Stepping into a Medieval Spanish Civil War

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Charlemagne, Historical Fiction, medieval, Middle Ages, Spain, Sulaiman Yaqzan ibn al-Arabi, The Cross and the Dragon, The Song of Roland

Thanks to anonymous medieval epic, “The Song of Roland,” the battle at the Pass of Roncevaux in Spain is seen as Christianity vs. Islam. While the poem has a lot to say about courage in the face of overwhelming odds, any resemblance between it and the facts is purely coincidental.

The people responsible for the 778 massacre were Basques, not Saracens. In fact, the nobleman who persuaded Charlemagne to cross the Pyrenees and invade Spain was a Saracen seeking assistance to fight a fellow Muslim. For more about the emir, Sulaiman Yaqzan ibn al-Arabi, and why he sought aid from a devout Christian king, read my post on author Jessica Knauss’s blog.

And if you would like to learn more about the massacre–so traumatic that no one wrote about while Charlemagne was still alive–read a post I wrote in May for Unusual Historicals.

Illustration to “The Song of Roland,” 1903, Heorhiy Narbut (public domain image via wikipaintings.org)

Q and A about ‘The Cross and the Dragon’ on Unusual Historicals

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Charlemagne, Historical Fiction, medieval, Middle Ages, Rolandsbogen, Sources of information, The Cross and the Dragon, The Song of Roland

Rolandsbogen (photo by Tohma via Wikimedia Commons, used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License)

What do an ivy-covered arch, four nonfiction books, and a painting about “The Song of Roland” have in common?

They all relate to the answers to questions about The Cross and the Dragon on this Sunday’s Unusual Historicals, a blog dedicated to fiction in unusual places and times. My debut novel is a tale of love amid the wars and blood feuds of Charlemagne’s reign.

Here are the questions:

From Diane Denton: How was the idea for your novel born? Obviously, you have an interest in the period, but what moved you to focus on the characters and their story as you did?

Four great resources about the Carolingians (photo by Kim Rendfeld)

From Sandy Frykholm: I think of the early Middle Ages as a fairly dry period for source material. What variety of sources did you find? Any that particularly surprised you—either in content or the fact that they exist at all?

From Roseanne E. Lortz: How did the epic poem “The Song of Roland” influence you in your writing? Are there elements in the novel that you took from the poem?

Visit Unusual Historicals for the answers.

Roland at Roncesvalles, Odilon Redon, c.1869 (public domain image via Wikipaintings)

What Would Roland Think of “The Song of Roland”?

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Historical Fiction, literature, medieval, Middle Ages, Roland, The Cross and the Dragon, The Song of Roland

What really happened in 778 at the Pass of Roncevaux in the Pyrenees bears little resemblance to 11th century epic “The Song of Roland” (for more see yesterday’s post at Unusual Historicals).

My forthcoming novel, The Cross and the Dragon, explores a German legend in which Hruodland (Roland) survives the massacre at Roncevaux but his wife is told he died. In my story, he is comatose after the attack and left at a hospital for a Christian burial. What if after months of fighting his way back to health, he were traveling back home under an assumed name and heard a singer perform an earlier version of the poem?

Read today’s post at Unusual Historicals for an excerpt, a novelist’s speculation on how he might have reacted.

Illustration to ‘The Song of Roland,’ 1903, Heorhiy Narbut

We Won’t Write about the Massacre While the Emperor Is Alive

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Charlemagne, Historical Fiction, Massacre, Middle Ages, Roland, The Cross and the Dragon, The Song of Roland

When it happened, the 778 battle at the Pass of Roncevaux in the Pyrenees was not the glorious self-sacrifice depicted in “The Song of Roland” centuries later. In fact, Charlemagne’s official record-keepers did not write about Frankish soldiers being slaughtered in ambush by the Basques while he was still alive. Yet it became propaganda for the Crusades in the 11th century.

This battle, a turning point in my forthcoming novel, The Cross and the Dragon, was kept quiet for decades, at least 36 years. Visit the blog Unusual Historicals to find out why the story was suppressed at the time

A reminder: If you’re interested in helping us choose cover art for The Cross and the Dragon, check out the four contenders on the May 14 post. Name a favorite and you’ll get a chance to win an e-book.

Roland at Roncesvalles, c.1869, Odilon Redon

An Author’s Note Means We Trust Our Audience

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Author's Note, Charlemagne, Historical Fiction, historical novelists, Mike Daisey, public radio program, The Cross and the Dragon, The Song of Roland, This American Life, working conditions in china

Last weekend’s episode of This American Life depicts a journalist’s worst nightmare: Finding the compelling story you thought was true turn out to have so many falsehoods that the only ethical thing to do is retract it.

In January, the radio program aired part of a monologue by Mike Daisey about terrible working conditions in the Chinese factories that make Apple products. I listened, transfixed, horrified. Problem is, he fabricated many of the anecdotes, and when This American Life directly asked him about facts in his story, he lied. A reporter for another public radio program, Marketplace, exposed the discrepancies.

As a former journalist, I feel This American Life’s pain. When you represent a story as true, when you say you saw something or you talked to someone, that means you actually did so. I am also saddened. Working conditions in China are harsh, but knowing that parts of Daisey’s story are not true hurts the cause of improving those conditions.

The historical novelist in me see things in more of a nuance. I portray real people fictitiously and even create people to interact with them. In my novel The Cross and the Dragon,  I invented a whole family for my hero, Hruodland. With the historical information about Hruodland consisting of part of a sentence in Einhard’s biography of Charlemagne, any portrayal of Hruodland is fictitious, including (and especially) “The Song of Roland.”

Historical novelists debate on how far to stray from actual events. My own philosophy is that the key word of historical fiction is fiction. I endeavor to accurately portray the characters’ times and culture but will take a few liberties for the sake of the story. I also believe in including an author’s note, that place where I confess where I made stuff up. It is especially important in a period not well known to a general audience.

Daisey’s response to This American Life’s retraction includes, “My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity.”

We who write historical fiction routinely make such admissions. We trust that our readers will be moved by our stories even when they know we speculated, embellished, and invented. I wish Daisey had the same trust in his audience.