A collection of one ...

The blog's been pretty limp for a long time - unfortunately not the kind of infrequency that keeps a reader wanting more. I follow several others like that, but even my following of other blogs has been pretty poor of late. I don't read like I used to, don't write at all, really haven't blogged either. And am not even really thinking about "maybe I'll write again" and so on.

That said ... please go visit one of those I follow! Jeff Sypeck is such a good writer, and his observations about anything he uses *his* blog to point to are worth the stopover every time. In this case, too, the way he's pointing has me fascinated AND my mind is blown. Spoiler alert: Mike Tyson is fascinated by Clovis, the Merovingians, the Franks???? I mean ... Huh. It doesn't take me back, ahem, but does provide the unexpected imaginary mindpic of Mike Tyson reading my novel (had it ever seen the light of day). Huh.

Well, SOMEBODY Wants It ...

My thanks to Tom Williams for pointing me to the one person in the world eagerly seeking a novel about Clovis I, King of the Franks.

Only tens of thousands more to go, and The Ax and the Vase is a product I can sell.

In the meantime: WIP. And sighing.

Collection

Mmmmm! Nothing says summer snacking like a nice, light tongue. Of course, at your finer establishments, you might ask for a refreshing cockscomb. Courtesy of Two Nerdy History Girls.

On detail images from paintings, and what we can learn: costume nerding - is it a boy? (Again at TNHG.)

The History Blog is hanging out in my 'hood - their take on Childeric's bees (and more). And mine.

... and THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is where "granny panties" are exactly what a wearer needs ... (American Duchess blog)

.GIF: Wikipedia

^^ This is your brain ^^.

This is your brain on books.

And this is my brain craving Star Trek nerdlery. Surely this can't be the first time ... !!!!

Finally ... hope is the dream of the querying, man. BookEnds Literary on a different kind of referral.

If I Had My Druthers

Please accept my apologies for a late post from Monday ...


Monday mornings that start off rolling are the best beginning for a work week. I had a mental note or two coming in, only a minor glitch or two firing up, and a good, solid four hours of steady work to keep me going in the a.m. There were also two fresh new rejections (both of them expected, so the sting was minor); one on a query sent only yesterday, and one only a couple or three weeks old.

IF I HAD MY DRUTHERS

I honestly wonder, as I consider shelving (as distinct from “drawering”, which would imply entirely giving up hope) Ax____, whether it is right or wrong to do so. It’s hard to be open to the possibility of putting away a work I know is GOOD, even if I have begun to consider that it may not be the work that can launch my second career, but I am trying to allow the idea to be … okay. At the same time, yes, querying is a numbers game and this could just be my origin myth, the tale of the super-author in the making, the cred that makes my own arc as worthwhile as (insert respected/much-rejected author’s name here) – and as Clovis’ own.

That latter is tempting, and honestly I would hardly stop to think about “quitting” (for NOW) on Ax, except that … I feel like I’ve run out of lists to plunder, research resources to take advantage of. Options. I feel like I’ve queried every agent who even mentions histfic without dotting their eyes with little Regency romance hearts or … yeah, mentioning that it’d be nice to see something other than some white European king for a change.

Hilary Mantel did spectacularly well with Wolf Hall and Bringing up the Bodies, but … Hilary Mantel also wasn’t a debut novelist in the first place, and was writing and publishing on a different continent from my own in the second place. She had twenty years’ catalog of performance behind her. She also found a way to write about the perennially-blockbuster Tudors without quite treading old ground. And now she also has TWO Man-Booker prizes to her credit.

Not a platform I can claim to stand on. Though I’ve got a story that not only doesn’t tread old ground, but illuminates a huge swath of the history of the West *and* even some of the very reasons #WeNeedDiverseBooks today, it isn’t. Diverse. And nobody’s heard of Clovis I on this side of The Pond (a *selling* point that gets in its own way, Catch-22 style [an appropriate problem for an author named Major?]). It’s not MG, YA, or NA; there isn’t a single dragon, pneumatic beauty, or magically-engendered neurosis in it. Game of Thrones readers might dig it, but I’m not comping that and don’t have compelling plans to garner that audience nor proof I could.

And but.

And but.

And but.

Ten years I’ve spent with this novel, now. Learning from it and LOVING it, though that may not shine through given my dry and pragmatic statements about killing darlings and it being a product and oh-so-professional detachment. I LOVE Ax and the Vase, it has been both one hell of a good story to be part of, and iet means the world to me. It is a manifestation of something my dad talked about all his life (“somebody should write a book” was a stock phrase in my house growing up), and he died before I ever began to write. I have no doubt he’s rooting for it, and there is a minor, sentimental strain in wishing I could publish a book I know he’d probably have enjoyed immensely on its own merits … and been inexperessibly proud to know I wrote. (Heck, at that, half the dead folks in my family would probably like this book; those who have gone before me gave me the very voice in which it’s expressed, after all.)

I am to this day entranced by the story, to the point that actually feeling it’s ready, it’s finished, is still exciting – just to know I have done this thing, that I made it, I have something to do with something this great.

I’m proud of my work.

Even if I let it go for now, there’s no doubt I’d try to get it out there as a follow up. (It is a prequel of sorts to the WIP; they are as unalike as they are inextricably linked.)

Lord, just thinking and writing about it, I gnash and resist with a fury the idea there’s no agent out there who could (… who would …) do anything with this book. It’s a bloody good read, it’s a ripping yarn.

If only I could find some hidden stash, somewhere else to turn.


In the meantime, I must turn to the WIP. If I have missed some dozens of agents who would do my work proud, somehow or other I’ll find ‘em – and beware, agents.

This isn’t quitting. I’m just turning slightly to one side … for the moment …

#WeNeedDiverseBooks

There is a movement in publishing which has gathered a great deal of momentum just in the past six months, and which is gratifying to see - and which I have DECIDEDLY failed (with The Ax and the Vase, that is) to participate in. Ax is not only about a royal white dude, but it's self-absorbedly told in first person POV, *and* includes a long and inextricable subplot about, essentially, hating and punishing homosexual behavior.

I've talked about it before, and don't defend these things in their essence. Ax is the story that made me tell it, and (failings and all) it still captivates me, and it's a great novel. I didn't think, when falling into the story, about its demographics, and have wrestled with my own culpability as an author since.

