(Part 2) Best products from r/AubreyMaturinSeries

https://www.amazon.com/Nelsons-Wake-Navy-Napoleonic-Wars/dp/030020065X

I might have read that in Dean King's Patrick O'Brian - A Life Revealed

It's just called "21" since he died before giving it a title. You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/21-Unfinished-Voyage-Aubrey-Maturin/dp/0393339335/

It's kind of a sad read, to be honest.

I believe (not backed up by evidence) that PO’B became fed up with Diana because of personal feelings that came from his own personal life. We have always known that Stephen is more or less a stand-in for him and the clearest and most direct expression of his voice. And his depiction of Stephen’s hopeless addiction to her is so fully realized and high fidelity.

I read a quote at some point where someone asked him why he killed her off at all, and he responded that he thought it was about time for her to stop planting horns on Stephen. That sounds like it could be personal, doesn’t it?

With Bonden I’m 100% convinced that he was realistically portraying a relationship between men of different classes in a very classist period and society. Yes, Jack highly valued and even loved Bonden; but it was always a proprietary, classist kind of love. Witness his wrath that someone had whipped Bonden during one of those times that he was in a different ship; he said “someone whipped MY COXWAIN?” Jack is a fully-participating and native member of the British landed gentry, unlike Stephen. He knows how he’s supposed to act and he does so. It would be unseemly to him and also to his peers if he started heaping ashes and wearing sackcloth over Bonden’s death. This is before we get to the expectations of masculinity and emotional suppression expected of fighting men, a class that Jack is a consummate member of.

With the various mids that died under his care, something else is going on—1. They are children 2. They are of his social class 3. Most critically they are under his care and he feels a strong sense of responsibility towards them and their parents. And I guess bonus 4. He’s a parent and can sort of understand what it’s like to lose a kid, as can most people present at the skylarking death. You’ll also note that this is a change for Jack. When Forshaw was killed in the Java engagement, there was much less waterworks. This also may be partly because the lad who fell died meaninglessly whereas Forshaw died a hero, leading men in an engagement.

EDIT: Found that PO'B quote about Diana!

From the article "A Master and the World He Commands", The Wall Street Journal, by Max Hastings, Nov. 7, 2003:

> Maturin, conscious of his lack of physical charms, is a tortured soul. His chief misery is caused by his love and eventual marriage to the tempestuous Diana Villiers, who is incapable of fidelity. I once asked O'Brian why, in the 19th book, he kills off Diana in a coaching accident with a casual brutality. He replied: "Well, I don't think poor Maturin could have been asked to wear horns for any longer, do you?"

EDIT 2: From Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed by Dean King, a different take than mine above. King theorizes that it's personal, but not in the way that I thought above:

> While neither Aubrey nor Maturin is wholly autobiographical, the effort of examining their characteristics and circumstances through the prism of O'Brian's life is certainly illuminating ... When in The Hundred Days, the nineteenth book of the series, O'Brian revealed (in a few cavalier words from a Greek chorus of passed-over lieutenants on the Rock of Gibraltar) the momentous death of Diana Villiers, the searing love of Maturin's life, O'Brian did so knowing of the impending death of his wife, Mary.

google books link