A Woman Who Fights
Valeria in Red Nails
For #Warrior Wednesday
I just read the last work Robert E. Howard published before he died, Red Nails. I had planned to write about Valeria as representing both eros and philia in Conan’s second major love relationship. But I’m not sure I know enough about Howard’s writing of Valeria to do that yet. The more I read, the more I am drawn to read more of Howard’s work on Conan.
One of the things Howard examines, through the character of Valeria, is what it means for a woman to be a fighter. He contrasts her with Conan along two axes: male vs female; and barbarian vs civilized upbringing.
As before, I will include spoilers. You can read Red Nails on-line for free. [https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600771h.html]
The beginning of the story actually echoes aspects of the story of Bêlit in Queen of the Black Coast.
Conan is looking for work as a mercenary when a soldier friend kills a captain of the king’s guard who attacks his girlfriend. Conan ends up forced to flee to a merchant ship because when he is pulled into court as a witness, he first refuses to betray the soldier, and then fights his way out of being put in jail for that refusal. 1
In Red Nails, Valeria plays the parts of both the woman being insulted, and the person defending her. A former pirate, she has joined Zarallo’s Free Companions, who are apparently non-pirate mercenaries. When she is attacked by a Stygian (who is apparently one of the Free Companions), she kills him, and then must flee the Free Companions, just as Conan had to flee in Queen of the Black Coast. Conan admires her actions: “If I'd been there, I'd have knifed him myself.” But then adds, “But if a woman must live in the war camps of men, she can expect such things.”
Conan, who had been a member of the Free Companions before finding out they weren’t worth his while, follows after her to make sure she is able to escape. He is attracted to her beauty and her spirit. In fact, he has made his attraction to her so well known that when he catches up to her, alone and on the run, she feels the need to draw her sword on him.
So how strong is she? It looks to me like Howard treats her as being a match, when armed, for an average fighting man in close quarters fighting on shipboard2, but not for an exceptional fighting man. On shipboard, she is said to be as fast as any man in the rigging. I think Howard might also be implying that because of the limited space on board a ship, there is less need for male endurance than someone traveling overland, because when she and Conan are both forced to leave their horses and travel on land, Conan attributes her difficulty with land travel not to her being female but to her not be used to going long distances on land, since she was used to the sea.
Both Conan himself, and later Prince Olmec, demonstrate that she is no match, even armed, for an exceptional fighting man. In Conan’s case, he backs down when she confronts him, her sword in hand, when he is unarmed, because he knows he cannot defeat her without possibly hurting her. Prince Olmec, later, will be able to defeat her with brute strength, although she almost gets through with her dagger at the beginning. Still, having lost the element of surprise, she misses her one chance and is defeated by his strength.
We see that armed, she is dangerous to everyone, and in close combat, can still win, even against the average fighter, but even armed, she is no match for a strong enough man, even if he is not armed. This actually matches what I used to think was realistic for some exceptional women, and it looks like that what Howard was thinking when he wrote this. It also seems to match Tolkien’s description of the skills of Eowyn, and Bernard Cornwell’s descriptions of Hild and Brida in the Last Kingdom video series.3 I don’t think I believe this anymore, but he is clearly trying to define where the line might be.
The only thing Valeria, in the movie Conan the Barbarian, has in common with the Valeria in Red Nails, is her appearance, that she is a fighter, and that she becomes his lover. In the movie, she says Bêlit’s lines exactly, about coming back from the dead to save Conan if need be. And she has a weird habit of yelling the American Marine line “Do you want to live forever?” which wasn’t in Red Nails. Was it in any of the other Howard stories?
At the end of Red Nails, which to me is a very creepy story with more of the “horror” aspect than I like, Valeria and Conan go off together with the implication that they will become pirates.
Although Valeria had fled the pirate ship she had crewed on, rather than become the mistress of the pirate Red Ortho, Conan she will accept, because he didn’t take advantage of her when she was weak. She had lost her courage when fighting the dragon because, being civilized, she was overawed by the savage beast, while the barbarian Conan was not, and just saw it as another animal.
Not having read the other Valeria stories, which I understand deal with Conan and Valeria as pirates together, I don’t know how Conan reconciles his dislike of drawing a sword on a woman with actually fighting with a woman who also fights, quite competently, with a sword. This is a conundrum that is still surprisingly modern and relevant, that modern combat soldiers still struggle with today.
The Leaders of Warrior Wednesday/Sword & Saturday:
- The Brothers Krynn’s Newsletter;
- Tales of Calamity and Triumph
Champions of Fantasystack:
- Shadows and Space;
- A Literary Eye;
- Crann na Beatha;
- Falden’s Forge;
- Senchas Claideb;
- Kathrine’s Substack;
- Dan’s Deliberations;
- Redd Oscar Writes;
;
- Fragments and Pieces;
- Work in Progress;
- Words and Sounds/The Suspension of This Belief;
- Treats of Writing
Wednesday Warriors/Saturday Swordsmen & Sorceresses:
Donn Harper The Apocaloptimist
Carl F Northwood: Weird Worlds
Conan’s description from Queen of the Black Coast:
"Well, last night in a tavern, a captain in the king's guard offered violence to the sweetheart of a young soldier, who naturally ran him through. But it seems there is some cursed law against killing guardsmen, and the boy and his girl fled away. It was bruited about that I was seen with them, and so today I was haled into court, and a judge asked me where the lad had gone. I replied that since he was a friend of mine, I could not betray him. Then the court waxed wroth, and the judge talked a great deal about my duty to the state, and society, and other things I did not understand, and bade me tell where my friend had flown. By this time I was becoming wrathful myself, for I had explained my position.”
"But I choked my ire and held my peace, and the judge squalled that I had shown contempt for the court, and that I should be hurled into a dungeon to rot until I betrayed my friend. So then, seeing they were all mad, I drew my sword and cleft the judge's skull; then I cut my way out of the court, and seeing the high constable's stallion tied near by, I rode for the wharfs, where I thought to find a ship bound for foreign ports."
“No living man could disarm Valeria of the Brotherhood with his bare hands”
I can’t speak to the books by Bernard Cornwell that they are based on, because I haven’t read them.
I feel that Howard did exceptionally well when writing Valeria. Surprising how fresh and exciting the works of old read...
I must admit that I kind of took the view that Valeria was an expectional fighter, ranking pretty high up there though I'm biased towards her. That said, I found she had a lot more chemistry with him than Belit, though I had the sense that by the end she's kind of more into him than somewhat vice-versa. She also strikes me as a survivor, so that I struggle to deal with other Howard fans' hostility towards some of my ideas regarding her ultimate fate.
That said, yeah Red Nails is more horror, and involves some unusual choices on Howard's part, but also some brilliant ones. I quite liked this essay and hope you follow it up with a Zenobia essay to round out the trio of love interests.