{"id":648,"date":"2017-06-05T15:12:52","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T05:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/?p=648"},"modified":"2017-06-05T15:18:28","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T05:18:28","slug":"a-muse-on-character","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/a-muse-on-character\/","title":{"rendered":"A Muse on Character"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t<!-- @page { size: 21cm 29.7cm; margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --><br \/>\n\t<\/style>\n<div id=\"attachment_649\" style=\"width: 242px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/desiree_clary2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-649\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-649\" src=\"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/desiree_clary2-232x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"232\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/desiree_clary2-232x300.jpg 232w, https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/desiree_clary2.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-649\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Queen Desideria of Sweden &#8211; image courtesy of Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">As with many in our language, the word character can be interpreted in several ways and mean different things to different people.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">For example: It may be used to describe someone with a distinctive individuality and\/or eccentric personality.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Or it may be used to define the quality of a person&#8217;s moral fibre; the essence of an individual&#8217;s psychological make-up. People requiring a reference would naturally be hoping to be spoken of as being of good or strong character rather than bad or weak.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">To a calligrapher or scribe it may mean one of a set of symbols used in a language.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">To a writer it means a person or personality portrayed in a novel or drama. And in this case, developing a set of believable characters is everything. No time or energy is too much to spend on this essential building block.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">However, the character of some of them, as in real life, can leave much to be desired.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Even one word can be enough to bring a character to life: Machiavellian, wolfish, foxy, warhorse, porcine, ox-like: all conjure up images that need no clarification.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Phrases such as the lift of an eyebrow, the quirk of a lip: all help to paint a picture of character (the character of the character, so to speak).<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">In real life there are people so evil that it takes your breath away and people so heroic and self-sacrificing that it is equally hard to comprehend. But most of us and our fictional characters fit somewhere along the spectrum of these two extremes: slightly flawed but lovable, just the same.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">There are many such fictional characters and one I will always have a soft spot for is the Earl of St. Erth created by Georgette Heyer in her Regency romance The Quiet Gentleman.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Amongst the real characters of history, I am especially drawn to the gentle, tragic Earl of Derwentwater, whose only crime was loyalty; and vibrant and loving Katherine Swynford, both brought to life with amazing clarity by Anya Seton in her novels Devil Water and Katherine respectively.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Recently, I reread D<span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">\u00e9<\/span>sir<span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">\u00e9<\/span>e by Annemarie Selenko, the story of a real life heroine: D<span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">\u00e9<\/span>sir<span style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;\">\u00e9<\/span>e Clary, the daughter of a wealthy merchant who was loved by two of the most important statesmen of her day, finally becoming a queen: Desideria of Sweden.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">She must have had plenty of character to have attracted the interest of an Emperor and a great General whom a country invited to be its King; and if you look at her portrait above you can see that she has it in spades.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Character and character: the one so forgettable without the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As with many in our language, the word character can be interpreted in several ways and mean different things to different people. For example: It may be used to describe someone with a distinctive individuality and\/or eccentric personality. Or it &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/a-muse-on-character\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[316,317,313,314,315],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-fiction","tag-anya-seton","tag-desiree","tag-fictional-characters","tag-georgette-heyer","tag-real-life-heroine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions\/651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annerouen.com\/blogspot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}