Brave New World

Originally posted by: inlieu

(Posting here from the other thread)

This is all Alexander's parents' fault. They taught him to rule through power and conquer lands but not to conquer hearts.

Which parents? If one of them is Zeus, you had better modify your comment if you want to escape being hit by his thunderbolt!😆

Jokes apart, I am afraid I disagree with this statement. Kings and emperors in those days did not go about winning hearts, like today's mostly fraudulent politicians.They conquered the territory, coopted the old aristocracy, and carried on. The people adjusted to the new ruler, and were at peace so long as they were not oppressed too much. Popular rebellions were very rare, and all that was necessary was to take care that the defeated king and his army did not regroup and return to fight once more.

And in the present context, Darius III had got to the throne by having his predecessor poisoned, and then having the poisoner whose services he used poisoned as well. No one bothered about that, neither the aristocracy nor the people.

No wonder his address to the Farsis to win them over fell flat

That whole scene was fake in the scripting. No king would ever make such election pitch type speeches. I have never heard of any such thing in any age in all the history that I have studied. This said, his speech was excellent, but the people were still terrified after c***eus and Hephaestion had dealt with them, and they did not react at all.

Nor would the conquered populace have dreamt of stoning the armed victors, thus ensuring that they would resort to a massacre. They would all have barricaded themselves into their houses in fear.

and the royal ladies were not convinced. 😆 Imagine a person kills a soldier in front of you using a flying dagger, then enters your tent and uses his leg to push the dagger further in, the bleeding leg that has an arrow stuck in it. 😲

Then he tells you "Don't worry you are safe. I will kill anyone who tries to harm you". Do you really think that's convincing enough? Then he goes out with the same bleeding leg and walks absolutely straight-backed, in order to address the public. Of course they don't consider him a normal human being in this state. Can you blame them?

I am afraid it is not clear to me what you mean here. The women should have realised at once that Alexander had misunderstood the situation and assumed that the soldier was trying to kill them. Yes, he was brutal in the way he put an end to that poor chap, but in those days, such things were common, and royal women would have never shown any fear at that or anything else. It is that unbending royal pride, that would make them hold their heads high in Alexander's presence, that was sadly missing.

So what was there peculiar about his behaviour? It was very polite and considerate. Even when asking them to accompany him to meet the people, he couches it as a request. Did they expect that he should go down on his knees to them? The women should, given their abject fears earlier, have been relieved and hugely grateful to God. Instead, they accompany him with long faces as if they were in a tumbril being taken to the guillotine!😡

And then Alexander goes to see the ladies in an "intoxicated" state wearing Persian robes and expecting them to find it easy to accept him. Short-circuit, I tell you. 😆

He was not, at this point of time, trying to get them to accept him. If he was, the drunken act makes no sense. The Persian dress was to make the invitees to his jashn feel at ease, not these silly women. He was already suspicious and put off by Barsine's smiling when the bazaar caught fire, and he wanted primarily to find out Barsine's secret, and he felt by then, after the fire incident, that now he needed to change gears and harden his tone a little. The fake drunken act was part of that tweaked plan of action.

How to win over Roxana? He has no clue right now. When he saw her face at the camp he already made the decision about his next move.

His game plan: the way to a girl's heart is through empowering her father. She would be impressed by the change in status and the magnanimity of this gesture and would be happy to be his queen. Of course, that backfired spectacularly. 😆 I didn't think they would show him proposing marriage so quickly but I was actually expecting this reaction from her when it did happen. Maybe she'll refuse a couple of times until he figures out how to win her over. I'm praying the CVs will have mercy on us and show us some of this journey at least. 😡

I am sure Alexander would have expected that both Oxyartes and Roxana would not only accept, but would be happy with what he had done. In most such cases, the high officials of the former ruler simply adapted to the new one, no matter how the transfer of power took place, unless of course they were fired or executed.

This apart, Alexander means every word of what he says to the dying Bessus, and every word he utters is true. Alexander values loyalty above all else, and hates disloyalty above all else. No matter how good a man and ruler Bessus was otherwise - and Alexander has no idea of this at that point of time - in Alexander's eyes he is a traitor to his overlord, and once a traitor always a traitor. So Bessus has to pay the penalty for his treason.

