Byzantine Tales
Having finished the available episodes on the History of Byzantium podcast - it's not over by two hundred more years, but I've now listened to all the finished episodes - with the last one just happening to be the 1204 sacking of Constantinople (sob!); I've felt inspired to go back to a few Byzantine tales I'd read before and look for new ones.
My favourite novels set in or around Byzantium are by Gillian Bradshaw, and of those three, I can never decide whether I prefer The Bearkeeper's Daughter or Imperial Purple.
The later has the better OCs, and a good thing, too, since it's focused on them, with the historical characters solely playing supporting roles. Our heroine and hero are a silk weaver and her fisherman husband, who get embroiled into dangerous political intrigues when the ambitious provincial governor orders our heroine to secretly weave a purple cloak (which is only permitted for the Emperor, but it's not destined for the current Emperor, which means....) Demetrias (our heroine) and her husband, who already have a young son, just want to stay alive, and are very aware that no matter how the scheming of the powerful turns out, they're likely to get crushed. In order to prevent this from happening, they each have different ideas, and so the novel has them end up for a considerable while with the historical supporting characters, who are the Empress Pulcheria and Marcian, respectively. (Which btw makes them all contemporaries of Attila the Hun.) Both historical supporting characters come across as three dimensional and interesting. But the heart of the novel is the marriage of the OCs, which is a skillful execution of the "marriage of convenience (for one party, not for the other) becomes real for both" trope. The novel manages to make it clear that our leads are among the most powerless people in the society they've been born into and that they still find ways to have goals, agendas, to find safety and free spaces for themselves.
The Bearkeeper's Daughter, otoh, is one of those novels where the pov character is not really the main character, but the one through which the main character's story is told/experienced. In this case, the pov character is John, illegtimate son of Theodora. John may or may not have existed, depending on how reliable you consider Procopius and his Secret History. At any rate, even if he did exist, Procopius doesn't say much beyond the fact of his existence, which meant that Bradshaw essentially could write him as an OC. Making John the pov character also means she can keep Theodora morally ambigous - John hears both good and bad stories about her, is both fascinated by and distrustful of the mother he only meets as an adult due to plot circumstances. Looking up the order of publication right now, I was intrigued to see the novel got published after Bradshaw's Arthurian tilogy, because in some ways, the relationship between John and Theodora is a lightside version of the one between Gwalchmai and Morgawse in Hawk of May, in that Theodora is capable of great ruthlessness, but the narrative also makes it clear how and why she came to be this way, always keeping the utter powerlessness of her origins in mind, and in the end despite her flaws she's the heroine, not the villain of the tale. I've seen the criticism that since this novel is set during the last years of Theodora's life, all the historical drama of it is essentially over - i.e. John doesn't get to witness it, he only hears about it in retrospect -, but imo, that's no drawback of the novel but allows it to focus on the central relationships and on the portrait of the Byzantine Empire and society as it is at that point. Something that's also unusual compared to other fictionalisations of the same era is that the most sympathetic of the historical characters and the one with the most page time is the Eunuch Narses, not the great military hero of the era, Belisarius. Eunuchs played a big part in most Byzantine administrations but usually tend to get a bad press, as with most societies that create them, so the utterly cliché free treatment of Narses was another thing to endear the novel to me.
These novels I'd read first decades ago. A much more recent reading experience, courtesy of the podcast reccommending it, was the graphich novel Theophano: A Byzantine Tale, text by Spyros Theocharis, art by Chrysa Sakel. If you're German, the first historical personality you think of when hearing the name "Theopanu", is this lady, the Ottonian Empress, who isn't the subject of this graphic novel. Rather, it is the woman she was possibly named after, , the Byzantine Empress. Now, according to the History of the Byzantium podcast, some of the deaths Theophano got blamed for were product of scapegoating, snobbery (she was a commoner) and power struggles long after her death where a rival family needed to damage her son, and that in all likelihood she's not responsible for any of them. Otoh, the graphic novel actually does let her go through with various murders (or aid them), but still goes with a sympathetic reading, not least by providing her with good motivations in all cases.
She's tricked into the first one, in the second case knows if she doesn't do it, she'll die herself, and in the third case her sons are threatened by castration plus the Empire is going down the drain if she doesn't act. It also, like The Bearkeeper's Daughter, chooses to tell the story of the Empress through the eyes of a close relation, in this case her commoner father. And bw, this is a rare father-daughter relationship where he's protective of her but also knows she's smarter and doesn't try to use her to gain advantages for himself, or question her judgment. This is in stark contract to the family relationships among the nobility, where there's constant distrust and jockeying for position even among temporary allies. Still, the novel doesn't make the mistake of letting all nobles be evil, either. And most characters have understandable motivations for what they do. (It's also the rare historical fiction which gets accross very efficiently why and how a great general can be a catastrophic Emperor.) Lastly, the art is really gorgeous, and does the 10th century Constantinople setting full justice.
And finally, seeing as the podcast got me as far as the century of the Komnenoi (i.e. the twelfth century), I checked, and lo and behold, the AO3 has this excellent fic with lots of UST between Alexios I. Komnenos and his most enduring arch nemesis, Bohemund the Norman. You don't have to know more than what is in the story itself to enjoy it, I promise.