The WIP happens once again to be about a royal princess, but (a) this novel will be told, at least, from the point of view of a woman, and (b) takes place in world by far more cosmopolitan than an ancient Frankish stockade. At least two major characters are people of color, and the issue of how one of these must die is one I am dealing with at great mental length these days, because it echoes, for me, the insensitivity of a White Dude King killing off the gay man in his ranks, and there is concern not only for my ethical expectations, but also the genuineness of the world. I shy away from political correctness in dealing with any story, and yet there is a definite need to "redeem" myself from some of the constraints my original first-person novel brings with it, no matter how good it is.

There is also the concern of my being a white person of undoubted privilege and freedom, and the extent to which I exoticize diversity, as opposed to presenting it properly. I couldn't even bring myself to add to the community response at Janet Reid's recent post about diversity; they do too good a job there for me to improve on it. I just know I want to participate in #WeNeedDiverseBooks - in the right way for who I am and what we all want to accomplish.

How to do that ...

• Avoid exoticization - turning someone's entire culture into a Hallowe'en costume (or, even worse, a sexy Hallowe'en costume) to dress up my book.
• Avoid appropriation - imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery; sometimes, it's just a reductive presumption, and can lead to a loss of perspective. Not good for writing about something.
• Don't impose myself on a character or a culture - researching a world to build it, without demolition in order to reface it. Storytelling is not a wasteful home design show out to impose a fresh new face on an old house, it's an exploration of structure and style which should be true to intent. I don't jam 21st-century feminists into my works, and I don't fetishize the worlds into which I want to bring my readers.
• Follow the story. If the characters are allowed "their own truth" so to speak, everything will work better. I love to be led, as an author.
• Keep #WeNeedDiverseBooks and the great diversity and voices *in tune* all the time. I find inspiration in Twitter all the time for this, connections and perspectives not only keeping me honest about my privilege, but affecting the way I live and write, and how I think about approaching everything.
• FIND THE HISTORY. There are more and more people every day seeking to illuminate sources beyond the powerful white men. Researchers are amazing people, and they share - it would be madness not to take advantage of that, as a writer.

The WIP is bringing with it, every day, more exciting opportunities in its story, its research - its *characters*.

Wish me luck ...

Hero

One of the more striking features of human culture is the consistency with which we enshrine scoundrels as heroes. Without fail, literature across the world describes as holy or laudable men whose only acts of which we know are violent, promiscuous, greedy, deceitful, and even almost stupid. What we know of some is only as much as that they supposedly ascribe to a certain faith, or are monarchs, or born of divine forbears. Virtue as many of us prefer to view it is rarely in blazing evidence, but we are always assured, this man is the elect of G-d, the sacred head of his people, the savior hero to venerate.

This isn’t over, of course – see also: Captain Kirk, and the fact that even as a decades-long and sincere fan, my pointing out he was all but a sociopath would draw ire (if not blood) from those who worship him as The Best Captain. We can’t forgive a pretty and demonstrably media-whore-ish newscaster for saying he was in a combat situation on a helicopter once, but venture to point out that Shatner played an overcompensating neurotic and you’re in for trouble.

Of all the things I’ve been concerned about in writing The Ax and the Vase – lack of diverse characters, bigotry in profound disagreement with my own philosophy, writing about the royal guy rather than “real people” – portraying a king with expansionist tendencies on the grandest of scale and someone liable to dropping axes into skullbones as a heroic main character is the least of my qualms.

I hate battle scenes, always have, but have taken that with a wry kind of backward-gratitude as the ultimate demonstration that we as authors do not choose our subjects; they come to us. Meeting the challenges of this work may have been the perfect learning material for me as a novelist, and I’ve never made life too easy on myself.

But Clovis’ extreme ambition and the potential ugliness of his character, viewed *outside* the first-person? These issues don’t get me losing sleep.

Maybe that is the challenge for my readers. Maybe it’s the way I justify focusing on the rich king – he hardly gets to sit on a pedestal, though the POV throughout presents him absolutely straight-faced. The guy is all about glory and his own power, with attention to his faith and his family always filtered through expediency. His love and his conviction may be perfectly genuine, but they always SERVE something beyond the spiritual or emotional.

Clovis is little different from any modern politician or head of state who got there by any means possible, and who gains ever more using every tool available. Other men, negotiation, and the sword – these are all office supplies, and their utilitarian ends are not intrinsically praiseworthy. Nation-building and origin stories are not in themselves honorable, myths not necessarily hagiography.

Was Rome’s ouster from Gaul a moral, a necessary – a GOOD – act? We understand it to be; the story of Clovis’ first great battle, and the execution of the Roman Syagrius, is one of triumph for the Frankish people. But was the triumph of one king, was his consolidation of what became the modern nation of France, a fine thing? We receive a tale of destiny and incredible success – but this is the success of one man, one royal court, one burgeoning country; it does not preclude the possibility any other fate might have been better for Gaul in that generation … or in the many, many generations since.

We receive the tale of the Decline of Rome – sometimes viewed as a wistful inevitability, Barbarians at the Gate and all – sometimes viewed as the triumph of native peoples reclaiming self-hood from an empire. The truth is, one conflict or another, one hero or another, Gaul might have become one under some other king’s banner … or some other faith. Would another outcome have been as magnificent?

Almost surely, if the authors of some alternate history had voices to sing their own praises. And they would have been just as Clovis himself was; expedient, sometimes violent, sometimes lovingly human, always serving some ambition.

Then There Was the Merovingian *Controversy*

I got into an argument one time with one of my early readers, when we were with our writing group and discussing my query or pitch or synopsis. In the document at hand, the name of the dynasty Clovis founded, the Merovingian, was prominent; and somehow it came out that I never use the word once in the manuscript itself (this was a draft and a half ago, and the word never has appeared in any version), and this reader was irritated. “Well, I’d be annoyed if you told me a book was about the Merovingian dynasty and you never used the word Merovingian even once in the novel! I’d feel you lied to me in the description – I would be looking for it!”

Putting the name of a dynasty still taking its position on the starting blocks – not an assured future, at the time Clovis recounts his tale in first-person – seems a difficult proposition, to me. For one, people in any given period are not prone to saying such things as “hey, we live in the Tudor Dynasty!” or “the Dark Ages” or “the Medieval period, which is going to be defined for us in just a few centuries”  and so on. I once lived in The Reagan Era, but I didn’t really discuss it in those terms at the time. Jesus never knew the word Christian.

