Thrones, Dominations
Encyclopedia
Thrones, Dominations is a Lord Peter Wimsey
murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers
began writing but abandoned, and which remained as fragments and notes at her death. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh
and published in 1998. The title is a quotation from John Milton
's Paradise Lost
and refers to two categories of angel
in the Christian angelic hierarchy.
over four published novels, culminating in Busman's Honeymoon
, the action of which takes place immediately following the couple's marriage. The characters appeared thereafter only in a few short stories and other published pieces, revealing only glimpses of their married life. However, according to Sayers' friend and biographer Barbara Reynolds, Sayers had begun work in 1936 on Thrones, Dominations, a murder mystery novel in which the Wimsey marriage was to be contrasted with those of two other couples.
She apparently worked on it for some months during 1936 but does not appear to have done so thereafter; it has been suggested that this is due at least in part to the constitutional crisis
of that year surrounding Edward VIII
and his relationship with Wallis Simpson.
The events of December 1936 onwards overtook the story, with the abdication altering how Sayers' potential audience would interpret a tale of contrasting marriages. In 1938, she declared in a letter that she had come to dislike the book, and had "great difficulty doing anything about it".
It is noteworthy that the last chapters of "Busman's Honeymoon
" show Wimsey consumed with such deep guilt and remorse at having unmasked that novel's murderer and sent him to the gallows (which would not have happened but for Wimsey's presence) as to leave the reader in great doubt if Wimsey would go on solving murders and causing more people to be hanged. Completing the present novel would have necessitated adding yet another hanged murderer to the burden on Wimsey's conscience — which is not the case for the remaining Wimsey stories that Sayers did complete, written in a more lighthearted vein.
Sayers's notes for the work were found among her papers after her death in 1957, and were acquired in 1976 by the Wade Center at Wheaton College, Illinois. They consisted of a number of complete scenes from the beginning of the story and a few diagrams, including a multi-coloured representation of the interactions of the characters. By 1985 there were plans to publish the manuscript as it stood, together with some of the other short Wimsey pieces, both published and unpublished, but these failed due to the death of Sayers' son and heir Anthony Fleming in that year. In 1996 the literary trustee
s of the estate approached novelist Jill Paton Walsh and asked her to look at the material with a view to completing the novel. She was also able to refer to a typescript which had been found in a safe at Sayers' former literary agents and which differed in some respects from the manuscript version.
The scenes were not ordered or numbered, and had to be arranged in logical order by Paton Walsh to constitute the first six chapters of the book. The remainder of the story had to be constructed from almost no data, based on what had already been written (compare The Floating Admiral
), but Paton Walsh has said that Sayers' notes make it clear who the murderer would be. They also include a scene, omitted from the book, in which Uncle Paul tells Harriet of his part in Peter's early erotic education.
The book was published in February 1998. Jill Paton Walsh followed it in 2002 with another Wimsey/Vane novel, A Presumption of Death
, set during World War II
and based on some short wartime writings of Sayers known as "The Wimsey Papers
".
. The couple are personally happy, having resolved many of the problems in their relationship caused by character and circumstance, but must now tackle the practical details of bringing their lives together, including domestic and working arrangements, and social and family obligations.
The couple become slightly acquainted with Laurence Harwell, a wealthy theatrical "angel
", and his beautiful wife, whom he has rescued from poverty following her rich father's disgrace and imprisonment. After two years' marriage the Harwells are famously still devoted to one another, and when she is found dead at their weekend cottage in the country Wimsey is asked to help interview the distraught husband, and becomes involved with the investigation. (He is also asked to undertake sensitive diplomatic duties connected with the problematic behaviour of the new king
, and as the 1936 abdication crisis
looms, he gloomily predicts the coming war with Hitler's Germany.)
Suspicion falls on a writer known to have been in love with Mrs Harwell, and a talented but bohemian painter who had been working on portraits of both Harriet and the murdered woman. Two men who knew Mrs Harwell's father in prison, and who have been blackmailing him with threats to harm her, are also suspected.
Meanwhile Harriet straightens out her domestic situation, learning how to fulfil her new role whilst keeping her own identity, and finds a practical solution to allow Wimsey's devoted manservant Bunter
to marry without having to leave the household.
