The narratives that vanquished peoples have created of their defeat have, according to Schivelbusch, fallen into several identifiable types. In one of these, the vanquished manage to (i)------- the victor’s triumph as the result of some spurious advantage, the victors being truly inferior where it counts. Often the winners (ii)------- this interpretation, worrying about the cultural or moral costs of their triumph and so giving some credence to the losers’ story.
Blank i
A construe
B anoint
C acknowledge
Blank ii
D take issue with
E disregard
F collude in
Answer: construe and collude in
But I can’t find the clues. Could someone please help me?
I think “spurious” is the key for the first blank. The advantage is not true, so the triumph isn’t a true victory either. “Construe” has a connotation of sort of choosing the facts or arranging them in such a way to come up with the answer you want. “Acknowledge” would be agreeing that it was in fact a real triumph, which is not the case here. “Anoint” doesn’t really make much sense at all to me - I don’t see how you could “anoint a triumph”.
For the second, the winners “give credence” to the loser’s story, which means they agree with it or support it. If they take issue with it, they would disagree with it. If they disregard it, that would mean they ignore it, probably because they think it is false, but that is not the case here. So they “collude in” it, which has a connotation of a secret agreement, actually an agreement that they will tell the same lie.