Lord Darcy (fiction)

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Lord Darcy is a detective in an alternate history, created by Randall Garrett. The first stories were asserted to take place in the same year as they were published, but in a world very different from our own.

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[edit] Magic

Magic is a codified scientific discipline, much involved with higher mathematics and possessed of theoretical and experimental underpinnings as sophisticated as those of our physics and chemistry. Licensed Sorcerers, possessed of the Talent and properly trained, achieve a wide range of effects. Healing by the laying on of hands is effective and a commonplace treatment for disease and injury; thanks to the efficacy of the Healers, it is common for people to live to the age of 100 and not rare for people to live to 125.

Black magic is not a categorically different type of magic, but a matter of symbolism and intent—at least in the Anglo-French sphere, as the Polish empire requests extradition of a woman for black magic when her actual offense was no more than unlicensed magic. However, the effect of symbolism and intent can be substantial; one character, a Witch-Smeller, is capable of detecting its effects on the black magician and his victims.

[edit] Social structure

France, Ireland, and the nations of Britain are combined into a single state as the Anglo-French Empire, whilst Russia, Italy, and Germany continue as loose collections of small states. Society is stratified—most important government positions are held by nobles, who dispense justice and still maintain private soldiers. The Church is powerful and a central component of everyone's life (there had never been a Reformation). However, serfdom is as dead as in our own world, and the rights of the common people appear to be as well protected as in our world's Western democracies.

Anglo-French regard themselves as fortunate in comparison to the subjects of the Polish King, who are reported to be living under a terrible tyranny. The characters expressing this are all living in the Anglo-French countries, but include a Polish refugee, whom the Polish government accused of black magic, and who is compelled to spy for Poland by a threat to her uncle.

[edit] Technology

Technology and physical sciences have suffered somewhat with the emphasis on magic. Physics has not been codified as a science; the one example of an investigator into the discipline is an eccentric on a par with the members of our own Flat Earth Society. Most mechanical devices are approximately those of our Victorian era. Characters travel by horse-drawn carriage and steam train and employ revolving pistols and bolt action rifles; buildings are illuminated with gas lights. An electric torch, with magical parts, is "a fantastic device, a secret of His Majesty's Government." Messages can be sent by an electrical device called the "teleson", but the principles by which it operates are not well understood, and the technology to lay teleson lines underwater, or over water, has not yet been developed, so it is impossible to communicate across the Channel. Food is commonly preserved in iceboxes; a magical "food preservator" has been invented, although preservators are expensive and rare. Sorcery is commonly employed in murder investigations, in much the same fashion as forensic science in our own world. Medical technology is not as advanced as in our world, because Healers are so effective.

[edit] International situation

The Anglo-French Empire was established by the Plantagenets, which dynasty has continued to rule. Richard I returned to England after being wounded at the siege of Chaluz, but recovered and ruled well, whilst John Lackland never held the throne and died in exile. Richard died in 1219 was succeeded by his nephew Arthur. Seven-hundred-fifty years later the present king is "John IV, by the Grace of God, King and Emperor of England, France, Scotland, Ireland [all the Anglo-French Empire], New England [North America], and New France [South America]; Defender of the Faith, et cetera".

To judge by the Irishman who has a central role in the stories, the Irish in this timeline do not feel particularly oppressed under the Anglo-French throne and have no inclination to become independent. Irish history here seems to have been spared traumatic periods of foreign colonisation and dispossesion—and since everybody is Catholic, this Ireland has no problems of rival religious-ethnic communties.

The king is also Holy Roman Emperor, exercising loose sovereignty over the many small German and Italian states. However, his actual exercise of sovereignty is limited by the ability of German states to call upon the Poles for help; the chronologically first Lord Darcy story (though not the first written) takes place during a military confrontation between Anglo-French and Polish forces on the soil of Bavaria.

In Italy the King-Emperor is more of a Constitutional monarch, with an Italian Parliament seemingly holding much more power than the one in London (in a story set in Italy, a local policeman emphasizes that his oath of office is to the Parliament rather than the King). There is no mention, however, of whether the parliament is appointed or elected, and by whom.

Poland is a major power and the chief rival of the Anglo-French, and the two exist in a situation of Cold War; some of the stories are spy thrillers, where Lord Darcy is pitted against Polish agents and takes on some of the attributes of James Bond (with some magic ingredients added, such as a spell used to make him fall madly in love with beautiful female Polish agent).

Hungary is part of the Polish Empire (the University of Buda-Pest is mentioned as one of Poland's major institutes of learning), and the empire seems to extend southwards into the Balkans. The Russias are no more than a set of fractious statelets, which might unify in the face of Polish aggression but as yet have failed to do so (it had been close to that situation in some periods of our own history—see Polish-Muscovite War (1605–1618).

The main strategy of the Anglo-French is to bottle up the Poles and deny them access to the world's oceans. There is mention of a war in the 1940s (roughly equivalent to World War II, but of a much more limited extent) in which the Polish Navy was decisively beaten. Since then, an alliance with the Scandinavians at the exit from the Baltic and with the Byzantines at the exit from the Black Sea denies passage to Polish warships—though they try to circumvent this blockade and build an ocean-going navy with the help of some African states.

As noted, the Byzantine Empire continues to exist and is, at least at times, an Anglo-French ally, but is a minor power corresponding to our Greece, its main importance being the control of the strategic Dardanelles. The Ottomans rule a realm beyond it, apparently never having spread beyond Anatolia. The Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon never united into a single Spanish realm and were never of much account, and Southern Spain is still part of the Muslim world (one story features a suave Muslim from Granada residing in London).

Since the Point of Departure which set this alternate history off is the survival of Richard the Lion Heart until 1219 and his success in eliminating the Capetians and making himself King of France, presumably in this history The Fourth Crusade of 1204 which fatally crippled the Byzantine Empire never took place. And with John Lackland never taking the throne, he never had a chance to behave tyrannically as a king, and therefore there was no rebellion culminating in the Magna Carta—which may (very partially) explain the lack of any democratic institutions in this Twentieth Century. (By which Garrett may have meant to imply that the villains of history sometimes have their uses.)

Mexico (Mechicoe in Anglo-French) is still ruled by Aztecs, headed by the Christianised descendants of Montezuma, having been taken into the empire's high nobility and possessing considerable autonomy. North America (the whole of which is called "New England") is in the process of being settled by Europeans, but the process is far less advanced than in our history, with Native American tribes in the 1960s still able to offer significant resistance to whites encroaching on their land. However, there is also mention of thriving tobacco plantations, which seems to indicate that the equivalent of the US South is more thickly settled than the North.

Little is mentioned of "New France" (South America) beyond a single mention of its jungles being a punitive posting to unruly soldiers, from which it is clear that native inhabitants are far from completely subdued there, either.

There are only few references to Africa. Lord Darcy's father, who was an army "coronel" (i.e. colonel), is mentioned as having fought in a war at Sudan (which might be not exactly the same as our timeline's state of this name). In West Africa, black states are mentioned as maintaining their independence, keeping a balance between the Anglo-French and the Poles, and possessing enough technology to equip modern warships. The impression given is that Africa was not as heavily touched by colonialism as in our timeline. (Presumably, because the Anglo-French have a whole continent at their disposal on the other side of the Atlantic, and they do their best to bar Polish access.)

Lord Darcy is Chief Criminal Investigator for Prince Richard, Duke of Normandy—the brother of the king. An Englishman, he lives in Rouen, but spends very little time there. His assistant is Master Sean O'Lochlainn, a sorcerer who undertakes magical forensic work and who is highly proud of Irish magic and its superiority to those of other countries (especially to Polish magic).

[edit] Works

Despite the magical trappings, the Lord Darcy stories play fair as whodunnits; magic is never used to "cheat" a solution, and indeed, the mundane explanation is often obscured by the leap to assume a magical cause.

Too Many Magicians is the only Lord Darcy novel: it first appeared in Analog magazine from August to November 1966 and was issued in book form by Doubleday in 1967. This was followed by two short story collections: Murder and Magic (1979), and Lord Darcy Investigates (1981), containing stories that had appeared in Analog, Fantastic and other magazines. Garrett's extended illness and death prevented him from writing more Lord Darcy tales as he had intended.

