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.
Showing posts with label St. Clotilde. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St. Clotilde. Show all posts
Monday, February 2, 2015
Friday, August 8, 2014
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Author's Notes
Today we have two uncles and a sword. Stay tuned tomorrow, when we'll go all lex salica up in here!
GUNDOBALD
King of Burgundy 473-516, uncle of Clotilde. Gregory of Tours condemns Gundobald for the murder and the usurpation of his three brothers’ inheritances in a bid for their father Gundioc’s kingdom. Clotilde was said to have been exiled, but was able to escape into marriage with Clovis as Gundobald feared the Frankish ruler’s strength. Gundobald maintained a state of war with his last brother, Godegesil, for years, and each of them prevailed upon Clovis not knowing that the other had, begging for assistance against one another. In the end, having promised tribute to Clovis, Gundobald is said to have broken this promise, and besieged Godegesil at Vienne, finally defeating the latter with the help of a traitor within the city. Late in his life, he converted to Catholicism, and was succeeded on the throne of Burgundy by his son Sigismund.
GODEGESIL
Uncle and guardian of Clotilde, Godegesil quartered his niece at his capital in Geneva, where she was educated in the Catholic church. Godegesil engaged with his brother Gundobald in conflicts over their inheritance for many years. Though relieved by the support of Clovis for some time, he was finally destroyed in 501 during Gundobald’s siege of Vienne, after Clovis’ withdrawal and the betrayal of an artisan who helped Gundobald past the defenses after Godegesil expelled commoners from the protection of the city.
HEREBRAND
Accurately or not, as a kid who grew up reading Arthurian stories, I confess to an affection for the idea of naming a king’s sword. This name is made up of two authentic naming-elements: hari/here, meaning army; and brand, meaning blade or sword. Pattern-welded swords exist among the artifacts of the period, and represent an extremely prized symbol and treasure for any warrior or king. In Clovis’ early career, Herebrand would have represented an almost unattainably precious treasure; even with his increased prosperity and power over the years, it would have been a symbol of great potency and value.
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.
GUNDOBALD
King of Burgundy 473-516, uncle of Clotilde. Gregory of Tours condemns Gundobald for the murder and the usurpation of his three brothers’ inheritances in a bid for their father Gundioc’s kingdom. Clotilde was said to have been exiled, but was able to escape into marriage with Clovis as Gundobald feared the Frankish ruler’s strength. Gundobald maintained a state of war with his last brother, Godegesil, for years, and each of them prevailed upon Clovis not knowing that the other had, begging for assistance against one another. In the end, having promised tribute to Clovis, Gundobald is said to have broken this promise, and besieged Godegesil at Vienne, finally defeating the latter with the help of a traitor within the city. Late in his life, he converted to Catholicism, and was succeeded on the throne of Burgundy by his son Sigismund.
GODEGESIL
Uncle and guardian of Clotilde, Godegesil quartered his niece at his capital in Geneva, where she was educated in the Catholic church. Godegesil engaged with his brother Gundobald in conflicts over their inheritance for many years. Though relieved by the support of Clovis for some time, he was finally destroyed in 501 during Gundobald’s siege of Vienne, after Clovis’ withdrawal and the betrayal of an artisan who helped Gundobald past the defenses after Godegesil expelled commoners from the protection of the city.
HEREBRAND
Accurately or not, as a kid who grew up reading Arthurian stories, I confess to an affection for the idea of naming a king’s sword. This name is made up of two authentic naming-elements: hari/here, meaning army; and brand, meaning blade or sword. Pattern-welded swords exist among the artifacts of the period, and represent an extremely prized symbol and treasure for any warrior or king. In Clovis’ early career, Herebrand would have represented an almost unattainably precious treasure; even with his increased prosperity and power over the years, it would have been a symbol of great potency and value.
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.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
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.
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.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
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.
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.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Unfamiliar Territory
The revisions I've been working on have brought out a side of me seldom of much prominence in my life. I've been second-guessing myself a great deal.
The intensity of this, for me, is nothing like the self-doubt I know many suffer every day, and I'm grateful for that. But its very unfamiliarity is knocking me off-kilter.
The polishing work started when an agent whose opinion I'm willing to internalize (you can't take all the advice) gave me feedback I agreed with and wanted to implement. That was April 10, and here almost two months later I am very well along in the MSS. I've made some changes slightly off-script from the advice given, fleshed out a number of scenes and characters after the draconian cuts of the last revision, and ...
... of course. I found a pretty serious continuity problem.
How I managed this is beyond me, but I left Queen Saint Clotilde pregnant for about a year and a half.
Oh dear.
Of course, a mechanical fix like this is not all that straightforward, what with the ankle bone being connected to the knee bone and the knee bone being connected to the thigh bone, and so on all the way up and then back down into the nervous and circulatory and circulatory systems. I'm angry on a few levels, that this happened at all - bewildered at how I could have missed it - and that I can work on something for so long and still be finding something so profoundly wrong with it.
It's humiliating. It leads me to question whether this publishing thing is ever going to happen at all - whether it should.
These questions, it must be said, last about one second or so and myconfidence arrogance reasserts itself. But then I come up against - "am I taking too long!? I wanted to get back into querying really quickly! - and "am I not taking long enough? will what I am doing be substantial enough?" - and (probably scariest of all, particularly after stripping tens of thousands of words out in the previous edit) "am I adding TOO MUCH BULK???"
All I can do is trust myself, be grateful this particular agent was kind enough to give me feedback, NOT hang all my hopes on that, and do the work. Listen to a lot of Star Trek while wielding the keyboard on the MSS. And soldier on.
Ax will get out there, and we're getting closer and closer to that time. Get it done in this first half of the year. Get agented before 2015. And then ...
More writing.
Time for me to soldier on.
The intensity of this, for me, is nothing like the self-doubt I know many suffer every day, and I'm grateful for that. But its very unfamiliarity is knocking me off-kilter.
The polishing work started when an agent whose opinion I'm willing to internalize (you can't take all the advice) gave me feedback I agreed with and wanted to implement. That was April 10, and here almost two months later I am very well along in the MSS. I've made some changes slightly off-script from the advice given, fleshed out a number of scenes and characters after the draconian cuts of the last revision, and ...
... of course. I found a pretty serious continuity problem.
How I managed this is beyond me, but I left Queen Saint Clotilde pregnant for about a year and a half.
Oh dear.
Of course, a mechanical fix like this is not all that straightforward, what with the ankle bone being connected to the knee bone and the knee bone being connected to the thigh bone, and so on all the way up and then back down into the nervous and circulatory and circulatory systems. I'm angry on a few levels, that this happened at all - bewildered at how I could have missed it - and that I can work on something for so long and still be finding something so profoundly wrong with it.
It's humiliating. It leads me to question whether this publishing thing is ever going to happen at all - whether it should.
These questions, it must be said, last about one second or so and my
All I can do is trust myself, be grateful this particular agent was kind enough to give me feedback, NOT hang all my hopes on that, and do the work. Listen to a lot of Star Trek while wielding the keyboard on the MSS. And soldier on.
Ax will get out there, and we're getting closer and closer to that time. Get it done in this first half of the year. Get agented before 2015. And then ...
More writing.
Time for me to soldier on.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Breaking the Rules
In The Ax and the Vase, Clovis occasionally refers to his wife and queen Clotilde as “Cloti.” Linguistically, there is zero defense for this – not least as “Clotilde” itself is a Romanization of a name pronounced with very little relationship indeed to the adaptation. I’ve discussed Clovis’ own name (given to him, not by his father, King Childeric, but by his mother, Basina). His own Romanized epithet takes us from a name more like “Hludo-vechus” to something more familiar to the modern eye, raised on two thousand years of Romance language and an affinity for clipped phonics.
