It’s the first Friday of the month, and usually a guest post by physics professor (and my dad) Dean Zollman highlights the history of atom theory. Today through Monday, this space will be dedicated to the Heroes and Villains blog hop. Enjoy the post about the hero of The Cross and the Dragon below and check out the giveaway and other bloggers. Then come back to Outtakes on Tuesday for another installment on the history of how we came to understand atoms.
Any portrayal of Roland, whom I call Hruodland in The Cross and the Dragon, is going to be fictitious. The only thing we know about the historical eighth-century governor of the March of Brittany is where and when he died.
The Hruodland of The Cross and the Dragon is a product of my imagination, as Roland is a product of the imaginations of the people who created The Song of Roland, Orlando Inamorato, Orlando Furioso, and the legend behind the origin of Rolandsbogen.
Roland at Roncesvalles, Odilon Redon, c.1869 (public domain image via Wikipaintings)
So do I make him the hero who bravely faces overwhelming odds at the Pass of Roncevaux and stubbornly refused to call for aid? Do I make him the bridegroom grieving over the separation from his beloved?
Those questions pale compared to the greatest challenge for anyone writing historical fiction set in the Middle Ages: a hero who is true to his times yet whom modern readers will like and root for.
Unless their protagonist is an antihero, all fiction writers must balance making a character virtuous enough to be sympathetic but flawed enough to be realistic. Medieval times present other obstacles such as:
- Medieval folk likely favored harsh justice for criminals, such as putting out an eye, slitting nostrils, or letting bandits, often accused of murder and rape, strangle slowly on the hangman’s noose.
- Carolingian Franks were intolerant of pagan religions.
- Wife-beating was a right.
- Men thought women enjoyed sex and wondered if their wives would restrain themselves when they were away. A man knew whose blood his sister had, which is why his relationship with nephews and nieces was special; he had to take his wife’s word that her children were his.
Given all that, what kind of hero did I create? Hruodland has a common medieval attitude toward women and therefore doesn’t completely trust his wife, so he is prone to fits of jealousy. But he values her intelligence, compassion, and cleverness. He will stop at nothing to get her back when they are separated, and he is willing to pay any price to protect her.
This post about Hruodland and my process for creating him is part of the Heroes and Villains blog hop, May 3-6, in which more than 20 authors of fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction discuss our heroes or our villains. And we all have giveaways.
Mine is an e-book of The Cross and the Dragon. To enter, leave a comment in this space only, with an e-mail address so that I can contact the winner. If you’d like to get an extra entry, thus increasing your odds, mention that you would like to receive an e-mail (note the singular) announcing the publication of my second book, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar, which features am eighth-century Continental Saxon peasant who will do anything to protect her children.
The winner will be chosen at random and announced in an update to this post after the hop. In the meantime, please check out the posts and the giveaways of the authors below.
Update (May 7, 2013): And the e-book goes to Sandi, chosen by Random.org. Sandi, I will contact you by e-mail. Many thanks to all who entered and contributed to our interesting discussion.
- Nyki Blatchley
- Martin Bolton
- Adrian Chamberlin
- Mike Cooley
- Karin Cox
- Rhiannon Douglas
- Joanne Hall
- Jolea M Harrison
- Tinney Sue Heath
- Eleni Konstanine
- K. Scott Lewis
- Paula Lofting
- Liz Long
- Peter Lukes
- Mark McClelland
- M. Edward McNally
- Sue Millard
- Ginger Myrick
- David Pilling
- Kim Rendfeld
- Terry L Smith
- Tara West
- Keith Yatsuhashi
Kim Rendfeld 
I totally hear you, here. I’ve got a hero who is a Viking (Early 9th Century) and what is right and noble in that society is not what is right and noble now, in some cases. How he views the “personhood” of his slave is different than his view of a free woman, etc. Fascinating adventure, to get into a mind like that.
The Cross and the Dragon sounds great. 🙂
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We definitely have similar issues to deal with. The aristocracy would have seen themselves as special, and so perhaps would the peasants. And just to make things more complicated, the line between free and slave could sometimes be fuzzy. The belief was that everyone had a master, even the king (whose master was God).
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Kim, I very much enjoyed reading your post as part of the Blog hop. I think the issue you mention is a real one, and it is often elided in historical fiction. Thank you! I am leaving my email address in the details below.
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Glad you liked the post. Authors – or perhaps editors – need to trust their readers. I now find it jarring when a character expresses modern sensibilities.
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Sounds like a great read. Thank you for the giveaway. jman1985@yahoo.com And I would love to receive an email about your upcoming book.
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Thanks for your interest, Marsha.
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Sounds interesting! kterry88@gmail.com
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Thanks for your interest, Katie.
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I agree with Jessica–it’s hard sometimes in historical fiction to make a character a person of his/her time when our modern mentality is so different on some issues. I suppose the trick is to remember that people were still people then, and find the common thread 🙂
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Cora, you’ve discovered my secret. Regardless of our era, we’ve all loved and grieved and experienced great anger and great joy. I’ve used those emotions to connect my characters to modern readers.