Harriet's unorthodox approach infuriates her sister-in-law (who believes Harriet has an obligation to abandon her career, do her duty to the family and produce an heir) but it allows her to solve most of the practical difficulties that might have stood in the way of a successful and happy marriage. She also discovers she is expecting a baby.
After some plot twists, a second murder and a dramatic scene involving the hidden rivers and Victorian sewers that run under London, it is revealed that Harwell himself unintentionally killed his wife in a jealous rage, in the belief she was preparing to entertain a lover, although ironically her preparations had really been for him. (The killing is clearly reminiscent of Shakespeare's Othello
's strangling of his beloved wife out of unjustified jealousy).
Harwell might have gotten off with a manslaughter conviction, but for the fact that he later committed the premeditated murder of an actress who was in a position to disprove his alibi and tried to blackmail him.
It is Harriet who visits Harwell in prison to comfort him with the knowledge that his wife had not, after all, been unfaithful. In doing so, she finally banishes the lingering ghosts of her own imprisonment and murder trial, and the effect they have had on her relationship with her own husband.
play a key part in the novel, and one character remarks "You can bury them deep under, sir; you can bind them in tunnels, ... but in the end where a river has been, a river will always be."
The marriage between Mervyn Bunter and Hope Fanshaw, which is less crucial to the plot, tends to parallel rather than contrast with Peter and Harriet's marriage. Once realizing that Bunter and Lord Peter are not just a master and servant but share a strong emotional bond, Hope refuses to accept a marriage based on Mervyn sacrificing that bond. Harriet immediately recognizes in Hope a kindred soul — while having regarded Rosamund as embodying "everything she despised in a woman" — and manages to find a happy practical solution, enabling Mervyn and Hope to marry with no need for such a sacrifice. Incidentally, this involves Harriet thoroughly breaking social conventions under which a Lady is not supposed to treat a servant's wife as an equal.
, writing in the Sunday Times, declared it "...impossible to tell where Dorothy L. Sayers ends and Jill Paton Walsh begins". A.N. Wilson agreed that the joins in the material appeared "seamless" to the amateur reader, but found the plot in the main "rather feeble"; he noted Paton Walsh's attempt to parody Sayers' style, "...the really corking snobbery, the sub-Wodehousian banter, and the conceited swapping of obvious quotations", but judged it a failure. Joyce Carol Oates
in the New York Times called the book "engrossing, intelligent and provocative", praised the power of its descriptive passages, and found its darker tone more in keeping with the later Wimsey novels than with the "zest and flashy originality" of the earlier ones.
Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a bon vivant amateur sleuth in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries; usually, but not always, murders...
murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
began writing but abandoned, and which remained as fragments and notes at her death. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh
Jill Paton Walsh
Jill Paton Walsh, CBE, FRSL is an English novelist and children's writer.Born as Gillian Bliss and educated at St. Michael's Convent, North Finchley, London, she read English Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford...
and published in 1998. The title is a quotation from John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
's Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
and refers to two categories of angel
Angel
Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...
in the Christian angelic hierarchy.
Background
Sayers had charted the developing relationship between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet VaneHarriet Vane
Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers ....
over four published novels, culminating in Busman's Honeymoon
Busman's Honeymoon
Busman's Honeymoon is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It is the fourth and last novel to feature Harriet Vane.-Plot introduction:...
, the action of which takes place immediately following the couple's marriage. The characters appeared thereafter only in a few short stories and other published pieces, revealing only glimpses of their married life. However, according to Sayers' friend and biographer Barbara Reynolds, Sayers had begun work in 1936 on Thrones, Dominations, a murder mystery novel in which the Wimsey marriage was to be contrasted with those of two other couples.
She apparently worked on it for some months during 1936 but does not appear to have done so thereafter; it has been suggested that this is due at least in part to the constitutional crisis
Edward VIII abdication crisis
In 1936, a constitutional crisis in the British Empire was caused by King-Emperor Edward VIII's proposal to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American socialite....
of that year surrounding Edward VIII
Edward VIII of the United Kingdom
Edward VIII was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, and Emperor of India, from 20 January to 11 December 1936.Before his accession to the throne, Edward was Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay...
and his relationship with Wallis Simpson.
