One of the things I love about cover versions, remakes and adaptations is that they represent a different way of telling the same story. Often, it’s amazing to see how similar elements can give rise to such different stories.
At the moment, I’m enjoying a playful retelling of the King Arthur myth, in the form of the BBC’s Merlin series. Audaciously, it rewrites the prehistory of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table as a kind of soap opera, with popular British actors playing out stories that borrow from the Arthur myth whilst also establishing a mythology of their own.
The BBC’s website warns us to “keep the magic secret”, and this is the series’ main addition to the story we know. In this version, Uther Pendragon (Arthur’s father and predecessor) has banned magic from the kingdom. For him, magic is wild, uncivilised, and untrustworthy. It is the conflict between magic and Uther’s law that provides much of the adventure in this new story. It’s an interesting subject, and I’m enjoying watching how it is developed.
Many of my own stories are, in a sense, alternative versions of existing tales. ‘A Cadence‘ and the stories that follow it (‘A Fantasy’, ‘A Substitute’ and ‘A Tragedy’) are all based, to differing extents, on stories or story functions already known to me. They also contain my own inventions, elements of autobiography and even traces of public affairs. So I’ve rewritten the stories I know, or repurposed them.
In another sense, these stories contain the echoes of the many other ways in which I might have told them. My uncertain narrator plays out different possibilities rather than offering a fixed narrative, and – in a much more emphatic sense – reminds us that each of these stories could have ended differently, had the characters made different choices.
‘A Cadence‘ contains a story within the story – somewhere in the middle, the narrator interrupts his narrative to explain the back story of his two protagonists (Tenniel and Daniel), revealing why it is that this kingdom is governed not by one king, but instead by these prince twins.
Thinking about Merlin the other day, I remembered that I had told this story once before, in a significantly different way.
In ‘A Cadence‘ and its sequels, I took great care not to involve magic in any way, because I wanted to depict a world that was devoid of it. They’re rife with mythical creatures, but no magic.
Conversely, my earlier version of this story is all about magic. Like the writers of Merlin (although several years earlier) I invented a kingdom in which civilisation has pushed magic to the outskirts of acceptability. I envisioned this story as the first in a series about the return of magic to this place. I never wrote its sequels, and eventually re-used the story of the prince twins.
Here’s the original in its entirety (written circa 2002), in case you’re interested:
The Royal Twins
Once, a very long time ago, and in a land very different from our own (yet where men and women treat each other much the same) a pair of twins was born to the King and Queen who ruled the province. A very happy time followed, but after a few months the man and wife fell ill, and it was thought that they would not survive. The two boys, Titus and Chesney, were taken away from the invalids to save them from falling ill as well, and, when they returned, their mother and father were dead.
It is commonly known that twins have a natural bond between them, and in this case the natural bond was given further strength by the strange situation: the two boys were drawn together by the death of their parents, and became even closer when the public clamour surrounding the phenomenon of the orphaned royal twins demanded that they spend hours together at public events and royal appearances. In such a way, the most charming example of brotherly affection was reduced to a sort of stage show for the general amusement of a country in want of a ruler.
Because there was no natural heir old enough to take the throne, the kingdom fell temporarily into the hands of the royal council, which was made up of some of the wisest and most respected men in the province. One day, one of the most senior members of this council approached Titus with a heavy heart, and said:
“My dear boy, I have some terrible news to tell you. The other royal advisors and I have watched you and Chesney grow up together, and know how close you are. But, as you know, you are now both old enough to become King, and the law decrees that when twins are the heirs, a competition must be staged to identify the superior. We do not like it, but we must follow the royal procedure. The contest will take place next week.”
Titus received the news with a grave face, and said nothing for some time. When he was ready to speak, he said very simply: “You must know that I cannot compete against my brother, for aside from the fact that I love him too well to be able to do such a thing, the very idea is entirely impractical – it would not work.”