As do many in the family and the dynasty as a whole—Chlodomer, Clotaire, Chrotilda, and so on—Clotilde herself shares the primary root of her bigeminal name with Clovis. The Clo- root word derives from “hlud” – a cognate for fame, and most often translated thus – but it also is a cognate and shares kinship with the modern word “loud”. This informs, in a way, much of the plot of Ax. Clovis spends a great deal of energy on what we could call propaganda; he not only makes his own myth, but he tells a particular sort of story—a spectacular sort of story—in acts calculated for maximum shock-value and impact.
In Clotilde’s case, the root is, interestingly, most often translated as “bright” rather than “famed” – and that may be a gender bias dating back centuries which continues to be regurgitated, a feminine interpretation of a root used both for men and for women alike. Where Clovis’ name is said to mean “famed warrior”, hers is given as “bright battle” (the latter root of which tends to beg the question, what is “girly” anyway, in the context of Germanic naming?). I can’t cite hard data that this is a gender bias, but the consistency of the different meanings given for the same root for Clovis and Clotilde is striking.
Anyway. To the point (yes, there is one).
And so I have an early Frankish king being cutesy and calling his wife either bright or loud, depending on how we look at it linguistically … and the point is that linguistics went absolutely by the wayside in this conceit.
I felt it necessary to evoke perhaps the solitary area of tenderness in Clovis’ life and heart, by expressing it in his words to his wife. Humans are creatures of nicknames – but how an ancient Germanic reiks might nickname his wife, his queen, is frankly beyond my ken.
And so, without justification and I am sure without the slightest reality, I created a diminutization with abbreviation.
As false as it is by the rules, it’s authentic in terms of human behavior. Today, name-shortening is the way we most commonly create pet names (and have for centuries … even if not the centuries in which Clovis and Clotilde lived). It’s also a deliniation of how close an orbit is between two people: there aren’t many people who get away with calling me Di, but those who do are VERY close to me indeed. There is a brevity in affection which creates intimacy between us – if someone in my office calls me Di, they’re likely to get an eyebrow-raising wry smile. But when X uses it, it is a sort of bond – he’s known me for so long, and he has earned the right to choose a name for me. Oddly enough, a former coworker almost created a bond with me by calling me Lady Di – which bugged me so much I finally told him to stop it, and his utterly priceless response (you really had to know the guy to see how this could be endearing) was, “But I like it!” He stopped it outright – and, in the end, I found I missed him calling me that. And I still have affectionate memories of him to this day.
Nicknaming is a bilateral sort of leveling, a mutual sharing – and so, when Clovis speaks with his “Cloti”, it is a signpost of their unique rights to each other. No other person would nor could even think of such a name for the queen. And no other person would have the right to use it, either. I gave him no nickname from her, but people sometimes share a thing only one of them actually wears, so to speak.
It is in things like this historical fiction finds its little freedoms. There will be guitarists at the back of the bar of course, who scoff at such apalling license. I’m not writing for those purists, apparently.
Every word I put down is translated through a modern mind which can never honestly nor completely capture the character, the period, the etiquette and protocol. I can evoke them and study – but, being the product of the world I’ve lived in, forty-six years of hopeless modernity will inform the set construction. On occasion, such as in this little license, I’ll use a screw, if it holds better than a nail – even if that’s not authentic. If the wall stays up, and holds its own corner of the story, that is authenticity enough. I want the story to stand.
I won’t write a feminist Mary Sue character, whose presence would outright tear the story and its setting down; but I’m not above allowing myself a bit of “modern technology” to get a point across. If the ancient nails are rusted away, and there’s a Philips head and a screwdriver to be had … I’ll call my Queen-Saint “Cloti” in the bedchamber with her king, and apologize to nobody for it.
When looking in a Saint’s bedchamber, there is some license you can take … and some, of course, you really can’t. All things considered, I hope I chose the right infraction!
As do many in the family and the dynasty as a whole—Chlodomer, Clotaire, Chrotilda, and so on—Clotilde herself shares the primary root of her bigeminal name with Clovis. The Clo- root word derives from “hlud” – a cognate for fame, and most often translated thus – but it also is a cognate and shares kinship with the modern word “loud”. This informs, in a way, much of the plot of Ax. Clovis spends a great deal of energy on what we could call propaganda; he not only makes his own myth, but he tells a particular sort of story—a spectacular sort of story—in acts calculated for maximum shock-value and impact.
In Clotilde’s case, the root is, interestingly, most often translated as “bright” rather than “famed” – and that may be a gender bias dating back centuries which continues to be regurgitated, a feminine interpretation of a root used both for men and for women alike. Where Clovis’ name is said to mean “famed warrior”, hers is given as “bright battle” (the latter root of which tends to beg the question, what is “girly” anyway, in the context of Germanic naming?). I can’t cite hard data that this is a gender bias, but the consistency of the different meanings given for the same root for Clovis and Clotilde is striking.
Anyway. To the point (yes, there is one).
And so I have an early Frankish king being cutesy and calling his wife either bright or loud, depending on how we look at it linguistically … and the point is that linguistics went absolutely by the wayside in this conceit.
I felt it necessary to evoke perhaps the solitary area of tenderness in Clovis’ life and heart, by expressing it in his words to his wife. Humans are creatures of nicknames – but how an ancient Germanic reiks might nickname his wife, his queen, is frankly beyond my ken.
And so, without justification and I am sure without the slightest reality, I created a diminutization with abbreviation.
As false as it is by the rules, it’s authentic in terms of human behavior. Today, name-shortening is the way we most commonly create pet names (and have for centuries … even if not the centuries in which Clovis and Clotilde lived). It’s also a deliniation of how close an orbit is between two people: there aren’t many people who get away with calling me Di, but those who do are VERY close to me indeed. There is a brevity in affection which creates intimacy between us – if someone in my office calls me Di, they’re likely to get an eyebrow-raising wry smile. But when X uses it, it is a sort of bond – he’s known me for so long, and he has earned the right to choose a name for me. Oddly enough, a former coworker almost created a bond with me by calling me Lady Di – which bugged me so much I finally told him to stop it, and his utterly priceless response (you really had to know the guy to see how this could be endearing) was, “But I like it!” He stopped it outright – and, in the end, I found I missed him calling me that. And I still have affectionate memories of him to this day.
Nicknaming is a bilateral sort of leveling, a mutual sharing – and so, when Clovis speaks with his “Cloti”, it is a signpost of their unique rights to each other. No other person would nor could even think of such a name for the queen. And no other person would have the right to use it, either. I gave him no nickname from her, but people sometimes share a thing only one of them actually wears, so to speak.
It is in things like this historical fiction finds its little freedoms. There will be guitarists at the back of the bar of course, who scoff at such apalling license. I’m not writing for those purists, apparently.
Every word I put down is translated through a modern mind which can never honestly nor completely capture the character, the period, the etiquette and protocol. I can evoke them and study – but, being the product of the world I’ve lived in, forty-six years of hopeless modernity will inform the set construction. On occasion, such as in this little license, I’ll use a screw, if it holds better than a nail – even if that’s not authentic. If the wall stays up, and holds its own corner of the story, that is authenticity enough. I want the story to stand.
I won’t write a feminist Mary Sue character, whose presence would outright tear the story and its setting down; but I’m not above allowing myself a bit of “modern technology” to get a point across. If the ancient nails are rusted away, and there’s a Philips head and a screwdriver to be had … I’ll call my Queen-Saint “Cloti” in the bedchamber with her king, and apologize to nobody for it.
When looking in a Saint’s bedchamber, there is some license you can take … and some, of course, you really can’t. All things considered, I hope I chose the right infraction!
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Concrete ... Fantastic
One of the frustrations and joys of writing in fifth and sixth century Gaul is the dearth of primary sources. There is a great mix of reportage and legend, some of it one and the same, and choosing how to treat certain stories can be either a minefield or a liberation. For me, it was both – I dismissed some of the bloodier tales of Clotilde’s Burgundian family (and, indeed, was able to somewhat skip over some of the tales of the Queen-Saint’s own bloodthirst, which tend to be attached to stories about her sons and daughter, and take place after Clovis’ death). I sufficed, in her case, by creating a woman growing up – gaining confidence and even hauteur as she grows in her role as queen, in her role as wife. Strong she had to be – but as to repeating legends of her vengeance, I didn’t believe the legends, and was glad to be excused from repeating them.