So many of the ways we define ourselves, and especially our times, are labels applied by those outside the moment. Most of history is described in terms that didn’t exist contemporary to any given period, of course; but, as above, we just don’t live our lives by these contexts most of the time. I’ll cop to living in the twenty-first century, and having been born in The Sixties, but whatever the general-use term is going to be for the periods and places my life happens to coincide with, coined perhaps fifty or perhaps three hundred years from now, I am not privy to and can’t concern myself with.

Clovis, to be sure, was highly concerned with dynasty – and THAT word appears clearly enough in the novel. He sired four surviving princes, and spends not a little of the first act concerning himself with one son who appears sickly, and enthusiastically ensuring brothers when he marries Clotilde. In this theme, I did include much which is apocryphal.

But to put in Clovis’ mouth, “I am the Founder of the Merovingian Dynasty” is just not tenable.

Am I a liar?

Well … I’m a novelist, the whole *point* is fabrication. But another point is authenticity, and that both demands some story where facts are scarce – and forbids foolishness where character is clear. I can’t shoehorn words into a mouth ill-suited to say them, and that is important.

Too, the novel is told first person. This creates a forced perspective it isn’t possible to open up; indeed, I’d tell anyone who ever read it, The Ax and the Vase is told by an unreliable narrator. Perhaps this gives me the excuse for my own fiction; I didn’t think about it when I began writing (indeed, I tried to resist first-person for a long time), but the use of things I as author know are not history has made a good story. It both freed and limited me – I couldn’t very well sit an ancient Frankish king in front of a mirror to gaze upon and lovingly describe his handsome (or not) features, and I had no rose-colored glasses to dote long on the pretty romance with his wife … but I was also free to skip over judgment, negativity, and expectations outside the king’s perspective.

This forced me into the homophobia that kills off a major character by inches, over years.

It also freed me from the fetters of historical perspective. It gave me the unapologetic authority of the king himself, to do as we know he did, and to believe it all correct. It gave me one of the great jokes of the book, in fact. Where history provides Clovis, in his final years, a lament: “Woe am I, that I have no kinsmen” – I have a king chiding his eldest son in sarcasm, following up the plaint with “does victory tickle your scruples, boy?”

It may be I’m the sort of author who’ll tick off some readers, turning things on their heads and playing with history. Certainly (despite repeated attempts by a certain archaeologist to persuade me otherwise) I’m no historian. (This frees me from those niggling rules of the discipline.) I just want to tell a good story, even if that means including legends just because I like them. I do want to tell it correctly, but a thinly-sourced period does have its advantages – especially as I don’t read French, and therefore can say that much scholarship on my subject was unavailable to me.

I may be a cavalier, prevaricating American … but I’m also a pretty good novelist, at that.

Hacksilver, Liberty, and Equality

We've discussed here in the past that the Frankish name came from the francisca, their emblematic blade, and that this name comes from a word meaning freedom or liberty.

The problem with etymologies and concepts is that their meaning is always filtered through perspective, and the contemporary understanding of the terms freedom and liberty are affected by our experience, our education, our PRIVILEGE, and the standard of living that defines just how free "free" is, and so on.

The expectation of liberty for someone whose life is dependent upon crops or weather or military success far more directly and immediately than, say, most modern Americans, is difficult if not impossible to understand or conceive.

Equality, too, is a different matter.

All this is by way of introduction to the concept of hacksilver.

In the societies of Late Antiquity in Europe, "Barbarian" peoples enacted the precepts of equality through distribution of wealth:  specifically, to soldiers, after conquest.  Booty was collected and evenly divided - and, by even, what I mean to convey is that equal portions were allotted to all by way of cutting down precious objects, not merely by division piece by piece.  A large vase of gold might be hammered then snipped to ensure egalitarian distribution:  hacksilver (or gold, copper, etc.).

With items indivisible in themselves, the award of some particular treasure was a mark of significant prestige, and all divisions had to be agreed upon.  A king would lose face in the profoundest way, if he presumed upon the division of booty. This led to one of the most famous incidents of Clovis' early reign, the legendary shattering of a great crystal vase:  the vase of my title.

The effect of a king's failure to provide for his forces with booty - and to divide that booty equally - was the deepest betrayal of his duty as a military leader.  To fail, as Clovis did in the incident of the Vase of Soissons, was unthinkable.  His spectacular revenge, then, becomes a matter not only of legend - but, more immediately, and for him, propaganda.  Proven a failure as a king, he has to prove his authority in order to hold the throne from which he can remediate this black mark on his prestige.

So hacksilver is more than the "barbarian" destruction of treasures, it is the reflection of a society so fully invested in equality for those who defend and fight for their king and people that to short-change any of them might be the end of their king.  It is the reflection of the "barbarian" definition of liberty - and equality.

And maybe it's an interesting look at an ancient recycling program!

Voices

Writers of nearly every sort have a fondness for what we call “voice” – the tone and unique patois of a character, the way one speaks as opposed to the next – the very feel of a novel, a screenplay, a poem, a story.  Setting can have, and contribute, to voice.  Age and education, native intelligence, expectations, fears, and desires.

Many authors, too, read our work out loud.  It’d be impossible not to write, to some degree, in our own voices, and as important as reading a work out loud is to making sure its weight and rhythm and the feel are all right, even this imposes us upon the work.  Public readings, if we’re fortunate enough to publish, reinforce the imposition of our own voice on a work, and audio books can bring new voices, in performance, to a piece.

And through all this, we have to maintain the integrity of the characters themselves.  Characters mustn’t break under the weight of interpretations and expectations – and, the more I read, the more I know how very difficult it is for a character to remain itself.  Right now, I’m reading a novel told in omniscient 3rd person, but incorporating literally hundreds of years of voices – rendered in spoken word, chronicle, correspondence, and secondhand reportage.  It’s a piece with remarkable scope, and quite well put together – yet there are times I can see the author too clearly.  A habit of beginning sentences with the word “and” … certain unique phrases appearing generations apart, recalling some other character’s voice … the reiterations of descriptions of setting, from points of view which should be more distinct.  It’s an author’s job to notice detail.  It is not their job to put the same detail in the perspective of EVERY character, unfortunately.  Lush as certain points of interest may be, not all voices should desribe them the same – indeed, not all characters should even care.  Once seven different scenes from markedly different periods and focusing on wildly different players – scenes concerned with very different action and motivation – have pointed at the same beautiful plant in the same way, I not only lose patience with vicariously gazing at the plant, but I lose my place in the world itself.

Ahm – so plants don’t need to have voices in a novel.

Back to my point.

