My Paper

For the topic of my paper I will stay away from chess as the model for this entire book. But I will go into a more specific role of chess and the solus rex or the king-in-the -corner, which is referring to King Charles or the last king of Zembla (the only black piece). I will compare the fall of his Regime to the French Rebellion of March 1830. Also Compare King Charles Xavier with the young king of France at the time Charles X, since their is many similarities. This will lead me to the line in the poem 894 "Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed." This I believe is referring to Jean-Paul Marat, who was a doctor and journalist whose efforts where a main fuel for the French Revolution, who was murdered in his bath tub by Charlotte Corday or "the Angel of Assassination" (Just go up to line 891 for the tub reference). Marat was the leader of the Jacobin club which was the starters of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. The Reign of Terror was a violent battle between two rival political groups, the Jacobin and the Girodins. This really make me think about the connection with Jakob Gradus who symbolizes the violent movement of Zembla. I have not found out the connection with Corday maybe she is close to Sybil in her personality but that is about the extent of what I can find. But Something very interesting that I found about Charles X was that he was exiled just like Charles Xavier and one of his first political attempt as king was to re-establish male only primogeniture but it was turned down by the Chamber of Deputies. It was also said that Charles X was the most attractive of his family while his wife Marie was considered quite ugly.

After all my research tonight I am pretty confident that Kinbotes tale of Zembla represented or at least somewhat came from the French Revolution. I plan on doing a lot more research on the history and re-reading Pale Fire to find more similarities between the two.