It is the legend of Clovis’ time, though, which fascinates and eludes me. It might have been possible to write a novel far less grounded in the concrete – to weave the magic of the times and tales into the story, and come up with a tale just as gripping, and yet more fantastical. I’m not that writer, unfortunately; as much as the mystical appeals to a certain frame of my mind, it would have been impossible for me to apply it to Clovis. And already I see the new story framing up with a similarly practical bent – practical in the sense we use it when discussing set design, practical in the sense we use it when describing a tool, not a person. Parts must have a purpose, and my mind isn’t well suited to remembering magic and legend and making them palpable.
And yet, I can imagine Clovis’ life as told by his mythology – there is no lack of myth to be had – and it is a pleasurable idea. Seeing the same places I trod in writing him myself, cloaked in mist and that peculiar darkness of the preternatural, endowed, imbued, with something beyond the human. Clovis was said to have descended from a god of the sea, bestia neptunis - seduced by a woman back in his father’s line. What a story that would make. Or the tale of Basina, Clovis’ mother, who sent his father Childeric out into the night three times the night she conceived their son, and wove a dynasty’s fate out of the sights Childeric saw and reported to her.
The magic of those women. The divinity of the men; their charisma, their power, their increasing wealth, culminating in Clovis himself, as a shining scion of a race touched by greatness. The Catholic mysteries; the echoes of Constantine – surely cultivated, but still humming with the echo of the legendary. The role of king as priest, the role of king as warrior, the elusive charisma of blood, the rallying power of deeds – dux ex nobilitate, rex ex virtute.
I brought some legends to down earth, and omitted more than one. A tale where he finds his way to victory on the spoor of a stag. Passing references to the fleur de lys, or the pagan practices of burial – the explicit argument of Clovis with St. Remigius, discussing the tenet of divine descent … versus that tenacious – still *with* us – tenet of divine right. The ineffable importance of law – Clovis’ reasons for recording it, synthesizing it from tradition, and between two cultures within his realm. His driving need to see it done – and the legacy of a code most have heard of, even if they don’t know who laid it down. The Salic Law. Most know its effects upon male heirs (though few know that in Clovis’ time, male heirs shared and divided – as did his four sons – as did the sons of the Merovingians for three hundred years) – and females. A law later much famed for its deprivation of regnal rights to women … set down by the son of Basina, the king whose consort was the formidable Queen Saint Clotilde.
No sacred ampoule descends from Heaven at the moment of Clovis’ baptism in The Ax and the Vase … yet some tales could not be omitted. The oft-told displays of his vengeance, the Vase at Soissons, the deceptions of avaricious soldiers who would kill their own rulers for gold, the story that by the end of his life, Clovis ranted in lamentation that he was alone and without kin … having killed off so many of them himself, for their lands, their crowns.
“In the end … so history has said …”
Who needs magic – I had to feel – writing such a story as Clovis’?
And yet, I do love magic, I love to see tales grounded in the mythical rather than the tangible. I’d love to see stories told from Clotilde’s point of view, or seated on the legend and the lurid – that special light that illuminates beyond-natural happenings, that special echo of footsteps creeping down the halls of the gods, or the eye-bending mists of powerful pagan priests.
I’d love to see Clovis bloom across English-speaking publishing, and to be a part of a varied library of short stories, poems, and other novels than my own. Right now, my Ax stands alone – and there’s pride in that, in taking on something that has not been done before – and, too, there is anticipation that this story might inspire someone else, might intrigue and take hold as the Tudors have, as the Pharaohs have, as sorcerers and goddesses have. I’d love to be part of a sorority and fraternity, of those who all shared this story, and found different passions in it and coming out of it.
As for mine … I am still so proud of it. And excited, where it stands right now – in the hands of good agents, getting the attention it deserves, to make its way out into the world.
It is the legend of Clovis’ time, though, which fascinates and eludes me. It might have been possible to write a novel far less grounded in the concrete – to weave the magic of the times and tales into the story, and come up with a tale just as gripping, and yet more fantastical. I’m not that writer, unfortunately; as much as the mystical appeals to a certain frame of my mind, it would have been impossible for me to apply it to Clovis. And already I see the new story framing up with a similarly practical bent – practical in the sense we use it when discussing set design, practical in the sense we use it when describing a tool, not a person. Parts must have a purpose, and my mind isn’t well suited to remembering magic and legend and making them palpable.
And yet, I can imagine Clovis’ life as told by his mythology – there is no lack of myth to be had – and it is a pleasurable idea. Seeing the same places I trod in writing him myself, cloaked in mist and that peculiar darkness of the preternatural, endowed, imbued, with something beyond the human. Clovis was said to have descended from a god of the sea, bestia neptunis - seduced by a woman back in his father’s line. What a story that would make. Or the tale of Basina, Clovis’ mother, who sent his father Childeric out into the night three times the night she conceived their son, and wove a dynasty’s fate out of the sights Childeric saw and reported to her.
The magic of those women. The divinity of the men; their charisma, their power, their increasing wealth, culminating in Clovis himself, as a shining scion of a race touched by greatness. The Catholic mysteries; the echoes of Constantine – surely cultivated, but still humming with the echo of the legendary. The role of king as priest, the role of king as warrior, the elusive charisma of blood, the rallying power of deeds – dux ex nobilitate, rex ex virtute.
I brought some legends to down earth, and omitted more than one. A tale where he finds his way to victory on the spoor of a stag. Passing references to the fleur de lys, or the pagan practices of burial – the explicit argument of Clovis with St. Remigius, discussing the tenet of divine descent … versus that tenacious – still *with* us – tenet of divine right. The ineffable importance of law – Clovis’ reasons for recording it, synthesizing it from tradition, and between two cultures within his realm. His driving need to see it done – and the legacy of a code most have heard of, even if they don’t know who laid it down. The Salic Law. Most know its effects upon male heirs (though few know that in Clovis’ time, male heirs shared and divided – as did his four sons – as did the sons of the Merovingians for three hundred years) – and females. A law later much famed for its deprivation of regnal rights to women … set down by the son of Basina, the king whose consort was the formidable Queen Saint Clotilde.
No sacred ampoule descends from Heaven at the moment of Clovis’ baptism in The Ax and the Vase … yet some tales could not be omitted. The oft-told displays of his vengeance, the Vase at Soissons, the deceptions of avaricious soldiers who would kill their own rulers for gold, the story that by the end of his life, Clovis ranted in lamentation that he was alone and without kin … having killed off so many of them himself, for their lands, their crowns.
“In the end … so history has said …”
Who needs magic – I had to feel – writing such a story as Clovis’?
And yet, I do love magic, I love to see tales grounded in the mythical rather than the tangible. I’d love to see stories told from Clotilde’s point of view, or seated on the legend and the lurid – that special light that illuminates beyond-natural happenings, that special echo of footsteps creeping down the halls of the gods, or the eye-bending mists of powerful pagan priests.
I’d love to see Clovis bloom across English-speaking publishing, and to be a part of a varied library of short stories, poems, and other novels than my own. Right now, my Ax stands alone – and there’s pride in that, in taking on something that has not been done before – and, too, there is anticipation that this story might inspire someone else, might intrigue and take hold as the Tudors have, as the Pharaohs have, as sorcerers and goddesses have. I’d love to be part of a sorority and fraternity, of those who all shared this story, and found different passions in it and coming out of it.
As for mine … I am still so proud of it. And excited, where it stands right now – in the hands of good agents, getting the attention it deserves, to make its way out into the world.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
What's Old is New Again ... and What's In Again Has Been In Longer Than You Knew ...
I was making a point at Absolute Write yesterday, that scandalous clothes, language (and even technology) weren’t all invented within the past hundred years, and this and a few other items have brought forth this post, on things I have been thinking about recently.
