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In Nominandis Vero Rozinante
Posted By: PerseusSpartacusDate: 10/25/13 7:33 a.m.

Don't worry about translating the title, it's just a Google Translate-ed version of "On the Naming of the Rozinante". Re-translating it didn't even give me the proper sentence, anyways.

On the M2 level 'Fatum Iustum Stultorum', Durandal returns and 'subverts' the "largest Pfhor ship in the system", the Khfiva. At the very end of the game, he says the following:

I have rechristened the Khfiva the
Rozinante.

'Rozinante' is an alternate spelling of 'Rocinante', the name of the horse belonging to Don Quixote. The question, of course, is why Durandal would choose such a name, as one could say it makes him out to be a madman. However, it's more complicated than that. Wikipedia kindly provides the following:

Rocín in Spanish means a work horse or low-quality horse, but can also mean an illiterate or rough man. There are similar words in French (roussin; rosse), Portuguese (rocim), and Italian (ronzino). The etymology is uncertain.

The name is a complex pun. In Spanish, ante has several meanings and can function as a standalone word as well as a suffix. One meaning is "before" or "previously". Another is "in front of". As a suffix, -ante in Spanish is adverbial; rocinante refers to functioning as, or being, a rocín. "Rocinante," then, follows Cervantes' pattern using ambiguous, multivalent words, common throughout the novel.

Rocinante's name, then, signifies his change in status from the "old nag" of before to the "foremost" steed. As Cervantes describes Don Quijote's choice of name: nombre a su parecer alto, sonoro y significativo de lo que había sido cuando fue rocín, antes de lo que ahora era, que era antes y primero de todos los rocines del mundo—"a name, to his thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hack before he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacks in the world".

The most important part is this quote from the first chapter of the book, also given by Wikipedia:

Four days were spent in thinking what name to give him, because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before belonging to a knight-errant, and what he then was.

Did not Durandal change in his nature during the events of the original Marathon? Whereas before he was a slave to Bern[?h]ard Strauss, he now is the foremost AI of the universe, or so he thinks. The name 'Rocinante' or 'Rozinante' is meant to signify this change.

And yes, Bungie may have been trying to draw our attention to the fact that Durandal is insane. ;)

Vale,
Perseus

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Replies:

In Nominandis Vero RozinantePerseusSpartacus 10/25/13 7:33 a.m.
     Re: In Nominandis Vero RozinanteHokuto 10/25/13 11:13 a.m.
           Re: In Nominandis Vero RozinantePerseusSpartacus 10/25/13 3:34 p.m.

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