I am not sure that either Olympias or Hephaestion can be of much help. I am assuming Alexander never saw Philip and Olympias having good relations so he may have no idea how to be a good husband, or what it means to be a loving one because his "father" never loved Olympias. His mother is a very smart woman, but has never been wooed or shown interest in that area (at least on the show), so I don't know if she can give him any advice. She might give him ideas about strategic moves but these are matters of the heart, not politics. In fact, Olympias seemed as shocked as the others when Alexander killed Bessus, so maybe he didn't share his plan with her? I was hoping to see a scene between Alexander and Olympias where he talks about his feelings before proposing to Roxanne, but maybe we'll get it now if he's going to drown his sorrows in the company of his mother and friend. 😕

Alexander most likely thinks that since he is the son of Zeus, why wouldn't any girl want to marry him? Probably, but Roxanne isn't any girl. Hephaestion and he have been on the warpath for so long that I don't think they had time to polish their wooing skils, or even get any practice. The real Alexander may have had the company of women, but the Sony one is just traveling and fighting. The only woman he meets is Barsine, who was a big disappointment to him even though he wasn't interested in her romantically.

Roxanne's words were like a slap on Alexander's face and I am sure it hurt more than just his pride. She didn't just call him 'berehem' because of the way he murdered Bessus, but also because he was behaving very insensitively despite seeing her grieve. I don't know if he really understood this. On top of that, he has the nerve to tell her that he isn't here to ask her about her state of mind but to ask if she will marry him. 😕 It must have cemented her impression of him being cold-hearted. I really liked this aspect of Roxanne. She is bold and brave, but not heartless and insensitive (at least, not yet). Her emotions are her strength, and goodness knows what she'll do to get back at Alexander once she gets over her grief. 😆

Roxana is as hard as nails. It is she who proposes to Bessus and her father that Darius, an asylum seeker in Bessus' court and his former overlord, should be slaughtered in cold blood and his head presented to Alexander in order to save Bessus' skin, and of course her own and that of her father .

That, as I pointed out in my comments on your last episode analysis, was like Medea, one of the most violent of the female characters in Greek drama and mythology. Very few women would be able to do what Roxana does without any squeamishness, and in fact Roxana does it with the calm detachment of a Mafia foot soldier!😡 This is not bravery, it is total amorality, and this no matter what kind of person Darius was.

In short, she is Olympias Junior, and no wonder the original Olympias liked her!

She is now going to try and murder Alexander, definitely once and perhaps twice.

As for Alexander, I was only surprised that he asked her if she would marry him. What "nerve"? Kings in those days did not propose to their future wives, and definitely not to women whose status in life was so much below their own.

We must also remember that he was an emperor by now, not even just a king, and she was a nobody. Any ruler of Alexander's stature, whether he was in love with the girl or merely wanted her, would simply have had a message sent to her father that he wanted to marry her, and that would have been it. Even if he had not threatened to destroy Bactria if his desire was not fulfilled, both Oxyartes and Roxana would have assumed that the threat existed, and even she would have caved in.

All this stuff they showed is Mills and Boon nonsense.

I will hand it to him, though. The moment she said those words, he let her hand go. There was no rage or frustration, no show of force, only bewilderment and maybe hurt. I do not see him insulting or taunting her the way does with Barsine or forcing her to marry him because that would really be beneath him and contrary to his respectful attitude towards women, but you never know. The only thing I can think of is him remembering her praising the late Bessus' character and how there were very few good people in the world like him. Maybe this will have an impact on Alexander and he will begin to wonder what qualities she looks for in a man?

This is the problem with falling in love; your grey cells go on vacation! 😲Does Alexander think of the qualities he should look for in a wife? No, for he is besotted, and he ends up marrying a woman who will later murder his two other wives and probably an unborn child of his, as soon as he was dead, without any hesitation. If Alexander had thought about it, I wonder if he would have really wanted a wife so like his mother!

I have no hopes from the CVs but another team would have started to delve into his psyche and show character development as Alexander starts to care about Roxanne's feelings and what makes her tick. They are probably going to fast-forward this part of his life. Someone tell the CVs that the TRPs will go up if they show more of him, especially the beginning of his love story. 😉

In short, what you want is a "Roxana ne Alexander ko bereham qatil aur jallad/ haivaan se banaya insaan"? Medea reforming Jason (the chap who ran off with the Golden Fleece)? For me, with this Roxana, it would be a cynical joke. Ugh.. Any time they start that, I am out of watching this show, not to speak of analysing it.

Finally, there is one very major point concerning Alexander in last night's episode that no one here, as I perceive from scanning the forum, seems to have thought about. I think perhaps I will write a short post tomorrow and flag it .

Originally posted by: sashashyam

Which other thread are you referring to, my dear?

Anyway, I enjoyed this post a lot, as usual; you never fail your readers! My comments are in blue, also as usual.

Shyamala Aunty