O what a shame it is that the stars should capture the sun, under whom they sink down, compelled neither by force nor by war!
The stars are the magnates, barons and grandees, but the effect of referring to them as such gives the impression of ancient prophetic powers predicting events determined by the alignment of the stars and planets i.e. Ganieda’s prophecy is bound up in the movement of heavenly bodies.
Ganieda, Merlin’s sister, the seer, uses the time honoured method of astrology. What the prophecy relates to is the capture of Stephen at Lincoln. The King is captured as we witnessed in appendix 23. All the barons sink down in the Anarchy, brought low by their shifting allegiances, none of them being compelled to make war or forced into the situation. Henry’s point of view is the King is crowned and that should be the end of it. One point that is consistently made throughout the HRB and the Vita is that Britain would be much better off if it stopped fighting within its territories and advanced themselves from feudalism. The same point is made on several occasions in the Gesta Stephani: meanwhile, when the English were conducting themselves in so disorderly and disastrous fashion and, loosening the restraints of justice, were freely indulging in every sort of impiety….