Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Thursday 10 December 2009

Fact and Factoids

A TV star in the process of making a movie about Vlad Tepes gives an interview:
What can you share about the plot?
It’s a very big and sweeping story. The majority of time focuses on him as a young man assuming his rule as a prince, but we actually go all the way through his life. Basically what happened was, the Ottoman Empire was expanding at an exponentially fast rate with a father-son duo of sultans, who increased the size of their territory tenfold within 50 years. They got over the Danube into Wallachia, which is the southern part of modern-day Romania. Romania used to be three separate principalities: Wallachia, Transylvania, and Moldavia.

You have done your research. Impressive.
I did a lot of research.

Continue, please.
So the Ottoman came. They conquered Vlad’s father, also named Vlad Dracul — Vlad the Dragon. In Eastern Orthodox Catholicism, [emphasis added] because of the iconography of George slaying the dragon, the dragon and the devil was one in the same.
Well, it's easy enough to misspeak....
And it's also possible the interviewer misquoted, or thought she was "cleaning up."
Or even, I suppose, that the speaker meant small "o" orthodox, in an eastern context, and the typesetter just added the capitals.

But since it looks as if the film is being set up with a Christianity vs. Islam, and brother against brother storyline, they might want to get those little religious items right....

No comments: