‘Save yourself from that, if you think you can’

What you want it will be you the last one Novian it will come Emperor of Rome you. [...] The new, the nwer newest. The newly came, no Novian but one. The newest branch of the Novian stem. No Novian but another comes to ruin you. Save yourself from that, if you think you can.

Thus runs the bulk of the prophecy given by the Delphian oracle to Drusus Novius, when he demands to know why her previous prophecy (that he would become Emperor) had not come true. Drusus interprets this, and some other things the oracle says, to mean that he will become Emperor. I, however, think the wording is much more ambiguous, and that Drusus took from the prophecy what he wanted to hear.

As I’m dealing with events that take place in Rome Burning, you can be sure that there will be spoilers for both books in the series.

Let’s pick the prophecy apart, shall we?

The oracle’s first word to Drusus (apart from her greeting, which I’ll come back to) is ‘wait’. Right from this point, we can see Drusus overanalysing her speech, such is his desperation to hear what he wants to hear.

‘You mean – wait and it will happen?’ he asks. He’s not quite deluded enough to fail to realise she could simply be saying ‘wait, I haven’t started my prophecy yet’, but we can see that already there’s that hint of desperation, of clutching at straws, of trying to direct the prophecy (seriously, only Drusus would dare to force even Fate to conform to his wishes).

The oracle says nothing for a while, before remarking, conversationally, that ‘there’s glass on the ground’. Yet again, Drusus tries to force her words to fit in with his own reality, remembering a glass he’d smashed earlier in the day. (Of course, we later know that this smashed glass refers to the smashed dome of the Colosseum after it was blown up by Dama, a detail to keep in mind when considering the rest of the oracle’s words.)

‘Then he thought she was beginning to say his name again: “Novius”. And she did say it, many times, but she no longer seemed to mean it as a name, novii, novissimi – newer, newest.’

Again, Drusus misinterprets her words. His self-centredness leads him to believe, again, that she is saying his name. But there are many other people in his family who are called ‘Novius’ – Drusus’ cousin and rival, Marcus, for a start. But the Sibyl’s play on the word ‘Novius’ and notions of newness is not idle: the canny reader, who discovered Una and Sulien had been given new names upon manumission, would recognise the connection. Una and Sulien are given versions of Marcus’ name, to reflect the fact that he was the one who freed them: Noviana, Novianus. They have thus been grafted onto the Novian line in some way, and they certainly are the newer, the newest of the new.

Next we come to the crux of the prophecy.

‘The new. The newer newest’ refers to Una and Sulien, while The newly come, no Novian but one is a direct reference to Una, playing on both her new family name and her personal name, Una, which means ‘one’ in Latin. Sulien and Una are, of course, the newest branch of the Novian stem, while no Novian but another comes to ruin you seems to refer to Sulien.

Drusus, of course, pays no attention to any of this. He latches onto what seems obvious to him: Marcus is the youngest Novian, thus he is the danger to which the prophecy refers. In the next bit of the prophecy we have the most ambiguous wording, and another (crucial) example of Drusus’ inability to see beneath the surface of things, or to think beyond his own ambitions and problems:

‘Do you mean I can still do something – I can still stop him? My cousin?’
‘Your cousin, yes. Against you, afterwards-’

Drusus should be listening more carefully to what she is saying. Marcus will be against Drusus. He is not against him now. He is not the threat – yet. The Sibyl is warning Drusus against antagonising Marcus, but again Drusus mishears her in his paranoia.

‘You told me there’d be no one else!’ protested Drusus.
‘No one else left to take what you want,’ she agreed.

And here we finally reach the heart of the matter. Drusus interprets this as meaning that Marcus is antagonistic towards him and a rival for Emperor. The Sibyl is obliquely warning Drusus about Una and Sulien, not Marcus. And ‘no one else left to take what you want’ is not the same thing as ‘you will be Emperor if Marcus can be got out of the way’. All it means is ‘Marcus is also a candidate for Emperor’. Drusus, of course, takes it to mean that his becoming Emperor is destined.

And yet he’s still not convinced. The Sibyl comes out of her trance, and Drusus demands, again, that she tell him what he wants to hear:

‘Will I be Emperor? Still?’ [...]
‘And what have I said?’ she demanded.
[...] ‘Yes,’ whispered Drusus.
She shrugged as if to say, there you are then.

Note that she has not admitted to saying he’ll be Emperor. She asked him what she said, he replied with his perception of her prophecy. She’s only got his word to go on, and his word, as we’ve seen above, is distorted.

Interpreting the Sibyl’s prophecy as meaning that Drusus will become Emperor hinges on the meaning of two things: the line ‘No one else left to take what you want’, and the fact that the Sibyl greets Drusus as ‘Emperor of Rome’. This first line, as we have seen, does not mean that Drusus will become Emperor, and the notion of ‘what you want’ bears closer scrutiny. What, after all, does Drusus want? He wants to become Emperor, yes, but to become a certain kind of Emperor: conservative, despotic, hawkish. He wants to rule a world with Rome at its undisputed centre. In short, he wants power. Marcus wants to be Emperor too, but he doesn’t want the things that Drusus wants. He wants a diplomatic solution with Nionia, he wants to abolish slavery, he wants to be Emperor in order to change the world for the better (whether he’s right to think that such changes should be instituted in a top-down manner is a question for another post). Only one of them can become Emperor, and the ‘wants’ of one negate the wants of the other. Marcus ‘takes what you [Drusus] want[s]‘ simply by pushing the world in another direction to that in which Drusus would take it.

