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Rating: I expected mountains of gold and found the darkness of the earth.
I was searching for the treasure and found myself in the abyss of your eyes.
Who said that fantasy doesn’t exist in Italy? If someone did, they were greatly mistaken.
And I'm not referring to the various Licia Troisi and Chiara Strazzulla, who offer nothing but a pale imitation of Tolkienian adventures.
I'm talking about a saga that doesn't originate from some author's literary ideas, but from the narrative genius of the Ladin people's legends, which tell the adventures of the Kingdom of Fanis. These legends, orally passed down for centuries until the late 19th century, were meticulously collected and published repeatedly by Karl Felix Wolff.
Compared to commonly understood fantasy novels, they have two additional strengths. The first, already mentioned, is that they descend from a popular tradition and are rooted in a specific environment and culture. Second, and invaluable from every point of view, they are set in a real landscape, almost unreal enough to be perfect for a 'fantastic' setting.
And these places also have fantasy names: the Pale Mountains, the Moon Mountains, that is, the Dolomites.
Some Dolomite groups have names that derive from the legend: the Rosengarten, (which unfortunately in Italian is a horrible 'Catinaccio') is the Rose Garden of King Laurin, the legendary dwarf king who blamed the kidnapping of his daughter on the Rosengarten itself, 'guilty' of revealing his position to the enemy, and thought it best to curse it so that no one could ever admire it by day or by night.
But Laurin hadn't considered the sunset, during which the mountain takes on colors that can be described with a name ad hoc and unique, namely the enrosadira - which happens precisely at that particular moment that is neither day nor night.
The legend of the people of the Fanis is quite intricate, intertwining fairy tales and war sagas.
The last king of Fanes has a single daughter, who, to keep the peaceful kingdom of Fanis, forges a secret alliance with the people of the Marmots: an alliance based on the "exchange of twins". When the queen marries the adventurous prince Veliconder, who seemingly has good intentions, and two twin girls, Dolasilla and Lujanta, are born, the queen must 'sacrifice' one of the daughters by exchanging her with one of Ontilia's daughters, the marmot queen. Lujanta is the unfortunate chosen one and will grow up among the marmots, in their underground kingdom.
But what king and queen hide from each other complicates matters: the queen has not spoken of her pact with the marmots to the king, just as the king has told no one of his identical pact with the king of the eagles. Thus, the faithful servant Mizacola, sent by the king but in agreement with the queen, climbs the peaks of Mount Nuvolau carrying Dolasilla and who the king believes to be Lujanta, but who is actually the little marmot received in exchange, secretly replaced by the queen. He will give the eagles a marmot, receiving in return the promised eaglet.
On the way back, the servant encounters two antithetical characters who are fundamental to the development of the story: the wicked Spina-De-Mul (mule's spine), a half-man, half-mule creature (the upper part), who tries to abduct Dolasilla and will do everything over the years to destroy the kingdom and its inhabitants. The second character is the young King of the Duranni, Ey-de-Net (night eye). The two confront each other and the latter strikes Spina-de-Mul and takes possession of the Rajetta - a magical stone - and gifts it to Dolasilla. Their destinies will intertwine again many years later.
Over the years, Dolasilla becomes a fierce and infallible warrior, constantly supporting the king in battle, who becomes increasingly greedy and obsessed with the legendary hidden treasure of Aurona. Dolasilla, thanks to the magical artifacts she receives over time, long supports her father's reckless expansionist desires until, in adulthood, she reunites with and falls in love with Ey-de-Net. She then decides to stop fighting, also because by now Veliconder's devouring ambition has made the kingdom of Fanis anything but peaceful and has drawn the hatred of all populations with which they had lived without tensions.
The king, deprived of his most powerful weapon - his daughter - banishes Ey-de-Net from the kingdom and, to seize the treasure of Fanis, even allies with his own enemies and the wicked Spina-de-Mul, who was waiting for nothing else: Fanes is destroyed, invaded, and looted. Dolasilla is left alone to fight, and her fate is fatally revealed by her armor turning black. She is killed in battle with her own magical weapons, stolen by the enemy.
The king of the Fanis, who was waiting on Mount Lagazuoi for the battle's outcome, is fiercely mocked by the victorious allies and especially by Spina-de-Mul, who rebukes him for the disastrous outcome of his betrayal. Still today, the king's face, turned into stone with his crown of spikes, is visible on the rocks overlooking the Passo di Falzarego (falzarego=false king).
To prevent the massacre of the people of Fanis is Lujanta, mistaken by everyone for Dolasilla, who leads them to the Morin of Salvans, in the underground kingdom of the marmots.
This is the legend that Mauro Neri elegantly intertwines using an interesting narrative device, namely a contemporary village festival where a singer narrates, repeatedly throughout the day, the legends of the people of Fanis.
Accustomed to writing children's books, Neri integrates a happy ending into the legendary elements, in which Ey-de-Net, overcoming the challenges posed by the marmots, manages to go back to the moment Dolasilla is mortally wounded and save her, and at the same time discover the treasure of the Fanis: which is not material but a quality that Ey-de-Net must choose among strength, courage, power, wisdom, wealth, and magic. But the brave knight of the Dolomites cares about only one thing: saving the beloved Dolasilla. And he will do so while simultaneously revealing what the famous 'treasure' is: love - naturally - that goes beyond everything.
It's a pity for the graphic design, not at all appealing, typical of a middle school novel. Needless to say, it is much more, although this is clearly an adaptation primarily for teenagers, but its readability goes far beyond this.
The saga of the Fanis is evidently the subject of in-depth studies and what makes it all the more magical is that every described place actually exists.
On the Fanes plateau, for example, there really is a place called the Parliament of the Marmots.
The legends are still very much alive today: it is said that the surviving Fanis live among the caves of the Lago di Braies and that every year, on a moonlit night, a black boat appears on the lake, gliding over its quiet waters. One can distinguish the figures of the old queen and Lujanta. They await the sound of silver trumpets, announcing the hour when the kingdom of the Fanes will rise again.
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