The devil lies in the details – a reflection on writing historical fiction

Writing novels set in the distant past has its disadvantages. Like when your heroine ends up in a situation where you just know she’s dying for a piece of chocolate – except that chocolate hasn’t been invented yet. Or when the scene you’ve just written calls for cold fingers clasped around the comforting warmth of a mug filled with freshly brewed coffee. Come again? In the first half of the sixteenth century? I don’t think so.

As an avid reader of historical fiction, I know just how much I hate it when I run into anachronisms. In a matter of microseconds the magic is gone and I might just as well throw the book aside, because I’ll never get over the fact that the eleventh century Saxon lady just said that she’d walked “six kilometres” to get to wherever she was. Or when people “re-book their flights” over the Atlantic in the early 1920’s… I can make this list pretty long: amorous men unzipping the gown of their 18th century bride, a disobedient princess set to pealing potatoes in 10th century Ireland, someone throwing themselves in the large upholstered couch in an era when furniture did not include such comfy things as sofas, etc. etc.

This is why it is so enjoyable to read the well-researched stuff, where the mundane details of daily life seem plausible and correct. No reading glasses before their time, no pianos in the fifteenth century, no spicy tomato sauce in the thirteenth century and no gardenias decorating the tresses of the fourteenth century noble bride.

Most historical fiction writers I know tend to agree re the anachronisms: they are bloody annoying. As a consequence, such writers spend a lot of time researching things, inevitably being tempted off course by an article that is only tangentially relevant to their story. I spent many happy hours several years ago with a long, long article about how to make lye. And yes, I even tried making some on my own. It was sort of okay . . . practise makes perfect, and I wasn’t THAT interested in repeating the process.

Some years ago, my characters happened to be in Bristol. Oh, joy, oh joy, to be allowed to deep dive into what I could find about medieval Bristol. I spent way too much time on an article about where the Jewish bathhouse was situated—well, prior to Edward I exiling all Jews in 1290—I  drew my own rudimentary maps to plot just where the shambles were, and how long it would reasonably take to walk from the eastern to the western side of the town. (Not long. At all…)

I ended up totally distracted by a small article about how Robert, Earl of Gloucester and bastard-born son of Henry I, endowed a priory, and did little leaps of joy when I found a thesis detailing the expenses of the Constables of Bristol Castle during the 13th and 14th century. I got stuck there for a while, let me tell you. I also concluded the king was stingy when it came to food for his Welsh prisoners (this is where Dafydd ap Gruffydd’s two young sons, Llewellyn and Owain, where destined to live out their entire lives)

Thing is, Bristol featured as a location for like four or five chapters in one of my books, and most of what I’d learned would never even make it to my story (I tried and tried to shoehorn in a scene in the Jewry, but my protagonist Robert was uncommonly stubborn, saying he had no reason to do business with the Jews and his wife wasn’t going anywhere near the Jewry, no matter how veiled and hooded.  There followed a rather heated argument about antisemitism, but that fell totally flat, as Robert just didn’t understand what I was talking about. Maybe I’m expecting too much of my medieval male character…)

Still: because of all that tangential research, I have been left with very vivid images of what medieval Bristol might have looked like – boats sitting more or less in the mud during low tide, the busy bridge from Bristol proper to the Templar’s precinct, the various churches, etc. etc

In my soon to be released Queen of Shadows, I had a similar experience with the town of Mérida.
“Mérida?” said my friend Alison, “you mean the old Roman colony Augusta Emerita where the Aqueduct of the Miracles still stands?” .
Apparently I did. I, however, was more interested in how it looked in the 14th century. It wasn’t easy to find much information, but I managed to sketch in roughly were the Jewry was (important, as my Alma has dealings with a Jewish apothecary), where the old Visigoth church-turned mosque-turned back to church in which St Eulalia was venerated lay, and, of course, where the old Moorish fort—in the 14th century home to the Order of Santiago—was.

