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It’s a tale certain to delight and entertain It’s a tale certain to delight and entertainBy MIKE WALKER
"The Man Who Believed He Was King of France" Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, and in the case of Italian merchant Giannino di Guccio such was certainly the situation. Di Guccio was summoned to Rome from Siena to be alerted to the fact that, according to Senator Cola di Rienzo (the coy ruler of Rome at the time), he, di Guccio, was actually the crown prince of France but had been switched at birth with another child. Therefore, the throne of France was his to reclaim. As strange and fictional as such a tale sounds, the details were even more impressive: through a tangle of nuns, kings, popes and princes came a tale that one nearly had to believe if only for it seemed too complex for anyone to have made up, and di Guccio did come to believe, as the title of this book would suggest, that he was in fact the rightful king of France. Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, a noted historian of the Middle Ages and university professor, takes on a story that is half truth and half lies told for a variety of reasons, a story of vast political intrigue that would have suffered in the hands of a less-skilled writer and researcher. However, Falconieri's talents are up to the challenge of telling us how a wealthy yet rather simple man is swept up into a plan to change the course of history and to upset the power balance of Europe. It is a story that our most inventive writers of fiction would be hard-pressed to create yet, amazingly, it really happened (to some extent, at least) and as we follow di Guccio on his quest to win the throne of France we encounter the entire scope of European society of the time. We are taken to the medieval French and Italian courts, the halls of various lords, kind men of the cloth and con-men all alike as we visit with di Guccio every possible person (and then some) whom he thinks can somehow help him on his quest. Don Quixote of course comes to mind in di Guccio's travels and his nearly-blind belief in his birthright, yet when we divorce his story from the canon of Western fiction and our modern history, we find also an alluring and very real tale of politics and culture in a time and formulation of society quite different from our own. Despite this, on the merits of Falconieri's astute narrative skills, we are able to identify with di Guccio and many whom he encounters and draw comparisions with our own culture and the crazy ways in which politics even today often move towards unsure goals. Falconieri is a gifted writer and his translator, William McCuaig is just as gifted in producing this edition in English. Di Guccio and Cola di Rienzo are both men motivated by a quest for glory, power, and wealth but each had his own special goals and reasonings for pressing for what seems like an outlandish, never-to-be-realized outcome. When di Rienzo is murdered, di Guccio is left to plot this course alone and in his own unique fashion. In a time when communications were much less certain, records were not uniform, and few people were literate, the concept of confusion over something like a royal line may be somewhat understandable but the process of trying to muster out the truth of the matter mostly followed the same mechanisms we would employ today and much of the delight in this story revolves around how various important people of the time behaved in light of a claim seemingly based in fantasy. Given the pope and antipopes, various plans and cunningly evil mechanisms to push rulers off their thrones, and other general dirty dealings of the late Middle Ages and early modern period in Europe, it should not be surprising that di Guccio and company entered the fray as they did. Although Falconieri is a very talented storyteller and an able historian, and as delightful as the story he tells is, one has to question the real import of it to history. The primary sources for di Guccio's narrative are few and far between, and Falconieri gladly (though it must be said, expertly) fills in the gaps as best he can. At times, I wondered if the greater goal of this book was to entertain (above being a book concerned with serious history) and I feel in conclusion such was the case. This takes nothing away from the merits of "The Man Who Believed He Was King of France" though, as di Guccio was never accepted as "King Jean" of France and most historical sources have little to say of this pretender to the throne, so his importance in the grander overview of history is rather small. Instead, his real value may just be found as the title character of Falconieri's sweeping tale, a man who was both the pawn of others and a very motivated person in his own right, certain of a dream no matter how far in left-field that dream may have seemed. Falconieri's book is thereby a charming exploration of politics, psychology, and the
MIKE WALKER is a writer who reviews books for this and other publications and writes also about ecology, natural, and social history. He is also a poet, with his most recent publication being in the Fall 2008 edition of the Tipton Poetry Journal. He lives in Gainesville, Florida. Mike can be reached via email at: cloudrace@prontomail.com |
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