The Tournament
Matthew Reilly
London: Orion Books, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4091-3422-0
410 pp.
It’s back to the Tudor age we go and Henry VIII bestrides the scene, roaring like a lion and seeking whom he may devour. While doing so, he has entrusted the education of his mostly forgotten younger daughter to a certain Mr. Roger Ascham. She is out of mind not just because she is distant from succession but also because she is the living reminder of her mother, Anne Boleyn, whose marriage to Henry ended in a sub-optimal way. As a result, when the offer comes from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to send an English champion to participate in an international chess tournament, Ascham spies the opportunity to give young Elizabeth a lesson in geography, sociology and logistics management that few could have managed.
They travel to Constantinople together with the champion himself, Mr. Giles, as well as a chaperon and escort and a friend for the young princess, as well as some guards. They do not take any servants, which seems like a mistake given how extremely privileged the nobility were in this period and how unlikely, therefore, they were to be able to keep their clothes clean and their luggage in good order. Never mind that, though, there is an adventure to be had. As the travel further east, increasingly beastly things start to happen to them and it is only the plucky unflappability of Ascham and Giles that keeps them safe from the wiles of Johnny Balkan. This rather introduces one of the central themes of the book, which reaches its apogee when the party reaches the great city itself.
Constantinople is a dazzling place, far surpassing in grandeur and architectural vision anything to be found in western Europe but, on the other hand, pretty much all of the people of the city are dishonest, prone to violence, monstrous and exploitative of each other. Edward Said, of course, wrote powerfully of this kind of Orientalism and it is quite humourously endemic throughout the text – I might note that this is a book that was hidden from me for a few years as I packed up to move from Thailand to Vietnam and then came back again. Not only that but I have no memory of buying it and I imagine I must have received it as a present. So, I didn’t want to be rude to the present-giver by giving up halfway through and so persisted to the end, even though there were numerous provocations from the author challenging me to do just that.
The subtext to all of this, of course, is that it deals with the secret education of Princess Elizabeth and this helps to explain the success of her subsequent career as one of Britain’s more remarkable monarchs (I use the term Britain loosely as it was then a contentious issue). This is elaborated upon on the back cover, where it is claimed that “… at court in London and on the high seas against the House of Castile – she never lost.” It will hardly come as a surprise for me to say that few cliches are left untroubled by the author, who presumably felt that he had delved deeply into the research and wanted the reader to know all about it. I particularly enjoyed the conversations between Ascham and Michelangelo. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, does not come out of it very well, with every single member of the clergy revealed as seasoned practitioners of sexual misconduct, often of the most abusive kind. The Turks themselves are, obviously, when they are not disreputable members of a baying mob, inscrutable, devious and incredibly cruel.
The events of the chess tournament are rather traumatizing and the little English party is obliged to leave in haste and make their way back to a more solid and understandable form of civilization. If they have been changed at all by their travels, it is in spite of the people they meet (with the exception of Michelangelo, perhaps) rather than because of them. I can only recommend you spare yourself the same trauma.
John Walsh, Krirk University
Ladprao 64 