The problem with an author’s voice overcoming their characters’ is that, of course, the book stops being about what it is about, and begins to be about the author’s preoccupations.

Now,of course, none of us would ever write, if we didn’t have preoccupations.  It’s in some way entirely the point.

This is why we have editing.

I have a problem with “just” and “actually” – fortunately, writing historical fiction set in Late Antiquity, I am somewhat freed from this foible:  the likelihood of an ancient Frankish throwing around quantities of qualifiers is blessedly remote, and so I hope Clovis suffers little from this predilection.

My other problems, which anyone here knows all too well already, are loquacity and a confidence in my own intelligence, which are most likely the issue I have to watch the hardest.  I’ve edited and polished and worked, but have little doubt that the characters in The Ax and the Vase are perhaps more culturally and educationally homogenous than they should be.  Personalities set them apart, but I could not bear to make any of them less than truly clever (see also:  my overarching defensiveness about “Barbarians” and The Stupid, Stupid Past …).  We have one boyish colt, and one oafish drunk, but as a whole, the population of The Ax and the Vase are a canny lot.  One hopes this does not constitute too much of a problem.

I like to hope that the key is *listening*.  Listening to the characters, and the story itself.  Each scene tells me what its participants need out of it, and that helps.  Each man and woman has a past, and a future.

I can discern the actual VOICE of Clovis – the breath, the timbre, the power and the volume – in everything he has said through the novel.  I know his youthful tone and the creaking changes of his voice with age.  I know the speed at which words came from his mouth, with every line he speaks, and can tell you where he breathes, where he doesn’t.  When he pauses.  When he silences others with his own silence.

I know the sound of his kinsman, Pharamond – and the rumble and grind of his other supporting player, the profligate, the comes, the older idol, Ragnachar.

It’s not enough to see their faces – to know the very quality of their skin, their hair, the color or the brightness and clarity of their eyes.  It’s not enough to know that one character has a club foot, and another is leathery and scarred, almost blue he is so tanned and aged and hard.  I have to know that that latter man has a voice reedy and thin with age, incongruously small in his warrior’s frame.  I have to hear not only the lilt and laughter of the crippled woman, but to hear how the slide of her walk syncopates with her words as she walks.  I have to know that she has hands and feet and a belly and clothes, how she moves, how her breath moves with her, how the words will be affected by that.

I have to remember Clovis is fifteen in this scene when I edit it, and almost forty-five the next day, when I’m looking at the other end of the novel.


***


The most beautiful speaking voice I have ever heard, live and in person, was that of Mikhail Gorbachev.  It was over twenty years ago, when he was still one of the most famous men on Earth, and realized – I had never heard him before:  only interpreters.  His voice was magnificent, not at all blustering nor loud, mellow, mellifluous, simple, and beautiful.  I found myself ignoring the translator, and lost only in the sound of this unassuming, astoundingly powerful figure, quite overjoyed to forget his speech and simply revel in the sound of beautifully spoken Russian.

I have never been a fan of French, and as much love as I have for the German language – for sheer loveliness of sound, for its curve and sharpness and audible precision, the most gorgeous language in the world, for me, has always been Russian.  I find the curved shapes of its verbal Ls  entrancing, the glottal bounce of its coupled vowels delightful.  Spoken with an honestly attractive voice, Russian is an incredible pleasure for the ear.  Its edges, sharp and pure, never cut to bleed, and its lightness and speed are exciting.  Women who swoon for the congested sound of French have never quite made sense to me.  But give me a few phrases thrown away in rapid-fire, carelessly crystal-clear Russian, and the wonder of language lights up my brain.

The deliberate and convicted sound of a man who literally changed the world, speaking with a mellow voice no less powerful for its lack of volume, was an experience I frankly treasure in a sacred way apart from politics or seeing-a-famous-person or romance or anything else.  Beauty IS, sometimes, its own reward, and Gorbachev’s speech is one of those unexpected moments in memory, which illustrated something about beauty well beyond the perfectly arched brow or a total babe everyone wants to get to know.  That I understood not a word without the translator only enhanced this.


Clovis spoke a language I would never recognize, even if I spoke all the living tongues in the world today.

But I know his voice.

Rougher and sharper than a Russian statesman.

Never quite so guttural as a brute of a “Barbarian”.

Not quite a low voice, not for a long time – he came to the throne in the barest flush of his youth.

But balanced.  Measured.  Strong, if not beautiful.

And … I hope … compelling enough to echo through fifteen centuries …

Queen Saint Clotilde's Life

I have not neglected to post about Clotilde, but I have failed in one thing, and that is to point out that she was in her time a VERY long-lived lady indeed.

In The Ax and the Vase, I placed her marriage to Clovis I at about age nineteen in 493 CE.  She was married to him until his death in 511, and so they had a little less than twenty years.

Given that Clotilde lived about SEVENTY years, it’s difficult to put her marriage into perspective.  All of the history touching on her centers upon the marriage, and even the tales of her life as a supposed bloodthirsty revenge-machine after his death, inciting war over decades-old other imaginary murders, tend to be brief in comparison with the hagiography of the saint who brought a king to Catholic Christianity.

The history of Christendom focuses heavily on Clovis I, First Catholic King in Europe – and, to be sure, I have myself framed The Ax and the Vase as exactly that story.  Clotilde’s role is venerated, and she earned her entire fame in history by being the importuning wife who brought a king to the Church – yet she herself is rarely examined except through the lens of her husband, her sons.  We have no tales of her alone, outside the context of the marriage and her children.  And that’s not the exclusive case of Frankish women in history.

Clotilde is, if we take what sources we have at historical value (we shouldn’t), the catalyst, the instigator.  It’s clear her personality was strong – and yet, the person passed down through the centuries is never her own.  Always the daughter, the wife, the mother, Clotilde is in some ways obscured by the very act which brought her the greatest power and the enduring fame of fifteen hundred years’ sanctification.

If Clovis was the first Catholic king in Europe, the mighty precedent of a faith and tradition which set the very course of western history itself after Rome’s “fall” …

Clotilde is the woman, the heart, the impetus, the persuader – who made it happen.

Clovis tends generally to be cast either as a Christian of the Arian faith – or, more often, as an outright pagan.  Historians and enthusiasts squabble enjoyably about “what kind” of pagan he was, but there is no question, his coming to Catholicism was both unexpectedly nonconformist in his day, and an epochal event in Gaul and, eventually, beyond.

If it had not been for the will of his wife, it’s quite possible Clovis never would have come to the Church.