Two Nerdy History Girls has a nice piece on leopard print fashions of the 18th century, it’s a fun look at one of those periods in fashion which a certain quarter has *always* enjoyed deriding (even at the time – “macaroni” really wasn’t always intended to mean “my dears” ...). Yes, Virginia – leopard didn’t start with synthetics in the 1950s. And I have to say, in a currently-recurring theme I hope as dearly as any of you may will die a merciful death very soon, that “Nosegay Macaroni” would make a hilarious name for a band ...
As you might guess from the images of modern clothing above, I’m ruminating on new trends which reach back centuries – indeed, half a millennium now, and more.
The first photo above shows an edgy new blouse design. But slashing (or the paned sleeve) was particularly popular during the Tudor period in England, the fashion being to pull the linen of the tunic through the richer over-fabric.
The second image, the grey top, reminds me of dagging. Dagging, an even earlier innovation, became so popular it came with its own backlash, much like the macaroni above. Perhaps the most famous image of this fashion comes in the Arnolfini Portrait, the finely illustrative detail of which is shown here:
Dagging was another type of slashing; in which extravagant masses of fabric were artfully snipped to interesting flinders. This was often at the sleeves, which were for long ages were a focal point for fashion statement and expense (as, we can see from the first modern images, they still often are). Sleeves, though we forget it today, were one of the true innovations of human history. They seem obvious to us now, but for millennia, we were creatures of draping and few seams: think about how long humanity got on without any form of modern trousers! Same with the inset sleeve – though we did form arm-tubes for centuries, by cutting front-and-back pieces of cloth shaped to encase arms, the contemporary sleeve did not take the world by storm until just a few hundred years ago. Being such a singular item, naturally it provided opportunity to show off sophistication and wealth, as well as the body itself.
Another trend I have been seeing lately, which seems new and fresh if you don't know the silly things I do, goes back even farther than the sleeve.
Painted jewelry - currently most popular as embellishment on pointedly common items such as tees and thermal henleys, jeans, and even shoes – has become a meta-statement on lavish style (and yet, as noted below, these designs can be fairly pricey for what the garments actually are). Used on textiles and pieces not meant to herald outstanding occasions nor the physical value of gold, or even cloth-of-gold, and gemstones, the attitude is one of glamour by way of grunge. It seems to me, culturally, both to reflect the longing many of us have *for* exquisite show, and the rebellion too against what extreme wealth represents to most people. The layers within what we say in wearing knockoff-Chanel chain prints, or flocked or glass-beaded tees emblazoned with cartoon festoons of jewelry and even hardware are almost endless, given the complex relationships and attitudes we have to our economy, our taste for self-decoration, the level of awareness of what “fashion” means beyond the most current trends, and what simply flatters or appeals to us ... these layers are more fascinating than the simple choice of a tee to wear on a Saturday.
The contrast of exuberant design with ordinary material is taken even further with the neverending fad of "sublimation" - what my dad used to call "expensively flawed" (an item created to feature its own imperfections - and sublimation prints intentionally include voids in their design, caused by creases in fabric laid down for a flat-stamp print). I have hated sublimation prints since the beginning, and dearly hope that this "trend" (long since no longer a trend, actually) will die an unmerciful death very soon now.
Anyway. Printed jewelry - to wit:
It may be of interest that (well, it is to me, and this is my blog) ... in fact, these pieces were once worn in secret layers. There is a passage in The Ax and the Vase in which Queen Clotilde, in penance, fasts and eschews wearing jewels. She has undergarments painted with faux necklaces of crosses, the only form of adornment she will wear. The point of these un-displayed decorations was to adorn a statement of faith: these are not for show, and are worn next to the heart.
The very strong resurgence of this style for outerwear has interesting echoes, as the ancient and antique forms of faux jewels were rendered with purposes much like (my character – not the historical Saint) Clotilde’s. Hidden decoration worn next to the skin, covered by outer garments and unseen, was not uncommon for holy women in particular, even before the period of Catholicism and the Christianity we would recognize today. These garments have been found amongst grave goods, and, if I recall, were attested to in the record as well. This inspired this piece of my story, so rooted both in the formation of Catholicism, but also the volatile and passionate relationship of the particular king and queen who helped to guide this very formation.
A curious side note: many of these designs explicitly echo modern tattoo design. Ed Hardy became one of the most popular brands for the uber-hip during the 2000s, but his start was as a tattoo artist. Tattoos sometimes being for display - sometimes not - and more often than not, representing something deeply personal/important/intimate/spiritual/emotional for a wearer, this is a fascinating evolution of expression.
The sinuous lines of Hardy's more vintage-inspired designs hark back to the sort of trompe l’oiel garments I’m mentioning here, but also to actual jewels and textile embellishments – gold, embroidery, beading, swagging, and the voluptuous expressions of conspicuous consumption we alternately embrace and then revile, and always have through the history of human fashion (... and politics ...). The look evokes richness – and, indeed, Hardy’s prices are hardly discount – even as the designs are rendered on decidedly egalitarian pieces. More layers: and what has the message become, when the flouting of signifiers of wealth curves back and is expressed in ... designer wear, which (though it is nothing of the kinds) is intended to convey exclusivity and fashion snobbery ... ???
Two Nerdy History Girls has a nice piece on leopard print fashions of the 18th century, it’s a fun look at one of those periods in fashion which a certain quarter has *always* enjoyed deriding (even at the time – “macaroni” really wasn’t always intended to mean “my dears” ...). Yes, Virginia – leopard didn’t start with synthetics in the 1950s. And I have to say, in a currently-recurring theme I hope as dearly as any of you may will die a merciful death very soon, that “Nosegay Macaroni” would make a hilarious name for a band ...
As you might guess from the images of modern clothing above, I’m ruminating on new trends which reach back centuries – indeed, half a millennium now, and more.
The first photo above shows an edgy new blouse design. But slashing (or the paned sleeve) was particularly popular during the Tudor period in England, the fashion being to pull the linen of the tunic through the richer over-fabric.
The second image, the grey top, reminds me of dagging. Dagging, an even earlier innovation, became so popular it came with its own backlash, much like the macaroni above. Perhaps the most famous image of this fashion comes in the Arnolfini Portrait, the finely illustrative detail of which is shown here:
 |
| Image: Wikipedia |
Dagging was another type of slashing; in which extravagant masses of fabric were artfully snipped to interesting flinders. This was often at the sleeves, which were for long ages were a focal point for fashion statement and expense (as, we can see from the first modern images, they still often are). Sleeves, though we forget it today, were one of the true innovations of human history. They seem obvious to us now, but for millennia, we were creatures of draping and few seams: think about how long humanity got on without any form of modern trousers! Same with the inset sleeve – though we did form arm-tubes for centuries, by cutting front-and-back pieces of cloth shaped to encase arms, the contemporary sleeve did not take the world by storm until just a few hundred years ago. Being such a singular item, naturally it provided opportunity to show off sophistication and wealth, as well as the body itself.
Another trend I have been seeing lately, which seems new and fresh if you don't know the silly things I do, goes back even farther than the sleeve.
Painted jewelry - currently most popular as embellishment on pointedly common items such as tees and thermal henleys, jeans, and even shoes – has become a meta-statement on lavish style (and yet, as noted below, these designs can be fairly pricey for what the garments actually are). Used on textiles and pieces not meant to herald outstanding occasions nor the physical value of gold, or even cloth-of-gold, and gemstones, the attitude is one of glamour by way of grunge. It seems to me, culturally, both to reflect the longing many of us have *for* exquisite show, and the rebellion too against what extreme wealth represents to most people. The layers within what we say in wearing knockoff-Chanel chain prints, or flocked or glass-beaded tees emblazoned with cartoon festoons of jewelry and even hardware are almost endless, given the complex relationships and attitudes we have to our economy, our taste for self-decoration, the level of awareness of what “fashion” means beyond the most current trends, and what simply flatters or appeals to us ... these layers are more fascinating than the simple choice of a tee to wear on a Saturday.
