Each choice is painful and each entails a betrayal of a father, either the blood father Segimer or the mentor and childhood idol Varus. Or he could choose Rome, wealth, and glory, and abandon his people, severing himself forever from his roots.
#ARMINIUS D DESTINY FULL#
Arminius could choose his people, become their chieftain, and fulfill his destiny, but that comes at the price of achieving his full potential as a commander and statesman, which can only realistically be done within Rome as the greatest Empire in the world at the time. Essentially, he’s given the choice presented in my previous article on two nationalisms. Having been essentially kidnapped as a child and used as a janissary by the Roman Empire, Arminius faces a conflict whether he should become what he was raised to be, a knight and a prefect of Rome, or become what he was born to be, a chieftain of the Cherusci and possibly King of Germany. You can buy It’s Okay to Be White: The Best of Greg Johnson here. And indeed, while there are many minor storylines and one major storyline and they’re all worth seeing, the story of Arminius is the best and most important to learn from in this series. Arminius is portrayed as black-haired, but pale and blue-eyed, which underscores his liminal nature, as a man who belongs both in the Roman and German world. The Roman characters are portrayed by Italian actors, and indeed, few faces are as Italian as the face of Gaetano Aronica as governor Varus. The German characters are portrayed by blond, blue-eyed actors. Not only do the actors bring the characters, both historic and fanciful, vividly to life, but they seem to have been selected as representative of their respective nations. From Thunselda’s resentment of her Roman-loving father and her quest to marry the lowborn Folkwin, to Folkwin’s struggle with his place in the world as a commoner moving among nobles, to Arminius’ inner and outer identity struggles as a German who’d been raised to be Roman, even becoming a knight ( equitus ) of Rome and commander of Roman cavalry, as well as his divided loyalties between his father Segimer, who gave him away to Rome as a hostage, and his step-father, who in this dramatization is made out to be none other than Publius Quinctilius Varus, the historic governor of Germania.
#ARMINIUS D DESTINY SERIES#
The series skillfully weaves together the grand conflict of domination and submission between Rome and the German tribes with the personal conflict experienced by the characters. It follows the fates of Gaius Julius Arminius, alias Hermann the German - a prince of the Cherusci tribe raised as a hostage by Rome who went on to unite the German tribes and command them in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, as well as his wife Thusnelda and his (fictional) childhood friend Folkwin Wolfspeer. The story is set in 9 AD, in Magna Germania, and it concerns the events leading up to the battle of Teutoburg Forest, including the great clash itself. This may be the first series that I have, as the kids would say, binge-watched. I expected Netflix’s Barbarians to be no different, but people were talking it up and I was having trouble sleeping, so I thought, what the hell.
#ARMINIUS D DESTINY TV#
For a while now, I’ve found that I cannot bring myself to enjoy new films, new TV shows, and other new media, not only due to the active war on whiteness waged therein.