Two more Lord Darcy novels, Ten Little Wizards (1988), and A Study in Sorcery (1989), were written by Garrett's friend Michael Kurland after Garrett's death—the two names manifestly modeled on those of famous detective novels by, respectively, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, as that of Too Many Magicians was modeled on a famous novel by Rex Stout (whose Nero Wolfe has a counterpart in the novel's universe).

In 1999, Randall Garrett won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Special Achievement Award for the Lord Darcy series.

[edit] Allusions

As in many of Garrett's other writings, he takes every opportunity to insert subtle, or otherwise, allusions to other fiction—in these stories there are many echoes of other classic, or otherwise, detectives. For example, in Too Many Magicians there is a cameo appearance by the Marquis de London, who looks and talks like Nero Wolfe, an identification reinforced by his sidekick Lord Bontriomphe (whose name is a literal French translation of "Goodwin") and his cook Frederique Bruleur (corresponding to Wolfe's cook Fritz Brenner). That novel also contains a number of punning references to The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. More subtly, the murder victim, a famous Master Sorcerer named Sir James Zwinge, is named for Randall James Zwinge, better known as the stage magician James Randi; and the head of the magician's guild is Sir Lyon Gandolphus Gray, whose name is partially a reference to Gandalf from J.R.R. Tolkien and partially that of fantasy author Lyon Sprague De Camp, and whose appearance as described partakes of both men's appearance [1]. In the short story "The Bitter End", a bumbling Sergeant-at-Arms is named Cougair Chasseur, a clear reference to Inspector Clouseau of the Pink Panther movies. And in several stories there is a secret agent, Sir James le Lein ("le lien" is French for "bond"; a clear James Bond reference).

The story "A Case Of Identity" also contains two subtle references to contract bridge, including a magic spell for establishing identity called the Jacoby transfer which requires blood from "at least two hearts." This is an allusion to a bridge convention known as transfer bidding, which attempts to make the stronger, concealed hand the declarer, and can be carried out using the heart suit. Also in the story, the murder victim is described as having been struck with a long club, because "according to the Kaplan-Sheinwold test, a short club cannot have been used." In the Kaplan-Sheinwold bidding system, making an opening bid of "one club" when holding three or fewer club cards—a "short club"—is not permitted.

The story "The Sixteen Keys" contains a reference to the "von Horst-Shea" process, whereby a person can maintain a lifelong youthful appearance, at the expense of a much shorter life, and a sudden dissolution at the end of it. This is done by a magical "balancing" of the body's processes, so that no one part of the body wears out before any other. This is a clear reference to the name of, and events in, Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem, "The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay".

In two stories, Darcy encounters a magical reference to E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensmen series: King's Messengers, couriers who identify themselves with a be-gemmed badge that glows red for its owner, and only its owner. The spell on the badge is said to be invented by magician Sir Edward Elmer in the Thirties, and to have remained secret ever since. "E.E." was short for Edward Elmer, and the badges are a reference to a device which preceded the Lens which gave the Lensmen their name.

Darcy himself resembles Sherlock Holmes in a number of ways. However, unlike Watson, whose primary purpose was to allow Holmes to explain his deductions, Sean O'Lochlainn is more of a counterpart than a foil. The relationship between the two is very similar to that of the suave, analytical Napoleon Solo (Darcy) and technical expert Illya Kuryakin (O'Lochlainn).

Sometime Garrett collaborator Michael Kurland (who would himself write later Lord Darcy works, with the permission of Garrett's estate) appears as Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Coeur-Terre in Too Many Magicians; and in "A Case of Identity" the Marquise of Rouen, worried about her missing husband, is described as drinking herself into a stupor on "the best brandy, the St. Courlande-Michele."

The strong relation between Lord Darcy and Master Sean O'Lochlainn in some ways recalls that between Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey and his servant Mervyn Bunter. In both cases there is a successful detection team composed of a nobleman and a commoner, with a built-in social hierachy tempered by a strong and long-lasting personal friendship; in both cases, the commoner partner is an extremely capable and competent person, highly appreciated by his socially-superior noble partner; and in both cases, the partnership started as a wartime relationship between an officer and an NCO, and carried over into civilian life.

[edit] Stories

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