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Quote by Wolraad J. Kirsten

“The prince remembers his father's words- "Steal a loaf of bread, son, and they will cut your hands off, but steal an entire country and they will proclaim you their king. Humanity can never forgive mediocrity, but when audacity and brilliance combine in the right individual it can luster godlike- and they will forgive you anything, even a whole generation of boys sent off to battle for the interests of that lustrous-one". Excerpt from Varangian: Book One of the Byzantum Saga”

Quote by Wolraad J. Kirsten

Book:Varangian: Book One of the Byzantum Saga
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Varangian: Book One of the Byzantum Saga

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Wolraad J. Kirsten

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“How is it that after war and conquest the spoils are split evenly between the Emperor, the treasury and his Varangian Guard? True they are an unmatched commodity in war, but servants nonetheless, not so?Not so. They are tigers. Wild things we have allowed into our lands, our cities and our homes. They stand over our sleeping forms with their terrible axes poised. They have come to know all our secrets and entrenched themselves so deeply within the bosom of the Empire that it begs the question: are we paying them to guard us, or are we bribing them not to kill us?" - Justrudd Valusarian Excerpt from Varangian: Book One of the Byzantum Saga”

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Book:Varangian: Book One of the Byzantum Saga
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“We are the sons of that beast, Almuric, we are but spruced up- urbane predators. What else, if not a talent for violence separates the aristocracy from the peasantry? We are the nobility for the very fact that we are able to visit more violence upon them than they can upon us. History is written by nations with superior violence. The greatest civilizations to ever have existed were allowed such lofty cultivations only because of their divine brutality- their ability to vanquish those nations standing in the path of their destiny" - Grand Champion, Count Húracan Excerpt from Varangian: Book One of the Byzantum Saga”

PhilosophyHistoryMilitaryHistorical FictionPolitical PhilosophyMedievalVikingsByzantine HistoryVarangian
Book:Varangian: Book One of the Byzantum Saga
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“The saga teems with life and action, with memorable and complex characters from the heroic Gunnar of Hlidarendi, a warrior without equal who dislikes killing, to the villainous, insinuating Mord Valgardsson, who turns out to be less dastardly than we first expect. Unforgettable events include Skarphedin’s head-splitting axe blow as he glides past his opponent on an icy river bank, or Hildigunn’s provoking of her uncle to seek blood revenge by placing on his shoulders the blood-clotted cloak in which her husband was slain... Just as in the Norse poem Völuspá (‘The Seeress’s Prophecy’) the gods met their doom (no mere twilight) at the hands of brute giants and monsters, after which a new and peaceful earth arose, so do the terrible events of Njal’s Saga lead finally and at great cost to a dignified resolution bearing the promise of a better time. (Robert Cook(”

VikingsSagaNorseIcelandic Sagas
Book:Njal's Saga
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“A.D. 867. This year the army went from the East-Angles over the mouth of the Humber to the Northumbrians, as far as York. And there was much dissension in that nation among themselves; they had deposed their king Osbert, and had admitted Aella, who had no natural claim. Late in the year, however, they returned to their allegiance, and they were now fighting against the common enemy; having collected a vast force, with which they fought the army at York; and breaking open the town, some of them entered in. Then was there an immense slaughter of the Northumbrians, some within and some without; and both the kings were slain on the spot. The survivors made peace with the army. The same year died Bishop Ealstan, who had the bishopric of Sherborn fifty winters, and his body lies in the town.”

VikingsSaxonsAlfred
Book:The Anglo Saxon Chronicle
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