Gloriana **Spoilers**

[johneffay]

I was talking to some friends about Gloriana, and was told that it is has been rewritten. I've only read the original but would like to know what the difference between the two is as there seemed to be some disagreement as to whether the ending had been comprehensively rewritten, or just a couple of sentences altered.

Furthermore, it appears from some of the things that were said that Mike changed the book because he thought that it justified rape in some way. I'm rather confused about this as I thought that point of the ending was that it was deliberately ironic in that whilst Gloriana is 'fulfilled' by the rape and Quire is redeemed by his own 'unfulfillment' (which is itself ambiguous in that he takes joy in the fact he brought her to climax and the reader is unsure whether that joy is for her, or pride that he has done something no other could), the new age of chivalry is thereby heralded in by an act that is every bit as morally vicious as those which Montfalcon engaged in to set up and maintain the earlier age of chivalry. Furthermore, the fact that Quire rapes Gloriana because he sees it as his right to demand something for saving her life is itself a product of the code of chivalry; therefore the entire edifice is seen as necessarily structurally unsound from a moral point of view.

Now I could be wrong about all this, but my point is that such an interpretation only works if rape is taken to be categorically immoral, so I don't see how the original version could have been seen to justify such an act. Anyway, I'd be very interested in Mike's and other people's opinions.

[David Mosley]

With Gloriana, publishing both versions emphasises my moral position but respects all the readers who begged me to put the old ending back because they believed it had more integrity. Of course, my original reason for changing the ending was because some readers had objected! In the end it was best (just like the Hawks movie) to offer both versions.

It wasn't Colin Greenland who suggested flaws in Gloriana but Andrea Dworkin, who otherwise said she loved the book. Even then, she wasn't asking me to revise it. I revised it after conversations with her and other feminists, since the last thing I wanted to appear to be doing was to suggest that rape did anyone 'good'.

I know Mike's commented on the reasons for the changes to Gloriana elsewhere, but these are the first one I can find using the Search tool.

The actual changes are quite substantial, albeit that they only affect one chapter, in that in the revised version events in chapter 34 proceed up to a certain point as in the original but from that point on occur quite differently. I think we're only really talking about a couple of pages (if that), but it's certainly more than a few lines that are changed iirc.

In a sense, the two different versions are like glimpsing two different facets of the multiverse. In one, Gloriana is raped and in the other she isn't. Both versions end the same way (ie chapter 35 is the same in both) but the way the character gets to the end of their story is different.

[johneffay]

Thanks for that. I should have thought using the search tool. However, now that I've read Mike's replies I'm even more confused! I have never understood Gloriana to have a conventional happy ending, which would seem to me to be the only way that you could say that the rape was justified. I've always thought that the final chapter was designed to show that things were really proceeding broadly as they had done under Montfalcon: Gloriana is still living a lie as a mythical creature and Quire is subsumed into the facade by means of a further lie: the 'discovery' that he is actually Montfalcon's blood heir as well as his political heir. Quire stops being the artist and becomes the 'sober little king'; it is a downfall of sorts (he says over and over again that he does not want to rule). Gloriana's personal happiness comes at the expense of Albion which returns to a veneer of chivalry over a base of repression.

[Doc]

A more satisfying resolution may be found in the new trade paper edition from Aspect. MM has included both endings and a lengthy discussion of why he reconsidered the ending. As I remember, he also said he wanted readers to choose the ending that worked best for them, with the caution about not justifying rape.

For what it's worth, though, I don't always trust my memory, so maybe no one else should... :)

[David Mosley]

The Contents page for the Aspect edition of Gloriana (which reminds me I should have requested that edition for Christmas :)) lists the following:

Gloriana; or the Unfulfill'd Queen
Page 1

AFTERWORD FOR THIS EDITION
Haunted Palaces and Poisoned Chalices
by Michael Moorcock
Page 457

APPENDIX A
Alternate Chapter Thirty-Four
Page 465

APPENDIX B
Lyrics for a Proposed Musical Version of Gloriana
by Michael Moorcock and Peter Pavli
Page 485

Source - http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0446...=0#reader-page

I don't know whether the Alternate Ch. 34 is the original version or the revised one. In other words, does the Aspect edition reprint the 1978 version and include the 1993 revision as an 'extra' or vice versa? (I would suspect the latter myself.)

[lemec]

That is interesting. It's been along time since I read Gloriana, it was an old paperback. So, the 1993 version has the changed chapter? I will have to check it out some time. Of all the MM books, Gloriana is one that I don't remember as much. It's coming back to me now that I read this thread. I enjoyed it and remember it being alot different than anything else.

