gkmoberg1 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2021 4:50 am
Something I included in this story but did not explain is the number of boys haunting around the lord's manor. (And notice it is a manor house with an adjacent tower. It is not a castle (because such did not exist in 1770-ish Sweden, to my understanding). For young Elias, it may have well looked like a castle, but in this story what Kristina describes falls far short of stone walls and turrets.) Kristina described the boys in one of her chapters, saying she could spot them in the evenings looking in at her or scurrying past a light outside such that she catches a glimpse. But she never learns how many there are. Nor any of their names.
The Swedish original uses the word
slott. This would translate into English
castle, but the latter would also cover what in Swedish is called a
borg.
A
slott is a big and luxurious building or building complex intended as living quarters for a king or a nobleman.
A
borg is a fortified building or building complex intended to function as a defence post. It may function as a living quarters for a nobleman as well.
In the 18th century, most medieval
borgs would have been transformed into
slotts. More and larger windows would have been opened in the walls, moats would have been filled in, etc.
The
slott in Eli's memory and tale would most likely have been a manor, as you suggest - in Swedish a
herrgård. This is also a very large house, but not as large as a
slott, but would still impress Eli who probably lived in a house like this (note how low it is compared to the sitting woman):
gkmoberg1 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 24, 2021 4:50 am
In the end when the lord's manor is overrun and she flees to the basement, she finds she has wandered into the den where they hide during the days.
My inspiration had been this line of thought: If the contest Elias was entered into was not its first occasion, then there must have been prior winners ... prior young boys who were chosen by the role of the lord's dice. Yet what became of them? My conclusion was nothing happened: they continued on as 11 or 12 year old boys, hidden by day and with the manor's lord at night. Elias, by 'winning' when he was 10 or 11, became another.
Was he the last? Possibly. I didn't ponder that one.
Yet once the manor was overrun, the boys scattered. Afterwards, Elias never reconnected with any of them. He does say to Oskar in the novel that he has never had a true friend.
Perhaps they are still to be found.
Perhaps Kristina could tell you otherwise
Regarding if Eli was just one in a long sequence of children, I would say that he probably was. Why would the lord otherwise have bothered to have that table made?
However, I think the other children didn't survive. Perhaps they just succumbed, or maybe they were killed when the lord got tired of them. Eli didn't meet any of them, anyway, he just learned about them, I think. Or perhaps he figured their previous existence out by himself from clues that were around during all those years I think he spent with the lord.
But Eli survived. Perhaps he was special, and was treated differently than the others. Perhaps he was able to escape, maybe when the local population finally got tired of the lord's ways and revolted. Perhaps both. However, a favourite idea of mine is that Eli was brought with the lord to England when the lord fled just before the revolt. Eli thus would have arrived to England in the very late 18th century, to the budding industrial era with its overcrowded cities...