My favourite novels set in or around Byzantium are by Gillian Bradshaw, and of those three, I can never decide whether I prefer The Bearkeeper's Daughter or Imperial Purple.
The later has the better OCs, and a good thing, too, since it's focused on them, with the historical characters solely playing supporting roles. Our heroine and hero are a silk weaver and her fisherman husband, who get embroiled into dangerous political intrigues when the ambitious provincial governor orders our heroine to secretly weave a purple cloak (which is only permitted for the Emperor, but it's not destined for the current Emperor, which means....) Demetrias (our heroine) and her husband, who already have a young son, just want to stay alive, and are very aware that no matter how the scheming of the powerful turns out, they're likely to get crushed. In order to prevent this from happening, they each have different ideas, and so the novel has them end up for a considerable while with the historical supporting characters, who are the Empress Pulcheria and Marcian, respectively. (Which btw makes them all contemporaries of Attila the Hun.) Both historical supporting characters come across as three dimensional and interesting. But the heart of the novel is the marriage of the OCs, which is a skillful execution of the "marriage of convenience (for one party, not for the other) becomes real for both" trope. The novel manages to make it clear that our leads are among the most powerless people in the society they've been born into and that they still find ways to have goals, agendas, to find safety and free spaces for themselves.
The Bearkeeper's Daughter, otoh, is one of those novels where the pov character is not really the main character, but the one through which the main character's story is told/experienced. In this case, the pov character is John, illegtimate son of Theodora. John may or may not have existed, depending on how reliable you consider Procopius and his Secret History. At any rate, even if he did exist, Procopius doesn't say much beyond the fact of his existence, which meant that Bradshaw essentially could write him as an OC. Making John the pov character also means she can keep Theodora morally ambigous - John hears both good and bad stories about her, is both fascinated by and distrustful of the mother he only meets as an adult due to plot circumstances. Looking up the order of publication right now, I was intrigued to see the novel got published after Bradshaw's Arthurian tilogy, because in some ways, the relationship between John and Theodora is a lightside version of the one between Gwalchmai and Morgawse in Hawk of May, in that Theodora is capable of great ruthlessness, but the narrative also makes it clear how and why she came to be this way, always keeping the utter powerlessness of her origins in mind, and in the end despite her flaws she's the heroine, not the villain of the tale. I've seen the criticism that since this novel is set during the last years of Theodora's life, all the historical drama of it is essentially over - i.e. John doesn't get to witness it, he only hears about it in retrospect -, but imo, that's no drawback of the novel but allows it to focus on the central relationships and on the portrait of the Byzantine Empire and society as it is at that point. Something that's also unusual compared to other fictionalisations of the same era is that the most sympathetic of the historical characters and the one with the most page time is the Eunuch Narses, not the great military hero of the era, Belisarius. Eunuchs played a big part in most Byzantine administrations but usually tend to get a bad press, as with most societies that create them, so the utterly cliché free treatment of Narses was another thing to endear the novel to me.
These novels I'd read first decades ago. A much more recent reading experience, courtesy of the podcast reccommending it, was the graphich novel Theophano: A Byzantine Tale, text by Spyros Theocharis, art by Chrysa Sakel. If you're German, the first historical personality you think of when hearing the name "Theopanu", is this lady, the Ottonian Empress, who isn't the subject of this graphic novel. Rather, it is the woman she was possibly named after, , the Byzantine Empress. Now, according to the History of the Byzantium podcast, some of the deaths Theophano got blamed for were product of scapegoating, snobbery (she was a commoner) and power struggles long after her death where a rival family needed to damage her son, and that in all likelihood she's not responsible for any of them. Otoh, the graphic novel actually does let her go through with various murders (or aid them), but still goes with a sympathetic reading, not least by providing her with good motivations in all cases.
She's tricked into the first one, in the second case knows if she doesn't do it, she'll die herself, and in the third case her sons are threatened by castration plus the Empire is going down the drain if she doesn't act. It also, like The Bearkeeper's Daughter, chooses to tell the story of the Empress through the eyes of a close relation, in this case her commoner father. And bw, this is a rare father-daughter relationship where he's protective of her but also knows she's smarter and doesn't try to use her to gain advantages for himself, or question her judgment. This is in stark contract to the family relationships among the nobility, where there's constant distrust and jockeying for position even among temporary allies. Still, the novel doesn't make the mistake of letting all nobles be evil, either. And most characters have understandable motivations for what they do. (It's also the rare historical fiction which gets accross very efficiently why and how a great general can be a catastrophic Emperor.) Lastly, the art is really gorgeous, and does the 10th century Constantinople setting full justice.
And finally, seeing as the podcast got me as far as the century of the Komnenoi (i.e. the twelfth century), I checked, and lo and behold, the AO3 has this excellent fic with lots of UST between Alexios I. Komnenos and his most enduring arch nemesis, Bohemund the Norman. You don't have to know more than what is in the story itself to enjoy it, I promise.