Dion, Frederic; Will Hobson tr. Eventually Qulan becomes one of Genghis' favourite queens after his first wife Borte. It became more interesting to the Russians during the second world war as a source of ideas on strategy. The fictionalized story intersperses Genghis' campaigns with family squabbles, and his infatuation with women. The novel itself is far from fluid however. Power, Sex and Violence The book leaves the impression that the main factors driving Genghis Khan's thirst for empire was a lust for power and for sex.
The book highlights the tendency to violence, which appears to have been formed in their teenage years. Bo'urchu, the narrator and blood brother anda of Temujin: I was sixteen, in the prime of my youth, and I had a fearsome appetite for destruction In this sense, perhaps nonvegetarians at least of yore were more likely to be violent.
At the age of 16, Temujin and Bo'orchu meet and chase down some horse-raiders from the tribe "Sovereigns" that has usurped his father's authority. Only when he opened his eyes did I drive the stone from the riverbed down onto his forehead.
His skull gave a cracking sound; blood spurted out of the bridge of his crushed nose and flooded his eye sockets. He stumbled but managed to knowck Temujin off balance, who rolled over him. I had more luck. I grabbed his topknot, wrenched back his skull and slit his throat. Inflamed now, I cut off his head and laughed at the sight of his face in the first light. His bulging eyes wore a look of dumb amazement.
Weatherford suggests as a further motive the fact that according to Mongol norms, as eldest, he may also have been eligible to consort his step-mother Hoelun. That night I slit the dogs throat as it slept and tossed its head into the river. Bekter kept goading my patience with his thieving One day Qasar and I brought down two skylarks, but we could not retrieve them. That evening Bekter entered the yurt carrying them, our two arrows in his quiver. The next day, Qasar and I climbed to his lookout point Before he died, he begged us to spare Belugtei so that his bloodline could continue 65 This story more or less follows the Secret history and is also corroborated in Ratchnevsky's Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy and Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World ] [Belugtei is to become one of Genghis' generals, but he dies issue-less, like Bo'orchu].
