Near My Period

One of the fascinations of historical fictions is the different means by which authors choose their history and thus create their fiction.  I've discussed this in the author's note for The Ax and the Vase ... in this post at Reading the Past , we see Justin Swanton (another acquaintance from HFO's fora) discussing his research for Centurion's Daughter, a novel in which Clovis appears.

Wikimedia Commons
Baptism of Clovis, National Gallery of Art, Washington,  DC, USA

Swanton places (Saint) Genovefa's part in the siege at Paris during Clovis' reign; yet my research indicated this occurred during Childeric's (Clovis' father) time.  He accepts the tales of the fratricides and murder within Clotilde's family.  Many people do, of course, so I don't argue that choice.  But, for my own work, I found reason to question these legends, and did not choose to accept nor include them except as rumors, in a fleeting mention.

Swanton also accepts the placement of Clovis' baptism as being nearly simultaneous to or at least within a year of his conversion; whereas, based on some sources and some other indications that showed a conscious self-modeling by Clovis of his life and acts on Constantine, I chose to separate the conversion from the baptism by a period of years, making the baptism perhaps even more profound an alteration by the King.  For Clovis, born a pagan, who believed his very line sprung from a god of the sea, to accept a new faith was a powerful statement.  For a king who carried the charisma of divine descent ... to renounce that and re-anoint himself on his own, by then secure, throne - and to proclaim the tenet of divine right ... was a fundamental enough shift in the public basis of power itself to take some time for a man like Clovis to get to.  He not only redefined his own being - and his royal charisma - he set the course of European royalty for a thousand years and more.  To this day, even Elizabeth II's self-expectation of her divine right is a central part of her every action.  It is a manner of responsibility unlike anything conceived in Clovis' day.  And the responsibility was to the Christian G-d.

Like me, Justin Swanton worked much of the magic by researching everything but the characters - by finding information on the lives lived by, in his case, the Gallo Roman populace of the time and place.  I searched grave goods, researched horse breeds and sword-making, worked out the history of textile and read the Salic law, set down by Clovis himself.  When primary sources are slender, it's possible to learn how many other types of sources there are - in my case, by far more extensive than I had dreamed when starting out.