Now, think about that.  Really consider – the course of European life for a thousand years, until the Reformation, the rebellion against that church, the extent and influence of the Catholic Church in most people’s lives and expectations, for so many centuries.  Think about the complexion of the world if he had been and remained a non-trinitarian Christian.  If he had never converted, and the Church grew, but never quite integrated with the royal houses of Europe as it was able to partially thanks to Clovis’ precedent.  The feudal world would have looked very different – the material world would have, without cathedrals and basilicas coming to represent and to attract the wealth and trade of cities.  Consider the increasingly-bound ties, through generations and centruies, of throne and mitre, of money and influence – and the very morality and way of life of such a vast swath of time and humanity.

Imagine that one of the fundamental precedents that set THIS world in motion, never occurred.  That Clovis never looked critically at the Roman Church – spiritual scion of the Roman empire he had assisted to *extinguish* in Gaul – that he remained Arian, or pagan, or perhaps that he did convert, but was never so powerful a monarch as he was to become.  Imagine a Catholic king surrounded by Arians and pagans, who succumbed to defeat at their hands, or who stayed at three small cities in Belgium, and was no tool for a growing Church to gain greater influence and power – and followers.

Because the followers – that is perhaps the greatest key to Clovis’ conversion and baptism, and their eventual effects and influence.

Clovis came to power by the CHARISMA of his blood.  And the stories of the thousands who followed him in ecstasies to the Catholic faith are consistent, whatever else we may say of the veracity or dependability of sources for Late Antiquity.  So are the tales of new converts who lashed out against Arians and pagans in the wake of the fervor accompanying the massive acceptance of Catholicism.

It is Clotilde, a woman Clovis may in part have chosen to marry precisely because of her religious connections, who brought him from friendly correspondence with bishops, to actual submission to her faith.

It is Clotilde, who lived seventy years – nearly three decades after the death of her king – whose influence on one man rendered so many more susceptible to conversion, to baptism, to the Church she had in fact importuned upon him for many years before he accepted.

Clotilde baptized their first son against the will of Clovis – and that son died.

Clovis resisted her testimony, her witnessing, for years – until, on the field of battle, he finally is said to have laid himself in HER G-d’s hands, and gained victory.  Became the king he did become.  And forged his relationship with her Church.



The thirty years after Clovis’ death seeem almost to bear no relationship to the foregoing tales of her conviction, her purity in faith.  The character left to history devolves to a vicious queen out to right ancient family wrongs, in revenge for her father’s (purported) murder – bringing Burgundy to war, and setting her sons to acts of bitterness and revenge which seem not only out of character with the story of Clovis’ life, but out of character with her own youth and queenship.

It is puzzling, in any research (or just causal reading) of a period, to come across a character so lionized and so demonized all at once, yet it is hardly uncommon.  Just as the saint and queen, depicted in her youth and matronhood as the highest ideal may become a crone obsessed with long-gone wrongs … a young woman of power and hope may become a poisoner, the tool of a story meant to illustrate sin and the worst in her gender.  For that matter, even the young warrior may become, over years of propaganda and lost human motivation, the scapegoat vilified for liking little boys, dissipated in wine and shame for a new king to conquer and damn him.  Ahem.

Over the years and years I have spent reading about all the figures of the time, I’ve found reason to doubt almost all the worst tales told.  Propaganda plays an enormous role in The Ax and the Vase, and anyone who reads it should keep in mind both that and the fact that the novel is told in first-person.  I consciously set Clovis up as a somewhat unreliable (and, in that bargain – *incomplete*) narrator, just as I make explicit every piece of propaganda he set forth – the making of his own legend.

The result ends up being that, though I feel her character has blood in her veins and flesh on her bones, Clotilde is done little more justice as a figure in history itself than she is most anywhere else.

None of us lives our lives with great attention paid to our posterity.  Those few who do often rotate around an axis of vanity; and personal forms of propaganda, at that – the well-chosen selfie, the stories told or posted subjectively.  Whether self-aware or not, we’re all writing our own life’s stories, and to author our lives with consideration far beyond how we look in the immediate is close to unheard-of.  So I couldn’t really write a novel in first-person, by a husband often frustrated by his queen – by a *man*, who could not see the woman in his bed as a saint nor a part of history – and DO her that justice.

I hope my readers do her a little better, and see beyond the constraints of creative narrative.

I know some, surely, see beyond the saint and the bitter dowager.  And see a remarkable woman, long-lived, and more than the sum of her husband, and her children.

The Thing About Salic Law

One of the little excitements people indulged for a little while before a certain little British George was born just over one year ago was the idea that a female child would become heir to the throne.  Murmers have arisen in Europe, over time, about royal inheritance along feminine lines, and many contemporary stories and essays on the topic recall Salic Law.

The lex salica laid down by Clovis between 507-511 CE is NOT the law referred to, not honestly.  For one, the original code is lost to us, the earliest translations dating over two centuries later (indeed, possibly nearly three).  For two, even the earliest transcriptions to which we can look display enough differentiation to indicate a departure from original texts, if not outright error or scholastic – or even possibly individual - interpretation.

The tenet most often invoked by the modern phrase Salic Law is that no inheritance is for a woman, and even this title is not available in its original form.  And even if it were, law is not definitive.  This is why we have the term “interpretation” so closely associated with the term “law” – fortunately or not.  The one essential understanding we can glean from what remnants DO exist of the lex salica is that a woman was barred from the inheritance of land.

In England, this issue (though, to be clear, *not* this particular law) came to a head during The Anarchy of the twelfth century, when Henry I’s daughter Maud was in hopes to reign, and found herself double-crossed by her good cousin Stephen.  This led to damned near two decades of family quarrel on the scale of civil war – and, thanks to at least one certain convenient death, the reign of Henry II.  Let this be a warning:  Don’t drink and boat.  (If you don’t get the reference, look up “White Ship.”)

It took until the fourteenth century for England and France to really get the ball rolling and come up with what many now think of when they hear “Salic Law” – when, oft-intermarried across the Channel as each royal party had been for so long, the French had to come up with a reason to keep their throne out of the hands of the English king.  And thus they barred inheritance even through the female line - a neat trick intended to rebuff Edward III, and resulting in The Hundred Years’ War.