The contrast of exuberant design with ordinary material is taken even further with the neverending fad of "sublimation" - what my dad used to call "expensively flawed" (an item created to feature its own imperfections - and sublimation prints intentionally include voids in their design, caused by creases in fabric laid down for a flat-stamp print). I have hated sublimation prints since the beginning, and dearly hope that this "trend" (long since no longer a trend, actually) will die an unmerciful death very soon now.
Anyway. Printed jewelry - to wit:
It may be of interest that (well, it is to me, and this is my blog) ... in fact, these pieces were once worn in secret layers. There is a passage in The Ax and the Vase in which Queen Clotilde, in penance, fasts and eschews wearing jewels. She has undergarments painted with faux necklaces of crosses, the only form of adornment she will wear. The point of these un-displayed decorations was to adorn a statement of faith: these are not for show, and are worn next to the heart.
The very strong resurgence of this style for outerwear has interesting echoes, as the ancient and antique forms of faux jewels were rendered with purposes much like (my character – not the historical Saint) Clotilde’s. Hidden decoration worn next to the skin, covered by outer garments and unseen, was not uncommon for holy women in particular, even before the period of Catholicism and the Christianity we would recognize today. These garments have been found amongst grave goods, and, if I recall, were attested to in the record as well. This inspired this piece of my story, so rooted both in the formation of Catholicism, but also the volatile and passionate relationship of the particular king and queen who helped to guide this very formation.
A curious side note: many of these designs explicitly echo modern tattoo design. Ed Hardy became one of the most popular brands for the uber-hip during the 2000s, but his start was as a tattoo artist. Tattoos sometimes being for display - sometimes not - and more often than not, representing something deeply personal/important/intimate/spiritual/emotional for a wearer, this is a fascinating evolution of expression.
The sinuous lines of Hardy's more vintage-inspired designs hark back to the sort of trompe l’oiel garments I’m mentioning here, but also to actual jewels and textile embellishments – gold, embroidery, beading, swagging, and the voluptuous expressions of conspicuous consumption we alternately embrace and then revile, and always have through the history of human fashion (... and politics ...). The look evokes richness – and, indeed, Hardy’s prices are hardly discount – even as the designs are rendered on decidedly egalitarian pieces. More layers: and what has the message become, when the flouting of signifiers of wealth curves back and is expressed in ... designer wear, which (though it is nothing of the kinds) is intended to convey exclusivity and fashion snobbery ... ???
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Healthful Histfic
I read a discussion recently about the state of health of people in past centuries, and it got me thinking once again about a certain cut I made in The Ax and the Vase. As people in historicals (novel or film) have a tendency to either be far too clean or dirty in the extreme, so they also often appear throughout an entire story to go through their lives in apparent good health. Like the ubiquity of royalty in the genre, the curious absence of any infirmity, deformity, or disease not archly relating to a plot point has sometimes bugged me ... and, of course, is a tendency I have now perpetuated.
It turns out, there is a pretty good reason for this situation, and it is: economy.
In its original draft form, Ax included a subplot in which Clovis suffers from trichinosis (the disease is unnamed, but I researched and used its symptoms) after getting some bad meat. For the rest of his life, he has problems with meat, which is an issue for a monarch so concerned with status. Meat was a status symbol, beef most of all, and for a powerful king interested in propagandizing his reign and displaying his wealth and power - to be unable to indulge in the finest would have been humiliating.
More than that - it's just realistic. It's clear that among the most common ailments across time are gastro and digestive issues.
So why is it that we so often read the rich results of an author's research on the food a character ate ... yet we so seldom see "results" issuing from the sanitary and other elements of that food's making? It can be as cosmetic an issue as writing every character as a brilliant intellect and stunning beauty. In my case, though, it was mechanical: there is only so much you can - or should - include.
Editing a novel is like editing a film; if a scene or subplot does not move the plot forward, it is unnecessary. And so, when we do see any indication of a character's health, it almost certainly bears on their arc in some way - the young woman who feels nauseous is pregnant; the person who coughs is going to die of consumption - and we end up with cliches, because a character's health or lack of it almost invariably becomes a mechanism. I justified Clovis' trichinosis as realistic and supporting the theme of his concern for status and display, but in the end it was a thread that added nothing but a bit of contrived/would-be "grit" that sat there sort of by itself like an introvert at a party.
It had to go.
In The Ax and the Vase, we still see some hints of the medical state of our friends in Late Antiquity. The mother of Clovis' first son dies after childbirth, there are war wounds and deaths - Queen Saint Clotilde herself, after a difficult delivery, actually chooses to deprive herself physically for reasons of her faith. But nothing sits around outside the plot, having nothing to do.
I cut the trichinosis story for the same reason I cut a bodyguard named Wilichar and, indeed, any presence at all of Clovis' father, Childeric (who, however, is so fascinating a character I have a very minor side project touching on his history). The manuscript was bloated, and clearance was required.
So, sometimes, the cliches we end up with in historicals (or any writing, come to think of it) are born of the economies of storytelling. Done well, it can still produce a worthwhile story, even if the portrait of a period remains focused and misses a more complete picture. Read Ax when I get it out there - and tell me whether you agree ...
It turns out, there is a pretty good reason for this situation, and it is: economy.
In its original draft form, Ax included a subplot in which Clovis suffers from trichinosis (the disease is unnamed, but I researched and used its symptoms) after getting some bad meat. For the rest of his life, he has problems with meat, which is an issue for a monarch so concerned with status. Meat was a status symbol, beef most of all, and for a powerful king interested in propagandizing his reign and displaying his wealth and power - to be unable to indulge in the finest would have been humiliating.
More than that - it's just realistic. It's clear that among the most common ailments across time are gastro and digestive issues.
So why is it that we so often read the rich results of an author's research on the food a character ate ... yet we so seldom see "results" issuing from the sanitary and other elements of that food's making? It can be as cosmetic an issue as writing every character as a brilliant intellect and stunning beauty. In my case, though, it was mechanical: there is only so much you can - or should - include.
Editing a novel is like editing a film; if a scene or subplot does not move the plot forward, it is unnecessary. And so, when we do see any indication of a character's health, it almost certainly bears on their arc in some way - the young woman who feels nauseous is pregnant; the person who coughs is going to die of consumption - and we end up with cliches, because a character's health or lack of it almost invariably becomes a mechanism. I justified Clovis' trichinosis as realistic and supporting the theme of his concern for status and display, but in the end it was a thread that added nothing but a bit of contrived/would-be "grit" that sat there sort of by itself like an introvert at a party.
It had to go.
In The Ax and the Vase, we still see some hints of the medical state of our friends in Late Antiquity. The mother of Clovis' first son dies after childbirth, there are war wounds and deaths - Queen Saint Clotilde herself, after a difficult delivery, actually chooses to deprive herself physically for reasons of her faith. But nothing sits around outside the plot, having nothing to do.
I cut the trichinosis story for the same reason I cut a bodyguard named Wilichar and, indeed, any presence at all of Clovis' father, Childeric (who, however, is so fascinating a character I have a very minor side project touching on his history). The manuscript was bloated, and clearance was required.
So, sometimes, the cliches we end up with in historicals (or any writing, come to think of it) are born of the economies of storytelling. Done well, it can still produce a worthwhile story, even if the portrait of a period remains focused and misses a more complete picture. Read Ax when I get it out there - and tell me whether you agree ...
Sunday, March 10, 2013
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.
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.
 |
| 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.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
The Death Scene.
Today, I reworked the scene in which Clovis gains his first heir, and loses his first love. This is one I worked on recently, but somehow it brought me back once more. So my word count isn't greatly down today, but the finer-tuning, fingers crossed, was a good choice.