Thanks for letting us know of the different versions. ;)

[Michael Moorcock]

I put the revised chapter as an Appendix. Nothing to do with a happy ending, as such, but to do with rape having a positive consequence.
I realised after I'd written the book that that sequence MIGHT be used to justify rape and indeed similar arguments HAD been used to justify rape, so I changed it. Given the opportunity to discuss the issue, and thus state in an afterword that nothing justifies rape, I returned the original ending, but published the revised one, also. Otherwise, there were no changes made from the first edition through subsequent editions, even though The Encyclopedia of Fantasy claims that there were and that, by implication, my 'feminism' spoiled that and other books. I was extremely annoyed that John Clute, a friend of many years, should not only make that assumption, which showed he hadn't read the revised book, but that he insisted on retaining the 'charge'. It probably doesn't seem very important, but I was surprised that he should insist on a lie. The issue, sadly, brought that friendship to an end. This does not, of course, make me admire Clute's work any less, but it made me suspicious of many of the other value judgements which to my mind marred that particular book and were not evident in, say, the first Encyclopedia of SF, which remains the premier reference book in the SF world. So that's the whole background story, for what it's worth. What has surprised me elsewhere are male responses to that particular issue. I don't know if it's still on Amazon, but there's one piece raving away at my 'feminism' which makes me wonder just how addicted to sex and violence some people are!

[lemec]

Thanks Mike, that clears things up. :)

[Ant]

Of course, the rape would have been ok if Gloriana had been drunk: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...888035,00.html... :(

Gr.,
Ant

[johneffay]

Thanks very much for the reply Mike. I'll have to try and get a copy of the Aspect edition sent over the Atlantic. I can understand your point, but I'm not necessarily convinced by it: All sorts of things might be used to justify abhorrent things when taken the wrong way, e.g. Nietzsche was used to justify Anti-Semitism despite his hatred for Anti-Semites; does that mean he should not have written the way he did? Ultimately, of course, it is your choice and, anyway, I would not like to comment further without reading the alternate ending.

[Michael Moorcock]

My point is that I believe writing to be, like most actions, a moral action. I'm not an Arts For Arts Sake sort of person, much as I admire those who were. Therefore, I want to avoid being even remotely responsible for adding to someone's justification for rape. There was a correspondent here not that long ago who had been raped by someone saying they were inspired by Elric. Now we all know Elric was more likely to kill his lady-friends than rape them and as far as I'm concerned the context of those actions shows that he doesn't exactly benefit from them. The problem with Gloriana was that I don't believe I found a completely satisfactory way of putting the action in context. Now, happily, that edition has a clear message in an appendix, plus the new (and still somewhat unsatisfactory) amendment which states my thoughts on the matter. John Davey, by the way, has copies of the Aspect Gloriana.
It's probably the handsomest of the paperback editions. Nicely done, I thought.

[johneffay]

I popped into Borders yesterday and read the alternative ending. I thought it changed the book quite radically as Gloriana is obviously much more empowered in that she basically tames Quire. That said, I didn't find it detrimental and certianly not transformed into some sort of crude feminist polemic.

I prefer the original ending, but I wonder whether I would still do so had I read them in reverse order. Gloriana makes it into my top five of your books and I have read it so many times that I'm intimately familiar with it. Consequently, it just feels strange to read a different version.

[Michael Moorcock]

I know what you me4an, I think. But I'm glad you had that reaction to the 'new' chapter. It's exactly what I was trying for. The resolution of the book is, after all, about the balance between, as it were, Law and Chaos -- Romance and Intellect and so on. It would be weird for me if a favourite book was changed inthat way.

[lemec]

Mike, would you consider Quire to be one of the most cruel characters that you have created? For some reason a scene stands out in my mind when Quire stabs some poor watchman or guard, but it only paralyzed him so that Quire could sit on him to keep warm.

I guess I should read it again. It probaly will be more clear then. :D

I'm sorry it is such an odd question. I think it was Quire. Reading this thread made me think of it again. It was just one of those shocking moments that I never heard of before or since.

Thanks

[Michael Moorcock]

Well, yes. Quire is definitely my most 'Jacobean' villain. I wrote the book as if it was being written in the late 17th century, closer to Defoe than Shakespeare, drawing on language and understanding from that far forward, as it were. Quire was intended to be what he described himself as being 'an artist' -- in murder and intrique. To say anything more here would be a definite spoiler, I think, though.