THE READING RHEUM: "THE SHADOW OF THE VULTURE" (1934)

After re-viewing the 1985 RED SONJA film, I became more curious about the possible evolution of the Marvel Comics character from Howard's one-shot character "Red Sonya of Rogatino." She, along with her male compatriot Gottfried Von Kalmbach, appeared only in the above-titled short story in the pulp magazine MAGIC CARPET, which was published by Popular Fiction Publishers. The same publisher brought out WEIRD TALES, the magazine that published the majority of Howard's Conan stories.

Here's my initial writeup from FEMMES FORMIDABLES regarding the story's significance in terms of Red Sonja's evolution:

I mentioned in my first 1934 post that Robert E. Howard had authored at least three significant femmes formidables in the same year, but one of them, "Red Sonya of Rogatino," gained more fame in a derived form, that of Marvel Comics' "Red Sonja."  Since Red Sonja only borrowed a few motifs from Howard's character, as well as appearing in a thoroughly different milieu, it seems sensible to give the earlier Sonya separate consideration.  The French reprint book above, which retitles the Howard story "Shadow of the Vulture" into "Sonya la Rouge," looks as if it's illustrating the Marvel version more than Howard's.

One surprising facet of "Shadow" is that Red Sonya is at best a secondary element of the tale.  The bulk of the story is Howard's rewriting of the history of the 1529 Siege of Vienna, the last attempt made by the Ottoman Empire-- then under the command of Suleiman the Magnificent-- to extend its power into Europe.  Robert E. Howard, being an ardent Celticist, had his own fictional version of "how the Irish saved Europe," often sending Celtic, English, or roughly related racial types into the mysterious East.  This time Howard sends a German hero, Gottfried von Kalmbach, to personally twist the tail of the ruler Suleiman.  Suleiman responds by sending a hitman, the "Vulture" of the title, to bring him Gottfried's head.

Sonya becomes embroiled in this conflict only because she comes to have some regard for Gottfried as a fellow warrior, and possibly (though it is not stressed) as a man.  Sonya saves Gottfried twice from his enemies, and displays fearless prowess on the battlefield, but her own character-arc is dubious.  She claims to be the sister of Roxelana, a historical Polish woman who became the real Suleiman's primary wife.  Howard devotes nearly no space to describing how this state of affairs came to be, though there's a mention that Roxelana was abducted in a Muslim slave-raid. To modern ears, this sounds pretty exculpatory for most sins that Roxelana would have committed in order to survive.  Yet Sonya refers to her sister as a "slut," apparently for not having chosen death over bedding a Muslim potentate.  It's possible Howard had some notion of pursuing this plot-thread in a separate story, but "Shadow of the Vulture" remains the only story about the woman from Rogatino.

Naturally, given Howard's great talent, there are other mythic aspects of "Vulture" aside from its introduction of the Polish femme formidable. MAGIC CARPET was probably interested in the story only because it offered readers some violent, exotic adventure, but as I noted above, Howard was a history-buff who believed in what a later author called "the clash of civilizations." He quite clearly took pleasure in the failure of the Ottoman Empire to secure a foothold in 1529 Austria, which would have put Islamic rule within the perceived boundaries of Europe proper, and Howard explicitly took it as the good favor of fate that the Muslims had been thwarted by "the yellow haired Aryan barbarian." (I'm not sure what Howard made of Islam's domination of the Iberian Peninsula for several centuries.) I should not need to point out that Howard 's mention of "Aryan" is not covalent with formal Nazism. Within the context of the story, which is not a racist story as such, the term only means that the author advocated the fading of the East's power as the West came to prominence.

The Ottoman failure to take Austria loosely parallels the failure of Suleiman I to take the head of German mercenary Von Kalmbach, even though Suleiman sends one of his foremost warriors, Mikhal "The Vulture" Oglu, to accomplish the deed. In a broad sense, Suleiman does Von Kalmbach a favor by persecuting him, for the German, though prodigious in battle, is something of a rebel without a cause, sneering at both the Ottomans and his own "Frankish" allies. Von Kalmbach seems content to spend his whole life fighting and then drinking like a sot.

While fleeing from Oglu's forces, Von Kalmbach takes refuge in an Austrian siege-city. One of the city's foremost defenders is Red Sonya, and though the German is fascinated with the red-haired fury, she seems initially scornful towards him. However, it eventually comes out that she does hold high regard for Von Kalmbach's battle prowess, and she ends up saving the mercenary's hide twice. Howard shows no literal romance between the two of them, but it's likely he meant to suggest that they were both alpha-types who sublimated their sexual feelings through constant quarreling. That said, the story ends without depicting even a symbolic union, such as a partnership, between the mercenary and the Polish warrior-woman.

In the first CONAN story that births Red Sonja, the heroine voiced her determination never to yield her favors to anyone save "him who has defeated me on the field of battle." There's nothing remotely like this declaration in "Vulture." The only remotely similar statement comes from a bit-player who tells Von Kalmbach that Sonya "marches and fights like a man," but is "no man's light o'love." Howard probably only included this observation to make sure readers understood that Sonya was not a camp-follower. If anything, Sonya is an antitype to her sister Roxalana, who, though never "on stage," allowed Suleiman I to take her maidenhead. (Possible pun-alert here: the Ottoman ruler can take a woman's "head," but not the head of a superior warrior.) I won't say categorically that Howard never wrote any character who might have challenged one or more males after the fashion of Marvel's Sonja. But Red Sonya of Rogatino is wholly defined by her mission to take the role of a male warrior in order to defy the Turkish ruler who despoiled her sister, so there's a loose opposition between the worlds of war and of sexual conquest. In later years Red Sonja would sometimes become a symbol of feminist liberation, yet the lady from Rogatino says nothing against the dominion of the male of the species. For such protests, one would have to seek out a character Howard created around the same time, Dark Agnes de Chastillon, whose first of two adventures deals with her escaping an arranged marriage and imprisonment in a brothel. 

Next up: Red Sonja Risin'.