Compare And Contrast Anna Of Byzantium

The Flying Boy and the Princess
“‘Don't fly too near to the sun…’”(Barrett 43). These are the exact words used by a princess’ tutor to warn her not to get too attached to power. In the historical fiction novel, Anna of Byzantium, written by Tracy Barrett, Anna is the eldest daughter of Alexius I, and she is the heir to the throne of the Byzantine empire, when her throne is taken away from her due to her actions that result from her hunger for power. On the contrary, a boy named Icarus, who is the son of a gifted inventor named Daedalus, is portrayed as a boy who does not know where to end his freedom, but at the same time wise by both Stephen Dobyn’s poem, “Icarus’s Flight” and Sally Benson’s retelling of the myth called “The Flight of Icarus.” Although they both have very different lives, they both demonstrate the
The author herself writes how Anna feels as she sits on the throne, “I saw the heavy crown glitter on my head, the purple slippers on my feet being kissed by kings and princes” (Barrett 30). In other words, through the thoughts of Anna the author is trying to show how Anna is imagining the wonderful things power can bring to her. Anna is almost in a trance when she is so deep in her thoughts about being empress. Although these astounding thoughts sound wonderful to Anna, she does not realize that she is being taken over by power, and it renders her to blindly follow her grandmother in hope for that power. She is basically falling into power because she has been exposed to so much of it, much more than she can handle. As Anna grows older she can handle the large amount of power, therefore making Anna later realizes that her grandmother is not trying to get the power for Anna, but for herself. In the same way, the author of “The Flight of Icarus” agrees when she writes how Icarus feels during his flight, “He was bewitched by a sense of freedom and beat his