A Moment of Appreciation For: The Eagle of the Ninth

 Today, as a follow-up of sorts to Anna's post on Sherlock Holmes, I'm here to bring before you another under-appreciated fandom.

That's right, folks, I'm gonna talk about Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth. After LotR, this is probably my favorite fandom. No joke.

Now, for everyone who is utterly confused at the moment and considering googling what the heck is eagle of the ninth, I shall explain.

Marcus Flavius Aquila, brand-new cohort centurion to a fort in Roman Britain, has longed all his life to be right where he is. Twenty years before, his father and his father's legion had been lost to the mists of Northern Caledonia, which is somewhere is Scotland, in case you were wondering. The family name had been forever tarnished by the loss of the Eagle standard of the legion. Marcus has a couple of wild hopes that he might find it and restore it to its rightful place in Rome.

But within his first few months at the fort, Marcus is wounded severely and honorably discharged from the army. He is subsequently sent to live with his uncle in Calleva, a town two hundred leagues south.

(Please keep reading, this is the important part.)

While there, his uncle takes him to the Saturnalia games, where a young Briton slave is matched against a trained gladiator. I'm not giving any spoilers, but the slave makes an impression on him and he saves the poor guy's life. Later he buys him out of the arena and Esca, the slave, becomes his body-servant.

Move on a few months. Several things have happened. Marcus decides to go search for the Eagle of the Ninth, and Esca goes with him. Drama and action and fights with natives occur.

Now, if you managed to get through all that, wonderful. My praise for the book is unending, so I'm not going to bore you with much of that. But I will say that you must read it before seeing the movie, as it is infinitely better.

Yes, you heard me right. There's a movie! I was disappointed when I first saw it, I must say. Though they did a great job with the choice of actors and scenery, and it had an authentic feel, they left out and changed a few key parts of the story. It's a good movie anyhow, with great reasons to see it. The foremost being:

IT HAS JAMIE BELL AS ESCA. Esca was my favorite character, so I was THRILLED when I saw who was going to be him. ASDFGHJKL;. Also, it has Channing Tatum as Marcus. Don't like him as much, but he did a good job. Oh. And looks who's Uncle Aquila:

DONALD SUTHERLAND. Good reason to watch. 

Now because I'm awesome, I'm going to show you some amazing fanart. I combed the internet for ages to find these, so be happy. 

This piece is gorgeous. The Seal Prince was cool, if a bit unnecessarily brutal. Evil rat. 

 Cottia and Cub. This is a reason to read the book. They left them out of the movie and I felt like strangling every person involved.

And because I'm super nice, I'll give you a fanfic to read when you get done with the book. Movie fans won't understand it, so hehehhehe:

Heron Feathers by Carmarthen. Note: I did not screen this author or any of their other stories, just this particular one. Thank you for not suing me.

And because I love you all, here is a .gif of Esca laughing among the Seal People.

You're welcome.

Erin 


{Dance Out the Feels does not claim ownership to EOT9, the pictures, fanarts, or fanfiction shown in these posts. They belong to their respective owners, despite how much we long to own them.}