Besides which, while on a spiritual vigil in her youth, Lavinia received visions from none other than Virgil himself in which he, near death in his own time and place, bemoaned the fact that he had so slighted her in his poem and foretold her marriage to the great king Aeneas. It would be a good match politically, but Lavinia fears both her mother’s motives for the marriage and also Turnus’. As Lavinia approaches a marriageable age, Amata becomes fixated on marrying Lavinia to her nephew, Turnus, the ambitious king of a neighboring kingdom. The childhood deaths of their sons has unhinged Amata and driven a wedge between mother and daughter, but Lavinia and Latinus are close. Le Guin succeeds wonderfully.Here we have the beautiful, strong-minded, and spiritual princess Lavinia of Latinum, only surviving child to King Latinus and his queen, Queen Amata. Le Guin here sets out to rectify the situation, fleshing out the character into a real, complex person in her own right, rather than the mere plot device she served as in Virgil’s poem. In the great epic poem the Aeneid, the character of Lavinia, Latin wife to Aeneas, never utters a word.
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