The events of December 1936 onwards overtook the story, with the abdication altering how Sayers' potential audience would interpret a tale of contrasting marriages. In 1938, she declared in a letter that she had come to dislike the book, and had "great difficulty doing anything about it".
It is noteworthy that the last chapters of "Busman's Honeymoon
Busman's Honeymoon
Busman's Honeymoon is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It is the fourth and last novel to feature Harriet Vane.-Plot introduction:...
" show Wimsey consumed with such deep guilt and remorse at having unmasked that novel's murderer and sent him to the gallows (which would not have happened but for Wimsey's presence) as to leave the reader in great doubt if Wimsey would go on solving murders and causing more people to be hanged. Completing the present novel would have necessitated adding yet another hanged murderer to the burden on Wimsey's conscience — which is not the case for the remaining Wimsey stories that Sayers did complete, written in a more lighthearted vein.
Sayers's notes for the work were found among her papers after her death in 1957, and were acquired in 1976 by the Wade Center at Wheaton College, Illinois. They consisted of a number of complete scenes from the beginning of the story and a few diagrams, including a multi-coloured representation of the interactions of the characters. By 1985 there were plans to publish the manuscript as it stood, together with some of the other short Wimsey pieces, both published and unpublished, but these failed due to the death of Sayers' son and heir Anthony Fleming in that year. In 1996 the literary trustee
Trustee
Trustee is a legal term which, in its broadest sense, can refer to any person who holds property, authority, or a position of trust or responsibility for the benefit of another...
s of the estate approached novelist Jill Paton Walsh and asked her to look at the material with a view to completing the novel. She was also able to refer to a typescript which had been found in a safe at Sayers' former literary agents and which differed in some respects from the manuscript version.
The scenes were not ordered or numbered, and had to be arranged in logical order by Paton Walsh to constitute the first six chapters of the book. The remainder of the story had to be constructed from almost no data, based on what had already been written (compare The Floating Admiral
The Floating Admiral
The Floating Admiral is a collaborative detective novel written by fourteen members of the Detection Club in 1931. The twelve chapters of the story were each written by a different author, in the following sequence: Canon Victor Whitechurch, G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha...
), but Paton Walsh has said that Sayers' notes make it clear who the murderer would be. They also include a scene, omitted from the book, in which Uncle Paul tells Harriet of his part in Peter's early erotic education.
The book was published in February 1998. Jill Paton Walsh followed it in 2002 with another Wimsey/Vane novel, A Presumption of Death
A Presumption of Death
A Presumption of Death is a mystery novel by Jill Paton Walsh, based loosely on The Wimsey Papers by Dorothy L. Sayers. The Wimsey Papers were a series of articles published by Sayers during World War II, purporting to be letters written between the various Wimseys during the war A Presumption of...
, set during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and based on some short wartime writings of Sayers known as "The Wimsey Papers
The Wimsey Papers
The Wimsey Papers are a series of articles by Dorothy L. Sayers published between November 1939 and January 1940 in The Spectator. They had the form of letters exchanged by members of the Wimsey Family and other characters familiar to readers from the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels, but were in...
".
Plot introduction
Newlyweds Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey move into their new London home and investigate the murder of an acquaintance, a beautiful former fashion model whose wealthy husband virtually worships her. The Wimseys straighten out both situations, Lord Peter doing more of the work on the murder and Lady Peter (the former Harriet Vane) doing more on the domestic front. Faithful man-servant Bunter marries a professional photographer, but both he and his brother remain in the Wimseys' service.Plot summary
It is 1936. Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey, returned from a European honeymoon, are settling into their new home in London, where daily life is affected by the illness and then death of the kingGeorge V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
. The couple are personally happy, having resolved many of the problems in their relationship caused by character and circumstance, but must now tackle the practical details of bringing their lives together, including domestic and working arrangements, and social and family obligations.
The couple become slightly acquainted with Laurence Harwell, a wealthy theatrical "angel
Angel investor
An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...
", and his beautiful wife, whom he has rescued from poverty following her rich father's disgrace and imprisonment. After two years' marriage the Harwells are famously still devoted to one another, and when she is found dead at their weekend cottage in the country Wimsey is asked to help interview the distraught husband, and becomes involved with the investigation. (He is also asked to undertake sensitive diplomatic duties connected with the problematic behaviour of the new king
Edward VIII of the United Kingdom
Edward VIII was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, and Emperor of India, from 20 January to 11 December 1936.Before his accession to the throne, Edward was Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay...
, and as the 1936 abdication crisis
Edward VIII abdication crisis
In 1936, a constitutional crisis in the British Empire was caused by King-Emperor Edward VIII's proposal to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American socialite....
looms, he gloomily predicts the coming war with Hitler's Germany.)
Suspicion falls on a writer known to have been in love with Mrs Harwell, and a talented but bohemian painter who had been working on portraits of both Harriet and the murdered woman. Two men who knew Mrs Harwell's father in prison, and who have been blackmailing him with threats to harm her, are also suspected.
Meanwhile Harriet straightens out her domestic situation, learning how to fulfil her new role whilst keeping her own identity, and finds a practical solution to allow Wimsey's devoted manservant Bunter
Mervyn Bunter
Mervyn Bunter is a fictional character in Dorothy L. Sayers' novels and short stories featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.- Literary Background :Dorothy L...
to marry without having to leave the household.
Harriet's unorthodox approach infuriates her sister-in-law (who believes Harriet has an obligation to abandon her career, do her duty to the family and produce an heir) but it allows her to solve most of the practical difficulties that might have stood in the way of a successful and happy marriage. She also discovers she is expecting a baby.
After some plot twists, a second murder and a dramatic scene involving the hidden rivers and Victorian sewers that run under London, it is revealed that Harwell himself unintentionally killed his wife in a jealous rage, in the belief she was preparing to entertain a lover, although ironically her preparations had really been for him. (The killing is clearly reminiscent of Shakespeare's Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
's strangling of his beloved wife out of unjustified jealousy).
Harwell might have gotten off with a manslaughter conviction, but for the fact that he later committed the premeditated murder of an actress who was in a position to disprove his alibi and tried to blackmail him.
It is Harriet who visits Harwell in prison to comfort him with the knowledge that his wife had not, after all, been unfaithful. In doing so, she finally banishes the lingering ghosts of her own imprisonment and murder trial, and the effect they have had on her relationship with her own husband.
Characters in Thrones, Dominations
- Lord Peter Wimsey - Aristocratic amateur detective in his mid-forties. The younger son of a duke, his wealth comes largely from property which he manages with intelligence and responsibility.
- Lady Peter Wimsey (née Harriet Vane) - Successful detective novelist in her early thirties, newly married to Lord Peter after a stormy courtship. Was saved from the gallows by her husband when accused (wrongly) of the murder of a former lover.
- Laurence Harwell - Independently wealthy investor in plays. Married for approximately two years, indulgent of his wife and deeply in love.
- Rosamund Harwell - Daughter of a wealthy man, reduced to humiliating poverty and employment as a mannequinMannequinA mannequin is an often articulated doll used by artists, tailors, dressmakers, and others especially to display or fit clothing...
after her father's imprisonment for fraud. Rescued by her marriage to Harwell two years previously - deeply in love, but given to friendly relations with other men and bored because she has little to occupy her days. Strikingly beautiful. - Mr Warren - Rosamund Harwell's father, once wealthy but now dependent on his daughter and son-in-law after becoming involved in fraudulent transactions and ending up penniless and in prison. Damaged by his experiences, proud of his daughter and grateful to Harwell.
- Claude Amery - Talented writer and promising playwright. Passionately in love with Rosamund Harwell, and very jealous of her husband, to whom he must be grateful for offering to stage his first play.
- Gaston Chaparelle - Society portrait painter. Talented artist but an amoral man in the habit of seducing his female sitters.
- Mervyn Bunter - Wimsey's manservant for over 16 years. Devoted and loyal, but in love and wishing to marry.