All this is to say, the codification of traditional tribal custom as laid down by the “Barbarian” Clovis bore little to no concern over swatting crowns off of girls’ heads.  To be frank (har), the idea of a queen regnant was likely illusory to the man himself and to the rather smaller society of his time.  Kings were still elected, at least in name – and by the time Clovis’ abundance of boys came to inherit, the substantial kingdom amassed by their father was their patrimony – in essence a single domain, but subject to joint kingship … and we all know how that went for the Merovingians, over time.  (Okay - for those new readers who actually don’t:  well, it lasted nearly 300 years, but involved rather a lot of betrayal and sibling rivalry at the point of many swords.)  Kings were also bound to their thrones by military success and the charisma of the blood.  A Frankish woman might indeed have charisma, and to spare (and, at that, one or two have been said to have wielded a blade, at least for legendary purposes) – but none has been recorded as a war leader, and even Clovis’ niece, who became queen regnant over the Ostrogoths, did not do so in Gaul, and didn’t do so with what could be called the overwhelming support of the male nobility surrounding her.  She was murdered in her bath in 535.

So, so much for even the idea of a woman as king – and yet, still, Clovis’ law was not laid down to make sure no occupant of the throne ever had matching chromosomes.  For that to come about, the code disappeared, morphed, and waited 80% of a millennium, for the occupants on either side of the Channel to get good and intermingled – and nicely paranoid about each other and the very inextricability of their links.

It is (not) a funny thing about humanity, that where we forge the tightest bonds, we also foster the greatest of our fears.  The major problem with power, and money (if we consider these different things; and I for one must, to remain sane), is that in gaining them pretty much everyone so “blessed” spends all their time concerned with losing them again.  And those who can use the law to defend themselves, if not as flat-out offense against even those who may or may not even wish to make incursions against them.

I wonder whether anyone reading might recognize *that* scenario.

Author's Notes - This Is the End

The final entries in the gloss:  starting points, sites of conquest, and money money money money.



TOXANDRIA
The realm of Childeric I, foederatus and King of the Franks (childerici regis).  Located within the area referred to by Rome as belgica, modern Belgium, it was ceded to the Franks by the Roman emperor Julian in 358 CE

Childeric held Arras, Boulougne (Bononia), and Tournai, the city representing here Clovis’ first capital.  The domain was not the backwater I have presented it as being; Childeric appears to have been extremely wealthy and perhaps not only in thanks to his position as an ally of the Empire.  Trade and travel throve here, and the art and fine craftsmanship of both Roman and Frankish entrepreneurs were all to be found within the area.


VINDINIUM
The city now known as Le Mans, mentioned by Gregory of Tours as having been ruled by Rigomer.  It did indeed have an amphitheater, which is still visible today; but the thermae, or baths, were demolished in the Imperial Crisis of the third century CE.  The city’s walls may be among the most complete surviving Gallo-Roman town fortifications.


VOUILLE'
The Battle of Vouille’, 507, was one of the greatest gains of actual territory in Clovis’ career, after Soissons.  With this fight, he subdued the Visigoths and likely completed an estrangement from Theodoric and the Ostragoths, and amassed Aquitainia and the major southern expanses of the sum of his consolidated territories, roughing out the outlines of what eventually we came to know as France.


WERGILD
Reparation money exacted for the murder of a member of one’s community:  the literal cost of taking someone’s life, or irrevocably compromising it.  Wergild might also be assigned for crimes other than murder, as in the rape of Tetrada, or for the death of livestock or catastrophic loss of property.  Interestingly, the wergild for a woman of childbearing age was extremely high; though women might not have held a position the modern mind would think of as powerful, their value to a community was undeniable, and their treatment was not strictly that of chattel.

The system of wergild valuation was formalized, and laws in existence at the time, as well as the lex salica set down in the final year of Clovis’ life and reign, address specific situations/personages in some detail.  The concept originally saved those in government—and many families—from having to deal with the alternative of blood-for-blood, thereby acting to control feuds and civil strife.  Where we might find the literal pricing of a person’s value … “barbaric” … the function of these laws was actually meant to reduce violence and provide deterrent to crime.  The hierarchy of wergild values provides an anthropological window into the society as a whole, and once again underscores the ultimate values in the Frankish system:  freedom and family.

Tetrada’s wergild would be thrice that of a male under twelve or over forty, or anyone else not a soldier in his prime.



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.

Author's Notes

Laws and characters - today, supporting roles, fictional and non:


LEX SALICA
Salic Law, the sixth century codification of law first set down by Clovis I.  Alaric II of the Visigoths, much maligned in these pages, was known definitively to have compiled his own code of Roman laws, the Breviary of Alaric, or brevarium.  The sixty-five chapers of Clovis’ pactus legis salicae represent traditions and punishments far predating his own rule, but synthesized to bring Franks and Gallo Romans under one system (though not equally; they are not treated precisely alike).  There is little Christian influence or input in the codification, and it demonstrates the priorities of Frankish society—with family above all other concerns, and loss of freedom or financial stability being the worst possible punishments.  The clearest thrust of these statutes is to minimize feuding, outlining tariffs and penalties clearly reflecting the specific value of relationships, and each member of a community’s worth within it.


MAGNERIC
FICTIONAL.  Both a bridge to the generation mostly destroyed in my version of Clovis’ accession, and an example of the nature of Frankish society in Roman Gaul, Magneric allowed me to represent both the newness of Catholicism and the old-guard of those more insular nobles who came before Clovis’ rule.


ODOVAKAR
Patrician of Rome whose ethnicity varies wildly across the sources, Odovakar deposed Romulus Augustulus and ruled during the ‘reign’ of Julius Nepos, the final Emperor in the West.  Already nearing fifty by the time Clovis came to his throne, he was nonetheless a staggering power in Italy and beyond.  His protracted standoff with Theodoric the Ostrogoth in northern Italy did end over a dining table, though some of the dramatic legends about this event are here omitted.  Variants:  Odoacer, Odovacer, Odoaker, possibly Adovacrius.



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.

Author's Notes - MC Edition!

Yes, we are here at last - and, as luck would have it, the king and queen are right next to each other in The Ax and the Vase's Author's Note.  Enjoy!


CLOTILDE
475-544/545.  “Illustrious battle”, from hludo (fame, illustrious—the root also gives us the descendant “loud”) and tild (battle).  Much of the legend of St. Clotilde relates to the Burgundian wars, romanticized for centuries in songs of betrayal and blood.  A significant portion of these appear to be only that—legend—but the saint would have almost certainly have been a woman of some will, and records of Frankish royal womanhood are vivid; the tale of “choose your blade” is taken from real sources, though not attached to Clotilde.