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Cora and kim – I’ve long wanted to write a book about Richard III but been unnerved by how to approach a subject that has been done so many times before (most recently by Phillippa Gregory). I think you’re right that many deep human emotions are immediately recognisable – what’s not so easy to get (for me) are things like religion.
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Coincidentally, I went to a lecture about Richard III just a few days ago, looking at his character and reputation in the light of recent developments. Certainly a complex and fascinating character, whichever “version” of him you go with.
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I have to ‘out’ myself as a member of the Richard III Society. There have certainly been some fascinating lectures which I am hoping to view online. I never dreamed they would find his remains!
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The princes in the tower represents the greatest challenge with Richard III. We might never know what happened to them or who was responsible for their deaths. The religion was not difficult for me. It has its own logic, even if I, a tolerant 21st century American, have my own personal disagreement with it.
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I have always hoped that he didn’t kill his nephews, though I fear that may be the most likely explanation. The religion requires a greater imaginative leap for me.
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I’ve never felt that Richard killing the princes adds up, quite apart from any issues of his character. The political advantage he stood to gain from it was to prevent there being anyone for rebellions to support, so hiding the fact they were dead made that pointless.
I think it was Buckingham, which would explain why Richard suddenly turned on his closest ally – besides the fact that he might have been genuinely upset (he’d been very close to his brother) he’d have been furious that Buckingham had put him in an impossible position.
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I’ve found a couple of good, rather balanced Richard III novels over the years (though it would be interesting to read them again after the discovery of his body and all it’s told us). I have a terrible time finding good, balanced novels about Henry Tudor–another man with different “versions”. Everyone is so very interested in his son and grandchildren, but few people spare a thought for the first Tudor king.
As far as religion goes, I sort of just go with it. As Kim says, it has medieval Catholicism (and Protestantism, for that matter) has its own logic for the time, even if it doesn’t jibe with our personal beliefs. 🙂
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Cora, which RIII novels would you recommend? I don’t think Henry Tudor has found much novelistic cover – I find his mother, Margaret Beaufort, a far more interesting character!
Agreed about the internal logic of mediaeval Christianity. My problem is more as a writer than as a reader, if you see what I mean. The problem for me is the (apparent) lack of tolerance for other beliefs. Forgive me! I talk too much.
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Talk away–I do it too!
My 2 favorite R III novels are Sunne in Splendor by Sharon Kay Penman (which is very all-encompassing, not just focusing on Richard), and The Seventh Son by Reay Tannahill (a slimmer story than Sunne’s 900 pages, but with good insight).
You may have discovered Henry’s problem breaking into historical fiction–his mother gets all the press! 😀
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I enjoy your comments, Jessica. Medieval people were intolerant of other beliefs and made no effort to hide that. Most readers will understand that the character’s POV is going to carry the biases of their times, even if the author is a tolerant 21st century American.
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An interesting issue. It seems to me that the best approach with that problem is to have your sympathetic character a bit “better” (from our viewpoint) than their contemporaries, so we can root for them by comparison, without being unrealistically modern. Not easy, with a mediaeval knight, who tended to be rather like mediaeval life – nasty, brutish and short.
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Two things you find when writing historical fiction: how much we changed and how little we’ve changed. Often, I focus on the latter such as the joy and relief of mother and baby being fine after childbirth. My novels are told from the perspective of my medieval characters. They might see a knight as noble or nasty, but they might not call their own lives nasty, brutish, and short. They know only their own circumstances – just as we do.
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As an academic medievalist who came to the discipline (more-or-less!) because I fell in love with Roland as portrayed in the Oxford Roland, I just wanted to ask what you thought of the portrayal of the court of Charlemagne. For me, much of the interest in the tale comes from the ‘un-courtly’ actions of the characters. Not just Ganelon, but perhaps especially Charlemagne himself, who, upon the news of Roland’s death, has to be restrained from overt grief and emotion (by Nîmes I think), in order to protect the fragile order of the court. (There is a great article by James R. Simpson on the corporeality of this, and he and I have an article forthcoming on the presence and absence of song in the Oxford Roland.) But anyway, I wondered how you approached the court relations – epitome of chivalry or more like Noble’s court in the Renard tales? How did you choose?
My other question is whether you consulted the manuscript tradition at all. I notice your images are not medieval – and that’s fine. But how did later medieval Roland iconography influence your writing, if at all?
Much more I could ask, but I’ll shut up now 🙂
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My novel reflects more of the history than “The Song of Roland,” although I did borrow from the poem and a German legend. Ganelon is an invented character, who might have been named after a ninth-century bishop accused of betraying one of Charlemagne’s grandsons. In my version of events, he’s not a traitor, but there is still plenty to hate about him.
Charlemagne’s grief in the poem might have been close to how he handled terrible news in real life. His biographer, Einhard, remarks on the monarch’s reaction to the deaths of his sons and close friends.
My approach to the court is based on my reading of “Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne.” With the poem, I found Ganelon’s defense creative–he’s not guilty because it was revenge instead of treason. I found the reaction from the court inexplicable. Really? They would excuse the deaths of so many comrades? However, from a storytelling perspective, it is good for suspense.
In the 8th century annals, when someone was brought before Charles–say, his first cousin Bavarian Duke Tassilo–the court would call for death and then Charles could show mercy by imprisoning him in a monastery.
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