This scene takes place pretty early in the going. Theuderic, first prince of Clovis I, is older than those I refer to as "the Clotine princes" (sons of Queen Saint Clotilde), born extremely early in Clovis' reign, and many years before his marriage to the Queen.
 |
| Theuderic I, 19th C depiction |
Without basis in history - perhaps only because of a White Liberal Guilt brand of need to confer on my characters some level of imperfection, I give to Theuderic a youthful palsy. As he fights to overcome what would have been seen as a weakness or even a defect, Clovis himself fights the fear, for those early years, that he has not sired a healthy heir.
The death scene echoes with this - but, more than anything, it is the moment when a very young man indeed comes to understand his own love, in losing it. I don't spend much time in philosophizing all this - part of what I need to do, after all, is to *shorten* this novel - but I hope the writing conveys a sense of the place mourning truly originates. Because the other thing I am doing, at the same time, is plumbing the emotional depths of the character.
Right now, this scene has sort of exhausted me. I've never lost a concubine to childbirth, but certainly on Father's Day, of all days, a sense of loss is never far away. And I have lost love - at that age (Clovis would hardly have been seventeen), it is practically the order of the day to lose love, even if not in quite this context.
Clovis' own death scene (SPOILER! He's dead now!) has made me cry. This scene did not have this effect, but, as long as it's been since I dealt with Clovis' scene, this one probably means more to me.
Still, the thing is hard to deal with. Writing, as much as I try to divorce myself from some of the more "passionate" cliche's about authors and poets, is an immensely personal emotional exercise.
And here it is 11:30 at night, and I am still not moving through the MSS like lightning, and wasting time on Blogger. Of *course*.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Protagonist
There is a phrase, "hero of the story" which, in literature classes, is generally replaced with the term protagonist. Of course, not all main characters are heroes - nor even likeable - and so we have to find a better option.
Clovis has many of the makings of a hero, and I did not write him as a villain - but he's hardly Dudley Do-Right.
Around Clovis cluster certain legends - there are those which cast him as a rapacious Barbarian (oh good lord, the whole BARBARIAN slur and bigotry ...), and at least as much hagiography, in memory of a practically legendary king, in memory of the Christian king, in honor of the father of France.
Then, of course, there are the howlers about the Merovingian Dynasty, which he founded. The less said the better, there - if you look at the link, it's been done.
I don't know how many authors sit down with an ax to grind (for those who even get that pun ... my apologies), but I don't have the ability to write with any sort of didactic point in mind. I'm not that convinced of my rectitude, for one, but mostly I don't care to get into arguments - and didactic writing begs for that dang guitarist to get noisy.
I also don't concentrate well on whitewashing a character. The ones who approach me aren't necessarily nice people - but they do seem to be endowed with much that's worthwhile. I can't make a hero out of a bad guy - I don't have any urge to - but to invite a character into my brain, there's got to be an attraction.
We know that Clovis was capable of spectacular violence.
Regardless of the sainted memory of Clotilde's conversion of her spouse and king to Catholicism, history appears open to the idea that his spiritual choices were at least partially politically motivated.
He appears to have been a continent husband, but family history is sometimes considered to be wildly bloody. Even the saint herself is said to have incited her sons to hideous revenge on an uncle said to have murdered her own family.
History is, as it always is, loaded with contradiction and the fascination of pretty spectacular wickedness. This is a part of what makes parts of it, and players within it, so interesting - and which also feeds the modern sense of superiority we so enjoy when looking down on things like Barbarians, the Dark Ages, medieval violence, even the learning of the past.
It's also loaded with protagonists we sometimes apologize for.
I don't apologize for Clovis. I do present some of those familial crimes without the prejudice of a middle-aged, middle-class white broad with excesses of privilege, looking backward at a man whose power - whatever his personality - is without question. I hope I provide a view of him without the mask of either violent legend or glowing sycophancy. I hope he's as compelling outside my head as he has been for me for so long now - for good and ill, for feeling and wit, for what he did, and for even his failings.
Clovis has many of the makings of a hero, and I did not write him as a villain - but he's hardly Dudley Do-Right.
Around Clovis cluster certain legends - there are those which cast him as a rapacious Barbarian (oh good lord, the whole BARBARIAN slur and bigotry ...), and at least as much hagiography, in memory of a practically legendary king, in memory of the Christian king, in honor of the father of France.
Then, of course, there are the howlers about the Merovingian Dynasty, which he founded. The less said the better, there - if you look at the link, it's been done.
I don't know how many authors sit down with an ax to grind (for those who even get that pun ... my apologies), but I don't have the ability to write with any sort of didactic point in mind. I'm not that convinced of my rectitude, for one, but mostly I don't care to get into arguments - and didactic writing begs for that dang guitarist to get noisy.
I also don't concentrate well on whitewashing a character. The ones who approach me aren't necessarily nice people - but they do seem to be endowed with much that's worthwhile. I can't make a hero out of a bad guy - I don't have any urge to - but to invite a character into my brain, there's got to be an attraction.
We know that Clovis was capable of spectacular violence.
Regardless of the sainted memory of Clotilde's conversion of her spouse and king to Catholicism, history appears open to the idea that his spiritual choices were at least partially politically motivated.
He appears to have been a continent husband, but family history is sometimes considered to be wildly bloody. Even the saint herself is said to have incited her sons to hideous revenge on an uncle said to have murdered her own family.
History is, as it always is, loaded with contradiction and the fascination of pretty spectacular wickedness. This is a part of what makes parts of it, and players within it, so interesting - and which also feeds the modern sense of superiority we so enjoy when looking down on things like Barbarians, the Dark Ages, medieval violence, even the learning of the past.
It's also loaded with protagonists we sometimes apologize for.
I don't apologize for Clovis. I do present some of those familial crimes without the prejudice of a middle-aged, middle-class white broad with excesses of privilege, looking backward at a man whose power - whatever his personality - is without question. I hope I provide a view of him without the mask of either violent legend or glowing sycophancy. I hope he's as compelling outside my head as he has been for me for so long now - for good and ill, for feeling and wit, for what he did, and for even his failings.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Axing the Ax!
I was struck and amused at some of the ideas I'm bouncing off my SBC readers, and thought it was worth sharing, if only for the realization I came to in the final line of my note to these wonderful ladies ...
By the way, if you don't like having opening chapters of a novel "spoilered" - well, then, this contains spoilers. However, nothing of substance beyond the first few dozen pages will be ruined by this post. If you're interested in "process", though - read on, because this is full-on authorial sausage-making! (Note: "Cloti" is my nickname for Queen Clotilde. Other characters named are a mix of historical and fictional, mostly the latter.)
***
Kristi, to catch you up on brainstorming last weekend, Leila helped me to see that I could cut the character of Clovis’ older sister, Lanthechild (and her traitor husband, Gaianus) out of the novel. Just because she existed doesn't mean she needs to exist in this novel! This weekend, I decided I probably need to ditch Clovis’ own mini battle with trichinosis, too. That thread doesn’t do anything but demonstrate Cloti’s administrative expertise, and I don’t think evidence of that is so short those scenes and their aftermath are worth preserving. Your thoughts?
I’m also shifting the opening progression to move straight from Evochilde’s death to the battle with Syagrius, eliminating all the talk of horse breeds and cousin Wedelphus, and prep for five years, to tighten the progression of events. It’ll be coronation, mother’s banishment, death of Evochilde, big battle, with very little exposition and blah-blah in between. Any character I can eliminate, I need to - so if you think the little scribe boy, Merochar, needs to go, for instance, tell me. For now, I’ve kept Mero since he does provide an ongoing thread through the novel - but he may not be essential, so throw ideas around there, too.
Pharamond’s parents may get to keep their names, but I may also eliminate the scenes where their deaths occur; it doesn’t add anything to the action, nor Clovis’ character (their deaths don’t even do much for Pharamond’s character, textually speaking!), so that will probably go.
Funny, how I can feel so “fertile” as a writer, coming up with so many darlings to kill!!
By the way, if you don't like having opening chapters of a novel "spoilered" - well, then, this contains spoilers. However, nothing of substance beyond the first few dozen pages will be ruined by this post. If you're interested in "process", though - read on, because this is full-on authorial sausage-making! (Note: "Cloti" is my nickname for Queen Clotilde. Other characters named are a mix of historical and fictional, mostly the latter.)
