Author's Notes

CLIMACTERIC
Roman tradition counted the turning points of a man’s life at seven-year intervals, the climacteric years.  After a child’s seventh year, the survival of infancy might be celebrated.  At fourteen, passage to maturity was observed.  During a climacteric year, portents were strong, but danger was also at its greatest; a person was considered to be weakest during the marker years, and one’s health was most imperiled.  The sixty-third year would be the Grand Climacteric, when death and danger most imminent—and, of course, few people reached this particular marker.

Here again we have a rite observed by Romans, which may or may not have been part of Clovis’ real history.  However, given the Romanization of his people, and, fankly, the handiness of a sort of timekeeping device, I found this a good marker to use.  Certainly, rites of age remain with us today—though perhaps at altered points in time—in Bat and Bar Mitvahs, Quinceañera, legal ages for driving or other adult privileges, and even in observance of retirement ages and marital anniversaries.  Humans love a good anniversary; I just happened to choose a Roman convention for this work.


CLOTAIRE
497-561; inherited Soissons.  Clotilde and Clovis’ youngest son; ambitious and unfilial, he murdered Clodomer’s children in 524 and took Tours and Poitiers.  Campaigned against his mother’s former country of Burgundy, and in 534, won Grenoble, Die and other territories.  Fought beside Theuderic’s son, Theudebert, and his own brother Childebert.  Much-married and bloodthirsty, by 558, he was the sole King of the Franks.  After one too many rebellious forays by his own son, Chram, he imprisoned Chram in a cottage in Brittany and burnt him, along with his wife and Clotaire’s own grandchildren, alive.  In apparent remorse, Clotaire is said to have made pilgrimage to St. Martin’s tomb in Tours to beg forgiveness, dying not long after.  (Variants:  Chlothachar, Chlotar, Clothar, Clotaire, Chlotochar, or Hlothar.)


As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.