- Hope Fanshaw - Portrait photographer with her own business. Object of Bunter's affections.
- Gloria Tallant - (née Phoebe Sugden) Young actress of small talent but great ambition. Acquainted with Harwell, and her family home is close to the Harwells' country cottage.
- Duke and Duchess of Denver - Wimsey's older brother and sister-in-law. She has traditional views on class and rank and disapproves of the Wimsey marriage, particularly Harriet's attitude to work and children. He is dutiful but unimaginative and in awe of his clever brother, but inclined to like Harriet. Both increasingly worried by their only son and heir, who is charming but spoiled and unreliable, and hope the Wimseys will produce children to ensure the succession of the family lands and estates beyond doubt.
- Chief Inspector Charles Parker - Police officer in charge of the Harwell murder case. Wimsey's brother-in-law and close friend.
Setting
The subterranean rivers of LondonSubterranean rivers of London
The subterranean or underground rivers of London are the tributaries of the River Thames and River Lea that were built over during the growth of the metropolis of London...
play a key part in the novel, and one character remarks "You can bury them deep under, sir; you can bind them in tunnels, ... but in the end where a river has been, a river will always be."
Comparison of Marriages
As explicitly intended by Sayers when first embarking on what would become this novel, the comparison between the marriage of Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane and that of Laurence and Rosamund Harwell is at the heart of the plot, in both its personal aspect and its detective mystery one. The net effect is to strongly vindicate Harriet's long hesitation in marrying Peter — her rejection of a marriage based on gratitude, her reluctance to marry a man so much wealthier and higher in social status than herself, and her consenting to marry him only on terms of equality. Conversely, Rosamund did agree to have an unequal marriage, owing boundless gratitude to her rich husband for rescuing her from penury. Though greatly loving each other, this basic flaw led to their tragic end — with Laurence feeling excessively possessive and unreasonably jealous, since "He had given Rosamund everything", which ultimately leads to his killing her when under the (wrong) impression that she had been unfaithful and thus "ungrateful" for his bounty.The marriage between Mervyn Bunter and Hope Fanshaw, which is less crucial to the plot, tends to parallel rather than contrast with Peter and Harriet's marriage. Once realizing that Bunter and Lord Peter are not just a master and servant but share a strong emotional bond, Hope refuses to accept a marriage based on Mervyn sacrificing that bond. Harriet immediately recognizes in Hope a kindred soul — while having regarded Rosamund as embodying "everything she despised in a woman" — and manages to find a happy practical solution, enabling Mervyn and Hope to marry with no need for such a sacrifice. Incidentally, this involves Harriet thoroughly breaking social conventions under which a Lady is not supposed to treat a servant's wife as an equal.
Edward VIII and the Abdication Crisis
Part of the book, not directly connected with the main plot line, involves Wimsey being asked to recover sensitive papers which King Edward VIII improperly took out of the country. Wimsey follows the King to his holiday residence in France, succeeds in recovering the papers, and finds disturbing evidence that the Monarch might be in contact with agents of Nazi Germany. Wimsey has a very negative and outspoken opinion of Edward VIII, regarding him as irresponsible and unfit to reign. This clearly reflects the post-war negative image of Edward VIII, rather than the romantic image prevailing during the Abdication Crisis of "The King who gave up his throne for love". Sayers would have likely written this part quite differently had she completed the book at the time itself.Reception
The book attracted considerable media interest, and met with mixed reviews from a variety of high-profile critics. Novelist Ruth RendellRuth Rendell
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....
, writing in the Sunday Times, declared it "...impossible to tell where Dorothy L. Sayers ends and Jill Paton Walsh begins". A.N. Wilson agreed that the joins in the material appeared "seamless" to the amateur reader, but found the plot in the main "rather feeble"; he noted Paton Walsh's attempt to parody Sayers' style, "...the really corking snobbery, the sub-Wodehousian banter, and the conceited swapping of obvious quotations", but judged it a failure. Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...
in the New York Times called the book "engrossing, intelligent and provocative", praised the power of its descriptive passages, and found its darker tone more in keeping with the later Wimsey novels than with the "zest and flashy originality" of the earlier ones.