The advisor, whose name was Old Rodney, had anticipated such a response, and knew what the young man meant. Titus and Chesney had grown up together, had been trained and educated by the best men in the country, and were flawless at every task imaginable. The councillors had recognised immediately that to place the twins in competition with each other was not only morally outrageous, but also hypocritical, because logic itself dictates that if two specimens are perfect, completely unflawed, then one cannot possibly be superior to the other.
After a week had passed, this notion proved itself to be correct in practice. The brothers competed at archery, chess, dictation, jousting and numerous other activities, but to the astonishment of the crowd that had gathered to watch the selecting of their new King, in not one of these activities did one triumph over the other. Even in the highly subjective case of musical performance, in which Titus and Chesney played upon the lute and the recorder respectively, a panel of judges declared that both played so sweetly, accurately and with that creative instinct which often escapes the most accomplished musicians, that it would be unjust to announce a winner.
The royal council observed these happenings with a grave sense of irony. In any other situation, a kingdom would have cause to rejoice at the brilliance of the young princes. They were pure and gifted in every respect: loving, strong, intelligent and creative – the perfect representatives of their province. Yet now, the council was expected to search hard for some flaw in one of the brothers – anything which could distinguish one brother as better than the other.
In the land that we presently speak of, the use of magic had been rare for many years. There had been a time when sorcerers of all kinds held the supreme status in the land, but, as the kingdom grew and became more civilised, ruled justly by a King and Queen, and governed by rules and decrees rather than by enchantments and spells, this wild magic had been built upon and pushed aside, so that now only a few relics of the old times remained.
Old Rodney was not merely wise, but also extremely observant, so that he knew, through eavesdropping at the market-place, that there were those in the kingdom who still appealed to the forces of magic in times of strife. A popular source of advice was the young sorceress, Carmella, who lived with her brother in a hamlet on the outskirts of the kingdom. Had the use of magic been declared unlawful, the loyal Old Rodney would never have considered visiting Carmella. However, as the practice was merely considered primitive and antisocial, rather than strictly treacherous or even morally outrageous, Old Rodney’s only source of opposition on the matter was his personal misgivings. Eventually, deciding that the kingdom’s needs were more pressing than his own reluctance to turn to the wild ways, he went to visit Carmella, and explained the predicament.
Although Carmella was very young, she had been using magic to answer the questions of her visitors for many years. The magnitude of this particular problem affected her little, as she was hardly even aware of a royal presence in the province, so in most senses this visitor was much the same as any other. Nobody can say, then, why she chose to address this issue differently from all others which presented themselves to her. Instead of appealing to the forces of magic herself, and obtaining from them a solution for Old Rodney, she presented him with a thick book, telling him that if he ever had a question, the book would help him to find the answer.
Old Rodney hurried home and, after summoning the other most senior members of the royal council, placed the book onto a table. As Carmella had instructed him, he placed one hand on the cover of the book, and said in a loud but timid voice:
“Who should be the next King of the province?”
He then opened the book at a random page, and read the book’s response. Instead of giving a direct answer, the book had asked another question:
“Who is the rightful heir to the throne?”
Old Rodney sighed and turned away, believing the book to be useless. But one of his subordinates suggested that, as Carmella had said that the book would help its users to find an answer, rather than dictating one outright, they should follow its guidance.
Old Rodney, who was very wise, but growing impatient with the present problem, realised that the younger man was correct. Placing his hand on the book’s cover a second time, he answered:
“The rightful heir is the first male to be born to the King and Queen. But both sons were born at the same time.” When he opened the book again, the response was this:
“If the rightful heir is the first-born, and both were born at the same time, who is the rightful heir?”
With this second response, the book mysteriously closed itself, as though that was all it had to say on the matter. Since all those present were very wise, and quick with logic, they swiftly saw what the book meant. The following day, it was announced to the kingdom that the two princes, being inseparable in every respect, and complementing each other perfectly, would rule the province together. In this way, the province found its new King, and in this way, magic wormed its way back into the kingdom.