Sequoyah's Reviews > Byzantium: The Decline and Fall
Byzantium: The Decline and Fall
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It’s hard coming to the end of this magnificent trilogy. Norwich has written quite a masterpiece of history—this final part being no exception. The last forty pages were the culmination of 11 centuries. I was struck by how awing it must have been to be one of those defenders the night before the fall of Constantinople; the despair was tangible through Norwich’s prose.
It’s strange to see something you have been illogically rooting for, since the first book, be brought so low an innumerable amount of times. Each part of this trilogy has its own villains—the Popes, the Emperors themselves and their wives, or the barbarians to the north and west— but this one had proven the true enemy to be the ITALIANS. God, I will never forgive the Venetians and Genoese their intriguing and perfidy for what they did to my precious Byzantium. I don’t know why I now have a para-social relationship with this now forgotten civilization but I do.
“That is why five and a half centuries later…it is the Land Walls—broken, battered, but still marching from sea to sea—that stand as the city’s grandest and most tragic monument.”
It’s strange to see something you have been illogically rooting for, since the first book, be brought so low an innumerable amount of times. Each part of this trilogy has its own villains—the Popes, the Emperors themselves and their wives, or the barbarians to the north and west— but this one had proven the true enemy to be the ITALIANS. God, I will never forgive the Venetians and Genoese their intriguing and perfidy for what they did to my precious Byzantium. I don’t know why I now have a para-social relationship with this now forgotten civilization but I do.
“That is why five and a half centuries later…it is the Land Walls—broken, battered, but still marching from sea to sea—that stand as the city’s grandest and most tragic monument.”
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Reading Progress
May 16, 2023
–
Started Reading
May 16, 2023
– Shelved
August 17, 2023
– Shelved as:
non-fiction
August 17, 2023
– Shelved as:
british
August 17, 2023
–
Finished Reading
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Aug 18, 2023 10:24PM
Yeah, Byzantium is the most sympathetic empire in history. Truly a heart ache.
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