Transcript
Book 2, Chapter Nine: Birth Stories, Pages 223 and 224
…and delivers them both to the day of Olympias’ wedding.
“In this story of the egg, your mother was bethrothed… (not to Philip! No! To none other than-)
The Shah of Persia.”
The chorus once again emerges from the palace’s treasure room.
Each woman carries a tray, each with a golden egg of dazzling flair and style, envy of all.
The Servant carries a tray, too,
and bows to the wedding couple.
“The wedding was one big part of a diplomatic parley that involved a gift of a hundred thousand golden eggs.
Each one containing a precious gem.
Of course, your mother was the crowning jewel.”
“All seemed well… until it didn’t.
Not long after the Shah rejected her.
The dragons wailed in despair:
Why?, they asked.”
Chapter Nine 223-224
I had meant to do the usual 4 page batch update, but since the second half of the update is taking a lot longer than anticipated (it doesn’t help that I’ve been slammed by endless 4 day weekends of work and/or socialisation for weeks in a row, which consequently doesn’t help with my fatigue…); I may as well show this spread to you guys now.
It’s a joy going back to this style again… well, almost! It’s not quite the same style as my previous webcomic epic The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya, which is more in the Ottoman miniature mode, while this one is Persian. They share enough of a familial resemblance for me to feel like homecoming.
I was excited to get to use some of the visual devices that I hadn’t been able to experiment more of in TCM: the disregard for spatial dimensionality and proportion, the architectural frames… and then a new idea: animation-like repetition, as seen with the servants/oracles and the Sultan’s hand.
Since it’s nearly almost 10 years since TCM, doing this was a nice opportunity to compare how I approach adapting Ottoman/Persian miniature for comics now vs back then. Nowadays I’m more insistent on drawing as much of all of the intricacies by hand and relying less on textures/pre-set textures. (not to say that TCM hadn’t got plenty of hand-drawing, to my detriment /lore)
And finally a place to cameo Zeynel (and his family!!). I make it a point to cameo the main cast of my first webcomic The World in Deeper Inspection in every graphic novel I do. This will be the first of the cameos; I still don’t know how to fit in Grimsley and the rest yet.
Footnotes:
This Persian face of Alexander comes from Taceddin Ahmedi’s Iskendername () – which made an appearance in the Prologue.
The pink dragon, which Alexander fights in the Romance: British Library, Add MS 16761, f. 190v
This story of Olympias’ marriage to the Shah is from Firdausi’s Shahnameh. My depiction here is faithful to the story, you will see its conclusion in the next spread, which will hopefully be out soon!!
The Servant’s face comes from the Victoria and Albert Museum (spoilers if you click this).
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