***
Kristi, to catch you up on brainstorming last weekend, Leila helped me to see that I could cut the character of Clovis’ older sister, Lanthechild (and her traitor husband, Gaianus) out of the novel. Just because she existed doesn't mean she needs to exist in this novel! This weekend, I decided I probably need to ditch Clovis’ own mini battle with trichinosis, too. That thread doesn’t do anything but demonstrate Cloti’s administrative expertise, and I don’t think evidence of that is so short those scenes and their aftermath are worth preserving. Your thoughts?
I’m also shifting the opening progression to move straight from Evochilde’s death to the battle with Syagrius, eliminating all the talk of horse breeds and cousin Wedelphus, and prep for five years, to tighten the progression of events. It’ll be coronation, mother’s banishment, death of Evochilde, big battle, with very little exposition and blah-blah in between. Any character I can eliminate, I need to - so if you think the little scribe boy, Merochar, needs to go, for instance, tell me. For now, I’ve kept Mero since he does provide an ongoing thread through the novel - but he may not be essential, so throw ideas around there, too.
Pharamond’s parents may get to keep their names, but I may also eliminate the scenes where their deaths occur; it doesn’t add anything to the action, nor Clovis’ character (their deaths don’t even do much for Pharamond’s character, textually speaking!), so that will probably go.
Funny, how I can feel so “fertile” as a writer, coming up with so many darlings to kill!!
Sunday, January 22, 2012
The Thing About Research
When I was researching Clovis, one of the things I found frustrating about the lack of direct and contemporary sources was the fact that this led to an awful lot of echoes. "Facts" about his life are picked up and reported frankly, without citation and without clarity. And thus does common wisdom become history.
Your less deeply analytical sources will repeat the knowledge that Clovis' baptism, for example, took place immediately upon his conversion.
Reading Ax is going to irritate these people. Because I chose to hearken to other sources. Sources which analyzed everything from the extent of Clovis' Romanization (did he really convert from Roman paganism? or was he a Thor sort of fellow?) to his dalliance with Arian Christianity to the likelihood of his wife's thirst for blood against her own uncles.
Gregory of Tours said Clovis was a Roman pagan, and an awful lot of pearl-clutching has gone on over the past century and a half or so, regarding how this is a terrible assertion to take at face value. Historical scholarship needs its pearl-clutching, and I am glad people are willing to think twice about the word of a somewhat less than contemporary cleric not writing history quite to the standard we might (for little reason, really) expect of a scholar today. Greg had a character to create, a point to make, and either he or Clovis himself was interested in making our man a second Constantine. The patterns can be drawn ... and so one must ask oneself - how much of this is fact?
I actually used that template - the recreation of Constantine in Clovis - as a choice on the monarch's own part. And it was this which led me to separate the baptism from the conversion. Constantine was converted for a LOT of years before he had himself moistened over the whole thing. And so I took Clovis' Christmas consecration and removed it by many years, too, from his dramatic battlefield conversion experience.
Even if I didn't accept this removal (which, for the record, I wholeheartedly *do*), the fact is that, as an author, the separation of these events provides opportunity for drama. I am able to build in the tension of a man who has always believed himself descended from a (pagan) god renouncing the tenet of ANY divine descent at all, and setting the standard for Europe of divine *right* ... which is, in fact, ongoing today. If any of you thinks Elizabeth II considers her position as a simple inheritance, like you or I might inherit a painting or a gold pocket watch - think again. She expects of herself adherence to a divine placement in her throne. And it may not be she is alone in looking at her seat that way. And if she didn't think it her right, G-d-given (and a responsibility to live up to) it's unlikely she'd keep sitting there.
Fifteen hundred years, divine right has been with the cultures extant and born of Clovis' time - and decision. He had a thing or two to do with the way the world has developed, this guy.
And even so, what we know about him from anyone who ever met him even once: absolutely nada.
The story about five thousand of his followers following him to the altar right after the battle of Zulpich becomes history, when nobody who was there has a voice we can hear.
The tales of SAINT Clotilde's cruel whispers, to kill those uncles (we also hear sometimes as if it were hard-history) who murdered her father and mother (a mother who, there is POSSIBLE evidence, lived into the sixth century!), are repeated as fact. Even by those who acknowledge her a saint.
The stories are good, to be sure. I won't pretend I didn't cherry pick the ones I found most intriguing.
But read with care, *any* history.
And read with joy, historical fiction ...
Your less deeply analytical sources will repeat the knowledge that Clovis' baptism, for example, took place immediately upon his conversion.
Reading Ax is going to irritate these people. Because I chose to hearken to other sources. Sources which analyzed everything from the extent of Clovis' Romanization (did he really convert from Roman paganism? or was he a Thor sort of fellow?) to his dalliance with Arian Christianity to the likelihood of his wife's thirst for blood against her own uncles.
Gregory of Tours said Clovis was a Roman pagan, and an awful lot of pearl-clutching has gone on over the past century and a half or so, regarding how this is a terrible assertion to take at face value. Historical scholarship needs its pearl-clutching, and I am glad people are willing to think twice about the word of a somewhat less than contemporary cleric not writing history quite to the standard we might (for little reason, really) expect of a scholar today. Greg had a character to create, a point to make, and either he or Clovis himself was interested in making our man a second Constantine. The patterns can be drawn ... and so one must ask oneself - how much of this is fact?
I actually used that template - the recreation of Constantine in Clovis - as a choice on the monarch's own part. And it was this which led me to separate the baptism from the conversion. Constantine was converted for a LOT of years before he had himself moistened over the whole thing. And so I took Clovis' Christmas consecration and removed it by many years, too, from his dramatic battlefield conversion experience.
Even if I didn't accept this removal (which, for the record, I wholeheartedly *do*), the fact is that, as an author, the separation of these events provides opportunity for drama. I am able to build in the tension of a man who has always believed himself descended from a (pagan) god renouncing the tenet of ANY divine descent at all, and setting the standard for Europe of divine *right* ... which is, in fact, ongoing today. If any of you thinks Elizabeth II considers her position as a simple inheritance, like you or I might inherit a painting or a gold pocket watch - think again. She expects of herself adherence to a divine placement in her throne. And it may not be she is alone in looking at her seat that way. And if she didn't think it her right, G-d-given (and a responsibility to live up to) it's unlikely she'd keep sitting there.
Fifteen hundred years, divine right has been with the cultures extant and born of Clovis' time - and decision. He had a thing or two to do with the way the world has developed, this guy.
And even so, what we know about him from anyone who ever met him even once: absolutely nada.
The story about five thousand of his followers following him to the altar right after the battle of Zulpich becomes history, when nobody who was there has a voice we can hear.
The tales of SAINT Clotilde's cruel whispers, to kill those uncles (we also hear sometimes as if it were hard-history) who murdered her father and mother (a mother who, there is POSSIBLE evidence, lived into the sixth century!), are repeated as fact. Even by those who acknowledge her a saint.
The stories are good, to be sure. I won't pretend I didn't cherry pick the ones I found most intriguing.
But read with care, *any* history.
And read with joy, historical fiction ...
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Learning New Things Every Day ...
For all the research I did for Ax, I am embarrassed to note I don't think I ever realized St. Clotilde is the patron saint of adopted children. A *number* of people I love very dearly indeed are adopted, so this is particularly interesting to me. Huh.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Queen Saint Clotilde
I've posted a great deal about Clovis, the Merovingians, a bit about research, and historical fiction in general. What I haven't discussed is my first major female lead - and what a lead I had in Clotilde.
The queen who converted her husband to Catholicism, who bore three princes and a princess for the dynasty, who rose to the status of legend - and who became a saint of her Church - was a challenge, but such a joyous one.
