CC Spin #38: The Black Arrow

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 The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, by Robert Louis Stevenson 

It's Spin Day!  Did you read your book?

The Black Arrow was fun.  It's set -- as the subtitle says -- during the Wars of the Roses, a chaotic and confusing time when two branches of the English nobility fought over which would control the throne.  Everybody else fought on one side or the other, and quite a few switched sides on the regular, according to who looked like winning.  This lasted decades, in patches, and was essentially a series of civil wars that took up much of the 1400s.  It ended with the death of Richard III in 1485 and the accession of Henry Tudor, a Lancastrian who married Elizabeth of York to unite the two branches.  But in this story, Richard III is a young man.  Strictly speaking he isn't even the Duke of Gloucester yet, but RLS makes him duke a little prematurely to avoid confusion.

Richard Shelton, called Dick, is a teenage orphan in the care of Sir Daniel Bracknell, who administers his estate and can control his marriage.  Sir Daniel is, for the moment, for Lancaster, and so Dick is too; he's loyal to his lord, until the outlaw Ellis Duckworth, head of the fellowship "The Black Arrow," announces that he's got four black arrows with which to kill four villains, and claims that Sir Daniel was responsible for Dick's father's murder.  Dick, hitherto unquestioningly loyal, naturally wishes to know the facts around his father's death -- and asking about it turns Sir Daniel into his implacable enemy.  Sir Daniel now wishes to murder Dick.

At the same time, Dick has met a young friend during a cross-country errand.  John Matcham is younger, needs to get to Holywood, and has no idea what he's doing, so Dick promises to escort him.  As they converse, it becomes obvious to the reader that 'John' is a girl; Sir Daniel kidnapped her to gain control of her estate and to marry her off to Dick for profit, and she's trying to run away.  Dick doesn't want to marry any dumb girl and says so loudly.  He and 'John' bicker over Sir Daniel, but become fast friends.

Eventually Dick figures it out and realizes that Joanna is really pretty great, so they vow to marry after all if they can escape Sir Daniel.  Dick spends much of the story trying to rescue her, while also joining the Black Arrow outlaws and Lord Foxham, a Yorkist and Joanna's legal guardian.  In the chaos of these wars, Dick meets Richard of Gloucester, is knighted, and has many adventures and escapades.

The story is exciting and full of interesting characters, but RLS indulged in a lot of "Forsooth, varlet!" type dialogue that can make for slow going.  It's not as bad as, say, Howard Pyle, though.  On the whole I enjoyed it a lot, and for extra bonus fun, I got to the Wars of the Roses chapters of Unruly just when I was reading this, too.  It was neat to get to Henry VI at the start of the story, and Richard III just when Dick meets the Duke of Gloucester.

While this is usually considered one of RLS' lesser works, I think it's worth a read.  Plenty of character development and historical interest.


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