Clotilde’s greatest accomplishment according to history was the conversion of her husband; certainly a significant event.  I felt the relationship here had to be contentious (the tale of the arguments surrounding baptism of the children, before Clovis’ own conversion, is taken from sources), but definitely loving.  I worked from the background of Clovis’ apparently profligate father to build the portrait of a marriage both befitting her sanctified repute and suitable to partner a monarch and a man as overwhelming as Clovis.  (Variants:  Clotilda, Clotildis, Clothilde, Chrodchild, Chrodegilde, Chlothilde von Burgund)


CLOVIS
466-511.  The name derives from the roots hludo (fame, illustrious—the root also gives us the cognate descendant “loud”) and wig/viga (war, warrior, battle).  Clovis’ exploits may have rested on a greater legacy from his own father than is sometimes assumed, and many of his timelines, motivations, actions, and legends are disputed.  Regardless of his real history, he makes for an irresistible story, and quite a subject in himself.  I was blessed to bump into him via the etymology of my own middle name, and overjoyed to encounter him at a time when productivity as a writer had become more than something to put off for later.  His legend has remained either wonderfully (for me as a writer) or sadly (for the millions who’ve never heard of him) untrodden in English, and has been an exciting tale to relate.

The sarcophagus of Clovis, interred at his church of St. Peter and Paul—later rededicated to St. Geneviéve—is said to have remained intact until the French Revolution, when revolutionaries broke into the church and desecrated his remains.  An interesting end for the king who was a kind of French beginning.  (Variants:  Chlodovech, Chlodovechus, Chlodovacar, Chlovis, Chlodwig, Hludowig, Hlodowig.  Gave rise to Hludowicus, Hludovicus, Ludovicus, Louis, Ludwig, Lewis, and, of course … Louise.)



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.

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.

Author's Notes

CHARARIC
One of the kinsmen Clovis is famously said to have disingenuously bemoaned no longer having, toward the end of his life—thanks to his supposed bloodthirst against his own relations.  I’ve given Chararic the seat of Tongeren, an ancient Belgic city it seems reasonable to consider a ruined one during the period of Clovis’ reign.  It was destitute, but not without potential; and, as with many of the gains I have written through Clovis’ career, he enjoyed battle, but also the prospect of territories the assets and advantages of which he felt could be more greatly exploited for power, wealth, and profit.


CHILDEBERT
496-558; inherited Paris.  Second son of Clovis and Clotilde, later in life he led the liberating army for his sister against the Visigoths and her husband, the Arian Amalaric.  More religious than his brothers, Childebert was also more successfully expansionist, and involved himself in more foreign wars than Chlodomer, Theuderic, or Clotaire.  Founded the monastery of Saint Vincent to house relics of the saint he had won in battle at Zargoza.


CHILDERIC
437-481; King of the Salian Franks; foederatus, belgica secunda.  The heir, though not certainly known to be the son, of Merovus/Merovech, who was said to be son of a sea god, and who gave his name to the Merovingian line founded by Clovis.  Childeric ruled 457-481, possibly with a great deal more power and wealth than are indicated in many siources and certainly within this manuscript.  His adult life and reign are documented, but subject to debate.  He was said to be so dissolute his own people rejected him, but after his restoration his rule appeared to be uncontested and fairly strong.

Possibly the most valuable legacy of Childeric was discovered in 1653, when his tomb was uncovered in Tournai at the church of Saint-Brice.  The riches found therein are legendary, in spite—or because—of being plundered in 1831 and lost to us.  Byzantine coinage, a signet ring reading Childerici Regis, the famous crystal head of a bull, and riches of jewels and gold abounded, along with the possibility of equine sacrifice over a period of many memorial years, and on a fairly grand scale.  Most famous are three hundred golden bees, each one attached by embroidery upon a rich Roman robe of silk and worked in garnet cloisonne’ with the backs of the stones incised in an identifiably Merovingian style.

Childeric’s bees have been subject of fables and fantasies, their symbolism discussed in the most fascinating interpretations.  Napoleon had them embroidered onto his coronation robes.  The metaphoric possibilities are tantalizing, and include wonderful tales attaching to the fleur de lys, symbol of France, as well as spearheads and animal lore of varying significance.

Clovis’ succession after his father was not, in his time, the entrenched guarantee royal primogeniture eventually became (partially thanks to Clovis’ own Lex Salica).  His election informs the quotation used after my title page:  rex ex nobilitate, dux ex virtute - king through noble birth, commander through right of virtue.  Like many Germanic cultures, it was the raising on a shield by a people’s commanders which elevated a prince to a throne; the right of inheritance was neither presumed nor automatic.



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.

Author's Notes

Today's edition:  a mother, a mother, and Mother Church!


BASINA
Wife of Childeric, mother of Clovis, she left another king, her husband, Bisinus (and, according to many sources, a son, Baderic), to become the wife of the Frankish king.  Certain legends depict her as asking for Childeric’s hand herself, saying, “I want to have the most powerful man in the world, even if I have to cross the ocean for him.”  She is credited with naming their son, Chlodwig/Hlodowig/Chlodowech/ Chlodovechus—not after an ancestor of the line, but in honor of her hopes for his legacy.

Basina’s fornication depicted in this work, after Clovis’ coronation, is complete fiction, serving the expedient of rendering our protagonist essentially orphaned (and unencumbered by women) and underscoring her shocking character.  This fiction also consciously echoes the Arthurian tale of Morgause, whose son Gaheris cuts off more than his mother’s hair when he finds her with a lover.


CARETENA
Mother of Clotilde, little is recorded of her but adventurous and significantly posthumous legends from Gregory of Tours, whose bloody chronicle of her drowning, and the murder of her husband Chilperic by Gundobald, Clotilde’s uncle, are late romantic inventions which appear to have little basis in fact or even good speculation.  It’s possible that Caretena was the Burgundian queen whose epitaph, discovered at Lyons, indicates she lived until 506; this would give the lie to Gregory’s exciting array of betrayals and murders, and allowed me the excuse to omit at least some of the myriad stories which cling to Clovis and his family in such profusion.  Even so, to include her in this extensive a cast of characters seemed unnecessary, so I have opted for omitting the lady herself, as well as her “blood-spattered” demise.


