The Game of Kings (81 page)

Reader’s Guide

1. For discussion of
The Game of Kings

The Game of Kings
is the first of six books in the Lymond series based on the imagery of chess. Who would you say are the gamesters in this novel? Do the kings “play” the game or are they pieces in the game? Given the way suspense is created and information hidden, how is the novelist at some level engaged in a chess game with the reader?

2. The brothers Francis Crawford of Lymond and Richard Crawford of Culter appear to be rivals in every field: love, war, politics, family. Which scenes make you feel you’ve seen the heart of this relationship? Has Dorothy Dunnett managed to create in Richard a character with a fullness of his own, aside from his function as “foil” to Lymond? Is Richard as “romantic” a character as his brother? More romantic?

3. Lymond’s Spanish disguise at Hume Castle is only the most theatrical and public of the flamboyant hero’s many masquerades; what are some of the others? Besides the multiple political or military purposes, what do you think are some of the deeper psychological reasons for Lymond’s brilliance at, or even addiction to, “acting”?

4. Lymond likens sixteenth-century Scotland to a wren caught between crocodiles. How do the character and choices of Wat Scott of Buccleuch mirror, and affect, what’s happening in Scotland? What about Andrew Hunter of Ballaggan? Would you call Agnes Herries, later Maxwell, such a “wren”?

5. Perhaps the most poignant relationship in the novel is that between the protagonist, Lymond, and young Will Scott, the heir to the lordship of Buccleuch. What are some of the lessons Will must learn during his “apprenticeship” with Lymond?

6. Startlingly enough, in the course of this novel the glamorous and dangerous protagonist has no lovers and no sex, delivers only one kiss, and ends up in the embrace of his mother. What are some of the ironies here? What does the romantic triangle created between Richard Crawford, his wife Mariotta, and Francis Crawford seem to be saying about “romance”? About love?

7. Why does Lymond put himself in the hands of his enemies to redeem Christian Stewart, held hostage in England? How is this relationship, as Lymond says, “made possible” by her blindness? How does the blind girl help the reader more truly “see” Ly-mond?

8. The scene at the climax of the novel cuts back and forth between a legal hearing and a game of tarot cards—a game associated with the mystic, occult, and fateful. How do the contesting parties in the legal game and in the card game mirror one another? What might Dorothy Dunnett be suggesting by this pairing of the legal and the occult worlds?

9. A good popular novel should, arguably, have some strong villains: Who qualifies for this role in
The Game of Kings
? Is it easy to distinguish treason from patriotism—or patriotism from ego-ism—in the world of the novel?

Dorothy Dunnett was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. She is the author of the Francis Crawford of Lymond novels; the House of Niccolò novels; seven mysteries;
King Hereafter
, an epic novel about Macbeth; and the text of
The Scottish Highlands
, a book of photographs by David Paterson, on which she collaborated with her husband, Sir Alastair Dunnett. In 1992, Queen Elizabeth appointed her an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Lady Dunnett died in 2001.

THE LYMOND CHRONICLES
The Game of Kings
Queens’ Play
The Disorderly Knights
Pawn in Frankincense
The Ringed Castle
Checkmate

King Hereafter

The Photogenic Soprano
(
Dolly and the Singing Bird
)
Murder in the Round
(
Dolly and the Cookie Bird
)
Match for a Murderer
(
Dolly and the Doctor Bird)
Murder in Focus
(
Dolly and the Starry Bird
)
Dolly and the Nanny Bird
Dolly and the Bird of Paradise
Send a Fax to the Kasbah
(
Moroccan Traffic
)

THE HOUSE OF NICCOLÒ
Niccolò Rising
The Spring of the Ram
Race of Scorpions
Scales of Gold
The Unicorn Hunt
To Lie with Lions
Caprice and Rondo
Gemini

The Scottish Highlands
(with Alastair Dunnett)
The Dorothy Dunnett Companion Volume I
(by Elspeth Morrison)
The Dorothy Dunnett Companion Volume II
(by Elspeth Morrison)

“The finest living writer of historical fiction.”
—The Washington Post Book World

THE GAME OF KINGS

Dorothy Dunnett introduces her irresistible hero Francis Crawford of Lymond, a nobleman of elastic morals and dangerous talents whose tongue is as sharp as his rapier. In 1547 Lymond returns to defend his native Scotland from the English, despite accusations of treason against him. Hunted by friend and enemy alike, he leads a company of outlaws in a desperate race to redeem his reputation.

Fiction/978-0-679-77743-4

QUEENS’ PLAY

Once an accused traitor, now a valued agent of Scottish diplomacy, Lymond is sent to France, where a very young Queen Mary Stuart is sorely in need of his protection. Disguised as a disreputable Irish scholar, Lymond insinuates himself into the glittering labyrinth of the French court, where every courtier is a conspirator and the art of assassination is paramount.

Fiction/978-0-679-77744-1

THE DISORDERLY KNIGHTS

Through machinations in England and abroad, Lymond is dispatched to Malta, to assist the Knights Hospitallers in the island’s defense against Turkish corsairs. But he shortly discovers that the greatest threat to the knights lies within their own ranks. In a narrative that sweeps from the besieged fortress of Tripoli to the steps of Edinburgh’s St. Giles Cathedral, Lymond matches wits and swords against an elusive villain.

Fiction/978-0-679-77745-8

PAWN IN FRANKINCENSE

Lymond cuts a desperate path across the Ottoman empire of Suleiman the Magnificent in search of a kidnapped child, an effort that may place this adventurer in the power of his enemies. What ensues is a subtle and savage chess game whose gambits include treachery, enslavement, and torture and whose final move compels Lymond to face the darkest ambiguities of his own nature.

Fiction/978-0-679-77746-5

THE RINGED CASTLE

Between Mary Tudor’s England and the Russia of Ivan the Terrible lies a vast distance indeed, but forces within the Tudor court impel Lymond to Muscovy, where he becomes advisor and general to the half-mad tsar. In this barbaric land, Lymond finds his gifts for intrigue and survival tested to the breaking point, yet these dangers are nothing beside those of England, where Lymond’s oldest enemies are conspiring against him.

Fiction/978-0-679-77747-2

CHECKMATE

Francis Crawford returns to France to lead an army against England. But even as the soldier-scholar succeeds brilliantly on the battlefield, his haunted past becomes a subject of intense interest to forces in both the French and English courts. For whoever knows the secret of Lymond’s parentage possesses the power to control him—or destroy him.

Fiction/978-0-679-77748-9

VINTAGE BOOKS
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
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F
IRST
V
INTAGE
B
OOKS
E
DITION
, M
AY
1997

Copyright © 1961 by Dorothy Dunnett
Copyright renewed 1989 by Dorothy Dunnett

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, in 1961 and subsequently in Great Britain by Cassell & Company Ltd., London, in 1962.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dunnett, Dorothy.
The game of kings / Dorothy Dunnett. —1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-76232-0
1. Scotland—History—Mary Stuart, 1542–1567—Fiction. I. Title. PR6054.U56G36 1997
823′.914—dc21 96-46867

Random House Web address:
www.randomhouse.com/

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