Gloriana

Today marks the four-hundredth and sixteenth anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth the First, one of the historical characters that always fascinated me the most. It probably comes from watching at a tender age the old TV drama featuring Glenda Jackson, Elizabeth R. And yes, I have already mentioned, when I was a kid, my parents allowed me to watch all sort of adult stuff on the telly.

As a result of this fascination, I have a shelfload of books about Elizabeth and Elizabethan England. Biographies, guidebooks, tomes on specific subjects such as magic, espionage, the criminal underworld.

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I’ve been spending the last two hours trying to find my way around the various reprints and repackagings of Michael Moorcock’s Elric series. I read the books out of order, part in English and part in Italian translation, back when I was in high school.

Now, much as I enjoyed the stories back in the ’80s, and for all of their role in shaping the sword & sorcery genre, Elric is not my favorite Moorcock character or series (I prefer Gloriana, or The Dancers at the End of Times).

But I wanted to read through some of the stories because… ok, you know why.
Because I’m writing a series about a time-displaced heroine that’s deployed through history, by unseen masters, as a mystical troubleshooter.
And that’s the Eternal Champion, of course*.
So I wanted to take a look at the original. Continue reading →