CATHOLICISM
Clovis was first described by Gregory of Tours as converting to Catholicism under the influence of his wife, Clotilde, a Burgundian princess.  Those princes in Gaul and central Europe who had adopted Christianity at all, at the time of Clovis’ rule, had chosen to subscribe to Arianism; so his acceptance of the Catholic faith of his wife has been alternately seen as either a political move based on the growing wealth and power of that Church, or a genuine reflection of her influence upon him.  The depth of his spiritual conviction is impossible to gauge, but I have chosen to give it some real power.  Apart from making for a good story line, it seems likely that a man of that era (and a man of the unique power Clovis both inherited and forged) would not have altered his spiritual status without some true inspiration.  I have made his spiritual choices difficult and troublesome, politically, personally, and for his people, in the ways many scholars have posited, but kept “faith” as the final consideration—as it has been for so many men and women throughout time.

Clovis’ conversion remains a seminal event in history.  Not least because of his religious pioneering, he is considered the first King of France, and it is in homage to his trailblazing faith as much as his power that his name was kept on the throne for over one thousand years.  Clotilde’s canonization has this at its root.

It’s impossible not to wonder what the face of European and Christian history might have been had Clovis followed his peers’ acceptance of Arianism (he is believed to have flirted with the faith at least in his youth), or perhaps never converted from paganism at all.

As to that paganism itself, it is often described as having been Roman, and the question of why a Frank would subscribe to Mars or Mithras has received ink for generations.  It seems to me a culture which yields the Frankish epitaph, Francus ego cives, miles romanus in armis (“I am a Frank by nationality, but a Roman soldier under arms”—a statement rendered in Latin, and a real artifact found at a Frankish burial), could easily have fostered cross-cultural spirituality, just as Clovis’ position itself, on the point between foederatus ally to Rome, and rex in his own right, would have been transitional.  Here is a man who on the one hand ousted Rome, in the form of its last governor in Gaul, Syagrius; and also embraced it, in the form of his chosen Church.  Clovis’ career is undeniably one of radical growth and change, and his conversion—and consecration—are the backbone of his contradictions, his fascinations, and his life’s story.


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.

Author's Notes

AUDOFLEDA
Sister of Clovis, queen of Theodoric the Great.  Her birth date is unrecorded, and little of her history is preserved, but her position as the sister and then wife of two of the most remembered kings in European history begs a memorable character.  She is somewhat minor in this work, but has indelible cameo appearances, and she is also the first of three matrilineal subjects of another manuscript currently in progress.

BONONIA
Today, the city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in northern France.  Bononia in Latin meant “good city”.  The settlement and its port, serving as a trade connection to Britain, dates to at least the first century CE; it was called by this name by the fourth.  Bononia is closest to the coast of Chararic’s three cities, on the Channel southeast of London and Canterbury.


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.

Author's Notes - Three-fer

Today, we'll take the next thee entries in the Authorial Notary gloss.  As always, kids - please remember that these are written "in-universe" from the point of view of writing The Ax and the Vase, and so should not be used as sources nor complete explanations.


ARIANISM
Arianism, an early Christian faith ruled heretical by the Catholic Church, was at one time a powerful Christian cult.  The central conflict between the Arian and Catholic faiths lay in the doctrine of the Trinity, which Arians did not accept.  By Arian doctrine, the Son was considered to be a creation of The Father, divine, but not co-eternal with God Himself.  The term was sometimes used as a blanket epithet for any nontrinitarian Christian belief.

Much has been made of Clovis’ adoption of Catholicism, as opposed to the Arianism adopted by those of his peers who accepted Christianity at all—many Catholic faithful accept the tale of Clotilde’s persuasion of her husband; some posit political advantages to his conversion to the Trinitarian faith.  Whatever the case, Clovis’ religious conversion made him the first Catholic king in Europe—and his power and influence, along with the dynastic continuation of his faith, makes this choice one of profound consequence for the millennium following his rule.


ARMORICA
The Armorican Peninsula, or Brittany, was at the time of Clovis’ rule most likely experiencing an influx of Britons, which gave the region the latter name.  There is some speculation that the Catholicism adhered to by this population made Clovis a palatable leader, which could have contributed to his acquisition of this territory by treaty and only minor combat.  Like Thuringia and Tongeren, Armorica presents an example of Clovis’ willingness to forgo war—and, his pet strategy, deceit—for conquest, and to manage his increase of power administratively.


ARRAS
One of the three cities held during the reign of Clovis’ father, Childeric, Arras’ etymology is uncertain, but occupation at the site of the city dates to the Iron Age.  Arras lay southeast of Bononia, southwest of Tournai.

Author's Notes - the Glossary

Having finished the polishing but for comments my readers assure me are not terribly drastic, and gotten to the part where I'm really looking at the gloss I've included in the Author's Note for the first time in a while ... well, frankly, I'm enjoying the entries.  So here is the first in a new series, in which we'll take a look at some of my research and notes.

Please understand that these are not general-use definitions/explanations, they have been written specifically for and within the context of my work on a piece of historical fiction.  This also means that these entries will not be edited for the blog, but presented as they are within the MS itself.

If you want real information on the people, places, and concepts excerpted here, please look further and read real sources.  It would thrill me to *interest* readers in these subjects, but it would dismay me to be taken for a source.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  I am not an historian.  :)

And with that said, off we go!


ALEMANNI
First documented by Cassius Dio in the third century, the name is said to mean “all men” in Old High German.  At the time of Clovis, many Alemanni had settled in Alsace and upon the Swiss Plateau, but they seem to have been less geographically fixed than the Franks and other peoples who appear both in this novel and in Gaul during Late Antiquity.  Their origins are thought to have been as diverse as their settlement habits, which spanned many small homesteads and settlements but included few or no major centers, and shifted more easily than was typical for other communities.  This dynamism has many attractive qualities, but the Alemanni are cast in my Clovis’ eyes as undisciplined, and perform in our story as The Enemy.  Contemporary and personal prejudices would have shunned the lack of tradition and the mixed influences Alemanni culture had at play.  Like many of the “barbarian” nations, they were heavily Romanized, but in the interplay between those nations, I have chosen to try to play up alien feeling, a rejection of other-ness, in order to answer—and explain—Clovis’ dealings with them.

The “mad and directionless” tribe against whom Clovis’ first clash—and, later, one of his most important conquests—was fought is based upon on truth only insofar as truth rules a storyteller; in this particular, it mattered less, perhaps, than some may estimate it should have.  Clovis would have seen them as antagonist, faceless, unanchored by a heroic commander, and worthy of respect only so far as they were powerfully difficult to fight.  No more balanced or complete view of them as a people would make sense coming from this narrator.