Tamar or Tarantia?

[bastion_korupt]

I just picked up the Coming of Conan anthology. I love RE Howard's work, it just keeps surprising me and enveloping me in it's raw sword and sorcery goodness.

I haven't read much de Camp or any others, though I have read a few Conan comics when I was a youngling. Even so, I don't remember much from them other than how cool it would be to play D&D in the Hyborian Age.

I have noticed that the capital of Aquilonia is Tamar in the books. But it is Tarantia on the map and in the text of the Conan RPG (including the setting book, Road of Kings).

Why?

Howard names it Tamar. De Camp named it Tarantia (maybe)? Is there a story here I don't know about? Are they essentially the same? Why choose a pastiche name over the original?

 

[Paluka]

I'm pretty sure that in The Hour of the Dragon the capital is Tarantia.

 

[bastion_korupt]

Hour of the Dragon is in the 2nd anthology (and thus haven't read it yet). Hmmm. So Howard changed his mind?

 

[VincentDarlage]

Howard was inconsistent with his choice of names. Either Conan moved the capital between Tamar and Tarantia between The Scarlet Citadel and The Hour of the Dragon, (making them two cities) or Tamar could be the name of the royal inner city of Tarantia (sort of like the how the capital of Kush works, where the inner and outer cities have different names).

 

[Faraer]

Howard didn't change his mind so much as need Aquilonia and its capital to serve a different artistic purpose in The Hour and the Dragon from the earlier stories. See Patrice Louinet's essay in the second Wandering Star/Del Rey Conan volume.

Similarly, he didn't change his mind about the Picts when he made them like American Indians in the later stories: he simply needed them to be Indianlike in those stories.

 

[bastion_korupt]

Could you clarify that?

Needed it to be different for those stories? What does that mean?

If I need Darth Vader to be more fatherly in Episode 3, then I wouldn't change his name, perhaps add some complexity but not change it entirely.

So what do you mean exactly?

 

[Strom]

When Howard wrote The Hour of the Dragon he was writing it for a publisher in England as a novel not a serialized story. In HOTD, the capital is Tarantia and in The Scarlet Citadel the capital is Tamar. Maybe Howard thought Tarantia was a better name and changed it not thinking that a novel published in England would have any discrepancy with a serialized pulp story in the States. I remember reading somewhere that Howard changed the name of the King of Aquilonia that Conan overthrew from Numedies to Nemedies(sp?) or something. When you look at the sheer volume of diverse material Howard wrote in such a short period these discrepancies are understandable. 8)

 

[Faraer]

He had different artistic goals at different times, and the symbolic and textural role of Aquilonia is different in HD from PS. Obviously those concerns -- and we can't be sure what they were, but Patrice's case is convincing -- were more important to him than mundane consistency. (The idea of a secondary-world 'canon' had not yet solidified, and would not until, for instance, the attempts to interpret a consistent 'Cthulhu Mythos'.) There are similar examples in his work, the various portrayals of the Picts being one.

 

[Tristan]

Maybe it's the DeCampian influence in me but I remember reading that it was explained that one of the cities was the traditional capital of Aquilonia and the other was named capital at some points in history, one case being during Numedides' reign. Conan changed things upon his ascension if memory serves me.

 

[bastion_korupt]

out of curiosity...


How do the Picts change? The first mentions of them just call them barbaric. No cultural details I have read yet.

What are they described as before that changes later when they are given a more native american feel?

Just curious... thanks all for helping answer these questions!

 

[Faraer]

Well, the history of the Picts was adjusted when he conceived the Hyborian Age after writing the Bran Mak Morn stories. In the late 1920s they were connected to some extent with Howard's Celtic instincts, what with Bran's name and the Pictish king Nial named in a Kull story.

When he wrote "The Hyborian Age" he called the future Pictish king Gorm, in the pattern of his earlier Pict names. When he wrote "Beyond the Black River", "The Black Stranger" and "Wolves Beyond the Border" his interests had shifted to the American Frontier, so he used the Picts to tell frontier stories that had the Conan character. (This is why I don't agree with Vincent Darlage's decision to use all Amerind-style names in his Pict book, rather than mixing those with the general Pict style -- even in WBB we have Garogh, an example of the latter.)

 

[Orkin]

Maybe Tamar was the Nemedian name for the city, which Aquilonians call Tarantia. Or the other way around.

It might have changed over time as Edo -> Tokyo

Tamar may be the name of citadel or castle in Tarantia - or the other way around.

 

[Fernando]

Dale Rippke explains very well the question Tamar/Tarantia in http://www.rehupa.com/rippke_chronology.htm#The%20Scarlet%20Citadel

 

[worldeater]

in beyond the black river he notes that the picts are a white race (although the hyborians don't think of them as white), and then later in the same story says they are dark-skinned.

 

[Fernando]

in beyond the black river he notes that the picts are a white race (although the hyborians don't think of them as white), and then later in the same story says they are dark-skinned.

"The Picts were a white race, though swarthy, but the border men never spoke of them as such" Beyond the Black River

What Howard meant is that the Picts had European features - like Hyborians, Vanir, Aesir and Cimmerians -, but they were dark-skinned, black-haired, black-eyed and weren't tall.

 

[Faraer]

Dale Rippke explains very well the question Tamar/Tarantia in http://www.rehupa.com/rippke_chronology.htm#The%20Scarlet%20Citadel

It's a plausible interpretation, but no more so than taking Tamar and Tarantia as two names for the same capital -- whether you assume literary licence or infer in-world multiple names.