I understand well, but tend to shy away from, the tendency to draw feminist characters in a historical setting. This puts no limit on the strength of personality, but also doesn't do the literary and social disservice of minimizing the extent of difficulty a woman (or any character at all) had, living in The Past. Clotilde is a fortunate resource to have in my story, because she perhaps ranks with someone like Abigail Adams in both strength of personality, personal appeal, and persuasive capability (if not in her explicit support of women's rights - heh). So the challenge with her was to present the power this woman wielded - over a king no less - in the context of a world where feminine power was hardly dominant.
Another challenge, with Clotilde, was to portray the love story between a man and a woman, without disrespect for the fact that this woman - a character I needed to render as fully flesh and blood - happens to have become a Saint of the Catholic faith. This aspect was not a major factor in my writing as I'm not an eroticist, but it was *there*, it was a thing that factored into Cloti's creation. The idea of yanking the covers off a religious icon in flagrante delicto seems perhaps disrespectful, even if it doesn't ruffle my personal feathers to contemplate the sacred and human in one.
Clovis was a hell of a guy in this (literal - heh) respect, providing me with reasons not to get too salacious. The legend of his father, Childeric, was that dad was so handsy with his female subjects that the men of the Salian Franks booted him out of town and offered his seat to the Roman governor. This gave me a pretty obvious motivation for Clovis' later dispatch of selfsame governor's own son, but also provided compelling reason for the fact that Clovis does not come off, in history or legend, as any kind of letch. He's known to have had one son before marrying Clotilde at the not insignificant age of about twenty-seven years. Nothing is known of Theuderic's mother, but it seemed only fair to make her a concubine, if only because I am the writer and I get to indulge my fascinations - and the institute of marriage and concubinage going beyond (a) what I am personally familiar with and (b) the exoticized idea the term "concubine" tends to bring to mind for many Americans fascinates me. Also, Theuderic is known to have inherited, and the legal status of friedlehe would certainly have conferred on any offspring the rights of any rightful heir.
So the first son gets a mom who freely chose her man, her status, and her child's future legal viability - and promptly exits, stage right. Nice to know you, mystery first love!
Clotilde comes along significantly later. Clovis has been on the throne, by the time he marries, a dozen years, not a lot less than half the span of his entire reign. I bent the legend about their union a little, but put them together at the appropriate time, and with what I hope is appropriate enthusiasm for one another. Clotilde may be a saint, but nobody ever called the mother of four a virgin - and I allow her the passion to love both her husband and her G-d. I also allow their marriage enough reality to both contain and sustain conflict.
Such as Ingomer.
Clotilde actually bore not three princes, but four. Ingomer was the firstborn between king and queen - and Ingomer also represents the major conflict between spouses pagan and Christian. Clotilde had her son baptized, much against her husband's wishes - and, when he died, Clovis blamed her Christian G-d. This may not be a Steinem-esque piece of self-actualization, but it was the palpably independent act of a woman within her time - both a figure of faith, and a strong-willed woman. As a mother, this was a core-deep matter of importance to Clotilde - and yet, taking the step was not a minor infraction.
Likewise, it makes for not a minor piece of dramatic tension, too. So bless her for being more than a little milquetoast.
Clovis' conversion, far from resulting in an immediate way from discussion with his queen, came while he was far from her - on the battlefield at Zulpich (Tolbiac). To succumb to someone's influence when they are not directly exhorting someone speaks to both the power of the influence, and the power of the persuader. Remote success in converting someone to a way of thinking means both that the seller of an idea, and the idea, have taken up residence under the skin.
Clotilde had serious power. She had this both because her husband trusted and invested in her. Probably because he was in love with/solicitous of her. She had the charisma of a queen, as he had that of a king - a woman, like Helen, for whom such a man would do much, and a woman like Abigail, from whom a man would be willing to actually learn anything so fundamental as the matter of faith and religion.
I'll come back to Clotilde again, but had to begin some record of her. I've been a little ill, so accept my apologies if this is a weak first chapter. Still, I had to get something out.
The queen who converted her husband to Catholicism, who bore three princes and a princess for the dynasty, who rose to the status of legend - and who became a saint of her Church - was a challenge, but such a joyous one.
I understand well, but tend to shy away from, the tendency to draw feminist characters in a historical setting. This puts no limit on the strength of personality, but also doesn't do the literary and social disservice of minimizing the extent of difficulty a woman (or any character at all) had, living in The Past. Clotilde is a fortunate resource to have in my story, because she perhaps ranks with someone like Abigail Adams in both strength of personality, personal appeal, and persuasive capability (if not in her explicit support of women's rights - heh). So the challenge with her was to present the power this woman wielded - over a king no less - in the context of a world where feminine power was hardly dominant.
Another challenge, with Clotilde, was to portray the love story between a man and a woman, without disrespect for the fact that this woman - a character I needed to render as fully flesh and blood - happens to have become a Saint of the Catholic faith. This aspect was not a major factor in my writing as I'm not an eroticist, but it was *there*, it was a thing that factored into Cloti's creation. The idea of yanking the covers off a religious icon in flagrante delicto seems perhaps disrespectful, even if it doesn't ruffle my personal feathers to contemplate the sacred and human in one.
Clovis was a hell of a guy in this (literal - heh) respect, providing me with reasons not to get too salacious. The legend of his father, Childeric, was that dad was so handsy with his female subjects that the men of the Salian Franks booted him out of town and offered his seat to the Roman governor. This gave me a pretty obvious motivation for Clovis' later dispatch of selfsame governor's own son, but also provided compelling reason for the fact that Clovis does not come off, in history or legend, as any kind of letch. He's known to have had one son before marrying Clotilde at the not insignificant age of about twenty-seven years. Nothing is known of Theuderic's mother, but it seemed only fair to make her a concubine, if only because I am the writer and I get to indulge my fascinations - and the institute of marriage and concubinage going beyond (a) what I am personally familiar with and (b) the exoticized idea the term "concubine" tends to bring to mind for many Americans fascinates me. Also, Theuderic is known to have inherited, and the legal status of friedlehe would certainly have conferred on any offspring the rights of any rightful heir.
So the first son gets a mom who freely chose her man, her status, and her child's future legal viability - and promptly exits, stage right. Nice to know you, mystery first love!
Clotilde comes along significantly later. Clovis has been on the throne, by the time he marries, a dozen years, not a lot less than half the span of his entire reign. I bent the legend about their union a little, but put them together at the appropriate time, and with what I hope is appropriate enthusiasm for one another. Clotilde may be a saint, but nobody ever called the mother of four a virgin - and I allow her the passion to love both her husband and her G-d. I also allow their marriage enough reality to both contain and sustain conflict.
Such as Ingomer.
Clotilde actually bore not three princes, but four. Ingomer was the firstborn between king and queen - and Ingomer also represents the major conflict between spouses pagan and Christian. Clotilde had her son baptized, much against her husband's wishes - and, when he died, Clovis blamed her Christian G-d. This may not be a Steinem-esque piece of self-actualization, but it was the palpably independent act of a woman within her time - both a figure of faith, and a strong-willed woman. As a mother, this was a core-deep matter of importance to Clotilde - and yet, taking the step was not a minor infraction.
Likewise, it makes for not a minor piece of dramatic tension, too. So bless her for being more than a little milquetoast.
Clovis' conversion, far from resulting in an immediate way from discussion with his queen, came while he was far from her - on the battlefield at Zulpich (Tolbiac). To succumb to someone's influence when they are not directly exhorting someone speaks to both the power of the influence, and the power of the persuader. Remote success in converting someone to a way of thinking means both that the seller of an idea, and the idea, have taken up residence under the skin.
Clotilde had serious power. She had this both because her husband trusted and invested in her. Probably because he was in love with/solicitous of her. She had the charisma of a queen, as he had that of a king - a woman, like Helen, for whom such a man would do much, and a woman like Abigail, from whom a man would be willing to actually learn anything so fundamental as the matter of faith and religion.
I'll come back to Clotilde again, but had to begin some record of her. I've been a little ill, so accept my apologies if this is a weak first chapter. Still, I had to get something out.
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