While reading up on Mérida, I also learned something totally new: it used to be the reconquering Christians rode in the name of St Eulalia, first ever Spanish martyr (read more HERE), but around the eleventh century, it was apparently decided a male saint was more appropriate to follow into battle—likely also a consequence of the increasing veneration of Santiago at Santiago de Compostela. And so, the first Castilian order of military monks was named the Order of Santiago, and our sweet Eulalia, while still venerated, was shoved to the background. Some centuries later, she would be further shoved back by St Teresa—neither here nor there for this post, but I love St Teresa, who so firmly believed God spoke to her while she was cooking in the nunnery’s kitchen. (More about her HERE!)

Once again, Mérida is not the most important location in my narrative, but I have done my best to ensure my description is adequately non-anachronistic. Plus, Mérida is now on my MUST SEE list.

One of the challenges setting a book in 14th century Castile is to weigh in just how much of the Moorish past would be present. In places like Valencia, the conquering Jaime I of Aragon had a vested interest in retaining the Moors as they were needed to manage the huge agricultural assets that came with the city, but relations were often strained. Still, there was a Morería (A Moorish enclave) , and anyone visiting or living in the city would likely encounter a Moor or two.

It was somewhat different in cities like Sevilla and Córdoba. While initially there was some tolerance with Muslims—Alfonso X had great respect for the learned Muslims—soon enough the pressure to convert to Christianity increased. By the early 14th century, most practising Muslims had left their former homelands and settled in Northern Africa or in Granada. Having a Moor up your family tree was not something to be proud of, which is why Alma is so careful in keeping her somewhat glibber comments about saints and the like to herself. She is, after all, one of those who has Moorish blood flowing through her veins.

In Queen of Shadows, the Moors—more specifically the Marinids—are the enemy. Good Christian people abide by good, Christian traditions and pray that their king will defeat the infidel. And yet, so much of life in medieval Castile is defined by that Moorish ancestry, evident in everything from the fragrant blossom of the bitter orange trees they so loved to clothing, food, buildings and baths—which is why I have spent many enjoyable hours researching Moorish Spain, even if very little of what I have learned makes it to my manuscript. But along the way, I learned to make mazamorra—a classic, cold almond soup still served in Andalucia which, yup, has been around since the Moors.

As a writer, I learn so much from all these rabbit holes I inadvertently dive into. Take, for example, that long but very interesting article about the first sign language (developed in Spain in the seventeenth century as deafness was surprisingly common among the Spanish nobility, and said high-born parents refused to believe being deaf was equal to being stupid, charging the family tutors with doing something. Like now!) This was a tangent to my efforts to establish just when Europeans began eating tomatoes instead of just admiring the bright red fruit, and no, I don’t quite remember how I went from tomatoes to sign language. I do, however, remember just how engrossed I was in the article as such. In this case, this unexpected little gem of knowledge did impact my writing—this is why beautiful, intelligent and somewhat amoral Lucy Melville is born deaf.

What can be very challenging when attempting to get things right are the regional variations: in Moorish Spain, women often wore loose pants under their covering skirts. A comfortable practise in hot climes, helping to minimise heat chafing. Being pragmatic, Castilian and Portuguese women on occasion also wore such trousers—it is said Queen Isabella herself advocated Moorish dress (including pants) during the hot summers in Sevilla.

Meanwhile, in the very, very far north of Europe, women would now and then wear breeches over their hose and under their skirts to handle the cold. Elsewhere, women only wore chemise and hose under their kirtles.

Forks is another of those details that were very much in use in one place long before they’d even hit the table of the rich in others. When some countries were still hanging Turkish carpets on the wall, in other places they’d already landed on the floors. While people in the medieval Mediterranean happily chomped down on broccoli, us Swedes subsisted on turnips—a state we would remain in for a very, very long time.

A book that seductively drags me into a vision of a distant place makes me shiver with pleasure, because, for a moment, I am there, be it on the creaking deck of an 18th century ship or in the somewhat environs of an overflowing Cloaca Maxima. A well-written historical novel creates an illusion of the past that allows me to time travel from the safety of my armchair—well, unless the illusion is brutally ripped apart by the appearance of something that shouldn’t be there. Like that peeled orange the female protagonist is consuming long before there were any sweet oranges. Ack! There went that book!