Flashy does show some discretion when Victoria Regina asks him how a diamond he recovered was worn, and he does not tell her that the ruler danced naked with it stuck (somehow) in her navel.
Not a defence I’m overly wildly convinced by. Having read and enjoyed the novels as a teenager, I systematically reread them all again a few years back, about thirty years after I’d first read them.
The hurdle of the rape in the first novel does seem to me an issue for the whole series. From my understanding, Fraser did pretty much acknowledge that that had been a mistake. It does jar with the tone of the other novels.
Overall, I felt the series peaked very early. It starts out with that sense of parodying specific Victorian novels, but that peters out very quickly. As I’ve probably argued on the Dope before, the brilliance of Royal Flash is that Fraser explicitly fixes all the fundamental plot holes that Hope ought to have spotted in The Prisoner of Zenda.
On the “footnotes” - and aren’t they usually formatted as endnotes? - I similarly think that Fraser got lazy. The early novels have that touch of Gibbonian irony to the notes, that the later ones don’t. Fraser’s notes are always interesting, but they did just over time become a vanilla listing of his (usually ultimately obvious) sources. Often clumsily reiterating the point he’d probably gracefully made in the main text.
Without wanting to seem cruel; I wonder whether some of the decline in quality seen in Fraser’s later output, vis-a-vis earlier, can be ascribed to mental slowing-down on the author’s part owing to advancing age – he died at 82 (The Reavers was, I think, his last work). There’s some good stuff in the last-but-one Flashman novel, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (John Brown); but I found it somewhat weak in that much of it is rather blatant “recycling” of Flash for Freedom, only taking place ten years later. I did feel that with the very last “Flashman” – Flashman On The March (the campaign against Theodore of Abyssinia), much of Fraser’s old spark was recovered.
No idea; I read for pleasure, not to dissect the text for a university thesis. (Been there, done that, glad to be able to read for enjoyment again.)
I’m just sorry we’ll never know the true story behind Flashman being decorated with the highest honors by both sides in the US Civil War. He made repeated references to that, but Fraser died before that book could come out.
One theory I’ve heard is that Fraser never intended to write a book in that era so all his Civil War references are the equivalent of the noodle incident.
You only think that as you have only read three of the books.
Yes. His service with the Union forces in 1862 and Confederate forces in 1863 would have allowed him to be on the losing side in some of the worst disasters for each, including Pickett’s Charge.
We also only got a brief look at his service in the Zulu War at Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift. Both would have offered exceptional opportunities for cowardice disguised as bravery.
I seem to recall reading that he said he wasn’t all that interested in the US Civil War. I think Flashman’s service with John Brown substituted for that.
Per a supposed quote from a 2002 interview by Fraser (no cites to give, I fear – just “picked up from the Net”): Fraser said, "to me, the American Civil War is a colossal bore. It was a rotten war, it’s been done to death and I’m not terribly interested in it. An American wrote to me urging me to write it, saying it had to be the high point of Flashman’s career. I wrote back saying: ‘Son, it’s a foreign sideshow. The Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, they were the important things in Flashman’s life. Your civil war? He was so disinterested that he fought on both sides.’ "
Despite my admiration of most of Fraser’s work: I feel that in the above, he was behaving like a dick – especially toward his American correspondent, but also toward his fans in general, who had been fascinated over the years by his frequently-dropped “in passing” references in the novels, to Flashman’s ACW doings. Picture generally got is that Flashy finds the USA a largely horrible, but nonetheless interesting, place… perhaps by 2002 Fraser, in his late 70s, had come to feel entitled to behave like an obnoxious old curmudgeon.
??? It’s as if I’d said, “I’ve only read three James Bond novels, but they seemed awfully sexist,” and you responded, “You only think that as you have only read three of the books.” As a rebuttal, that doesn’t make any sense.
I’m still confused by how Flashman could have been in the Crimean War, when the first book in the series takes place after the Crimean War…and there is no gap in his history into which a prequel could be shoehorned.
Did Fraser just quietly blow off the timeline, and write the prequel anyway?
Disagree: I thought the series maintained quality pretty consistently, remarkably so as it was published from 1969-2005.
The one I found a bit of a retread was Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, as someone mentioned upthread.
Afghan War = Flashman, takes place 1839–42.
Crimean War = Flashman at the Charge, takes place 1854–55.
The first Afghan War takes place before the Crimean War.
Bad analogy. If you had said “Bond seems to use a Beretta 418 a lot” it would have been more correct. And just as wrong.
The first three books (esp 1 & 2) were written as broad fantasy parodies.
Late, pTerry got into serious* character and world development. The tenor and theme of the books changed.
- still some humor, but less and less.
??? But the first book refers to Lord Cardigan and the Charge of the Light Brigade.
Having proposed that Fraser declined, I must admit that Flashman on the March was good. Though possibly helped by the fact that my re-reading of the novels was deliberately followed in each case by seeking out more factual accounts and in this instance I thought that both Henty’s contemporary The March to Magdala and Marsden’s recent The Barefoot Emperor were well worth reading in themselves, even given the minor disagreements with Fraser.
It refers to Cardigan and to the Light Dragoons. Cardigan took command of the Light Dragoons in 1836, before First Afghan War. Flashman joined the Dragoons in the late 1830s when he was about 18, when he first met Cardigan.
The books were supposedly written by Flashman when he was an old man. Flashman also served with Cardigan later in the Crimea, so perhaps he mixes in some mention of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the first novel. But the novel itself mainly takes place during the Afghan War.
To amplify what Colibri suggests and without checking the specific reference, surely there’s the point that all of the Flashman Papers are written well after the events described. The Flashy playing with the grandkids on the lawn in between penning his memoirs knows all about what will ultimately happen with Lord Cardigan before he put pen to paper on what became that first invaluable packet of documents.
That’s almost certainly what happened, then: I mistook “Old Flashy’s” reminiscences for “Young Flashy’s.” Never mind. Simple mistake. Nothing to see here…