of high adventure. In The Low Road, James Lear reinvents this classic as a satirical, queer, coming-of-age story.

[lilliburlero]

I'm a height-difference literalist! It is a matter of immense disappointment to me that there are quite a lot of descriptions of the historical Alan Breck, and he seems to have been reasonably tall. iirc, RLS's description of his clothes comes pretty much straight off a Wanted poster that also describes him as being 5'10", so the decision to make him a Short King was I think very deliberate.

I've never known quite why Alan speaks such braid Scots - Highlanders tending not to even now, especially if their first language is Gaelic - and I like your rationalisation for it.

[hyarrowen]

BBC 2005. It takes a little while to get off the ground but then Iain Glen appears over the gunwale and it just goes whoosh. New Zealand doesn't look right, but I can forgive that, just about.

I've got most of the adaptations, and enjoyed them, sorta; but some mess about with the ending of the book, though I can't speak as to history.

I like the sequel too, but only for Alan and Davy.

[liriaen]

You're giving me ideas... I seriously need to read this properly - I only have a 1978 Dutch (!) graphic novel edition that I read as a kid... and my memory is sketchy at best. I have the comic here, maybe still a good starter :D

[friendofthejabberwock]

Oh yes, please do write long rambling DW posts. I am enjoying reading your thoughts :D. I haven't started my reread yet but seeing this might get me in gear for it later today.

[garonne]

Like other commenters, I shipped these two as a child before I even knew what shipping was! :)

I reread Kidnapped last year on a sort of Jacobite binge (because of FotH, of course) and, like you, I was perturbed by the way that in the written text, David speaks standard English and Alan speaks a sort of Scots, even though general knowledge and the narration tell us that it should be otherwise. I like your theory about David/Robert Louis Stevenson "translating" both characters' speech to give the reader that same sense of familiarity/foreignness that David himself would have.

I also noticed that David uses the word "plaid" to refer to what is presumably a plain, non-tartan blanket. (He wraps himself in his plaid to sleep, etc.) Whereas in the context of FotH fic and the Highland Dress act, I always used "plaid" to refer specifically to something that was outlawed.

[luzula]

I am still behind on various posts, and just getting to this one! Aww, I'm glad you're feeling gleefully fannish over it. Yes, that scene is hilarious and adorable...

I challenge you to write a FotH/Kidnapped crossover! Or I suppose that should be GitN. It would be a service to fandom. : D