Mike - the simple answer is that my overall impression is that he is
introducing Isabelle to both this game called Trionfi, and also, especially since it is a heroic story, to Visconti’s Michelino da Besozzo deck. I see no reason to suspect anything else, so it is not worth my time to speculate. Evidence comes, I think about it.
But I can’t summon the energy to try any harder to convince you of my point of view. The main reason is that I believe you don’t really care. Here’re some reasons for why I think that:
- for instance, in response to your post 67 above, I pointed out that you consistently and mistakenly wrote “Cossa” when the person in question was Scipio Caraffa, but you still have not corrected your post
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1422&p=21272#p21272
In your penultimate post, number 75, above, you have clearly confused the person again:
mikeh wrote: 03 Nov 2019, 10:04
That would entail that
Marcello didn't teach her the game, even though he would have had motive, means, and opportunity.
When did Marcello have any opportunity beyond this letter? He never met Isabelle, ever. Do you actually mean her husband, King René? You confused Marcello with René. But to your point, it doesn’t matter if someone, anyone, has motive, means, and opportunity, when there has been
no crime. The “crime” in question would be if there is any reason to suspect that Isabelle knew the game before Marcello’s letter. If there were some hint, any evidence or suggestion, that she knew the game already, then we could suspect René. But since there is not the tiniest fleck of evidence for this,
there is no crime to solve. Marcello introduced her to the game of Triumphs, that is the straightforward reading, and sufficient explanation, for all the facts we know. We don’t need to speculate any further. There are no uncertainties requiring it.
Next there is something absolutely bonkers, asserting that the name “taro” for the game might have been known in Provence in the 1440s!
The question is of some importance regarding whether Trionfi then was already known not so much in Naples but in Provence (as "taro", presumably) and whether it would have been known after 1449 in what was later France, among certain nobles.
Finally another sloppy mistake, writing Marziano for Marcello.
When did Marziano get the ordinary triumphs, while he was talking to Scipio or before then?
You take me to task for not translating the Latin just to your liking, but you yourself repeatedly make careless mistakes, confusing the Italian M-names and C-names as if it doesn’t matter anyway, we are supposed to know what you mean, and you don’t even bother to correct these mistakes when it is pointed out. And you propose nonsense as well, such as the existence of the game of Triumphs in Provence, and that we should for some reason presume it was already called "taro," in the 1440s.
This is partly why I cannot summon the concern to try to convince you of my point of view. This is
my text. It is in my mind and in my heart. It has been there since 2003. It is clear from your sloppy and careless attempts to make a counterargument that you have not really taken the text to heart, thought carefully about the story and the people in it, going over it countless times, thinking long and hard for many years about it, as I have. If you had, in your mind Scipio Caraffa and Giovanni Cossa would be very different people at different parts of the story, it wouldn’t be possible for you to incoherently write one for the other. For how you confused Marziano and Marcello, I can hardly imagine how you could have done that, unless it is just those Italian M names, you know, they all sound alike. And for “presumably ‘taro’” in 1440s Provence, I simply give up trying to imagine where that nonsense came from.
It satisfies me that my other critic here, Phaeded, easily saw the common sense of my point of view about the likelihood of Isabelle knowing the game before 1449. This suggests to me that most people would take it as the obvious implication of the situation from the way Marcello tells the story. Your criticisms, on the other hand, are just true to form for how you always react to my opinions, arguing for anything but the way Ross sees it.
I love to engage with thoughtful and knowledgable criticism, one that offers new insight, as Phaeded has done. I don’t care to engage with careless, sloppy, and incoherent criticism. Especially gratuitous criticism, just to disagree for the sake of disagreeing.
Evidence is not something to be steamrolled over, flattened into whatever scenario you want. It has to be sifted carefully, weighed in the light of context and probability. In this case of Isabelle’s knowledge of the game of Triumphs, the only knowledge we have, the
only tiny fragment of evidence there is, is what Marcello says about it in this letter. We have no right to speculate about what René might or might not have learned in Florence, and brought back with him. We have no right because we just don’t know - there is no basis. All that we know is that
there is no evidence at all that he
did learn to play the game while he was there. No direct evidence, and no circumstantial evidence. Nothing. That negative evidence might have some value as well, but it is something to be used with great care.