Finally, there’s the greeting. That’s a bit harder to get around. One could argue that the Sibyl has not yet reached her trance-like prophesying state, and she’s merely telling Drusus what he wants to hear, flattering him and so on. That strikes me as the easy option, though. I prefer to look more broadly at what might happen in Book Three.

Rome Burning ended with a bang, and the potential deaths of just about every member of the Imperial family. The explosion is clearly intended to break the stalemate between Rome and Nionia and force a confrontation, probably in Terranova. This conflict will, of course, be incredibly destructive, and possibly mark the end of the Roman order. The explosion may also have killed Marcus, his uncle, the current Emperor, and all other members of the dynasty save Drusus. (I fiercely hope it doesn’t, as I desperately want a happy ending for Una and Marcus!) Thus, there may be no one else left to be Emperor.

I’ve always suspected that the Sibyl’s prophecy should be taken as a kind of ‘be careful what you wish for’ warning. Drusus wants to be Emperor: fine, but he’ll be Emperor of a pile of bones and ashes. The repeated references to ‘no one left’ certainly support such a reading. Drusus may become Emperor, but he will be Emperor of a vastly different Rome to the one in which he currently lives.

The scene with the Sibyl is one of the most powerful in the series, and it says so much about Drusus’ character. I still can’t help but feel sorry for him. He’s such a pathetic figure, really, as his final exchange with the oracle demonstrates:

‘How am I going to die?’ he asked her, abruptly.
She blinked again and the emptiness cleared in her pale, dirty-coloured eyes; she raised her eyebrows and tilted her head, a faintly disapproving look, as if he should know it was wrong to ask her that. But she answered him anyway, quite normally and conversationally now: ‘In your sleep. Of old age.’

There’s something in her pitiless, impassive response that brings home Drusus’ aching aloneness (I can’t call it ‘lonliness’ because that would imply he was aware of it himself). He’s a tragic figure, too ambitious and self-absorbed to see beyond the surface of the Sibyl’s words to realise their subtleties and ambiguities. He takes them to mean what he wants them to mean, with disastrous consequences for all.

Character study: Varius

There will be spoilers.

There is a reason why I waited so long to write a character study of Varius: he makes me so sad. When I read about what happens to him, I want to pull him out of the book and hug him, I feel so sorry for him! McDougall certainly gives him a fair share of grief.

When we first meet Varius, he’s a successful employee of Marcus’ late father, Leo. (He had been Leo’s private secretary, and had worked with Leo in the fight against slavery.) He is the executor of Leo’s will, a serious 27-year-old man ‘of Egypto-Nubian’ descent whose family had lived in Rome for about a century. He’s happily married to the lovely Gemella. He is pretty much doomed.

Within a couple of chapters, Gemella has been murdered in Marcus’ place, poisoned by a gift of sweets intended for Marcus. Varius swiftly works out that Marcus is in danger and sends him off into hiding. Unfortunately, he then finds himself accused of organising the kidnapping of Marcus and the deaths of Marcus’ parents, and, most cruelly, of Gemella. Most horrifically, he puts his own grief second to Marcus’ safety and doesn’t report the murder until Marcus is well out of the way, dealing methodically with Marcus’ escape and calmly working out what story to tell, all the while trying to avoid thinking about Gemella. My heart breaks for this competent and previously unambitious man, swept up in the cruel machinations of the Novian dynasty.

He’s sent to gaol and subjected to what we would consider psychological torture at the hands of the grotesquely awful Gabinius, a villain terrifying in the saneness with which he speaks about insane and horrific things. (Check out Gabinius’ speech about how wonderful it is to be Roman and be able to be freed from slavery and become a citizen, which is surely one of the most self-serving defences of slavery – and small-government conservatism – that I’ve seen since reading Gone With The Wind.) And although he is freed by the end of the first book, his sufferings don’t end there.

In Rome Burning, Varius is falsely accused of being one of the dangerous counsellors around Marcus (along with Una and Sulien), and is bundled off by Marcus into Nionian custody (in order to prevent his extradition and almost certain torture and death in Rome). He certainly suffers for the cause!

The injustice of Varius’ experiences lies in the fact that he appears to be a fairly unambitious, gentle and compassionate guy. Aside from his interest in abolishing slavery, we get the impression that he would’ve much preferred a life that kept him far, far away from the attention of powerful people. It’s his very competence and loyalty that keep getting him into trouble, and, like the rest of the forces of good in the world of Romanitas, Varius can expect quite a bit more unhappiness in the series’ final novel.

How do we solve a problem like Noriko?

Before I get started, the customary warning: this post contains spoilers. In fact, it contains epic, glaring, massive spoilers for both Romanitas and Rome Burning, so unless you’ve read both books, you should probably stop here.

I have spoken to fellow Romanitas fans who, upon encountering Noriko (or, more specifically, her marriage to Marcus Novius), threw their books against the wall. In my case, the reaction was slightly different. I felt a deep, deep sadness, not only for Marcus, but also for Noriko herself.

This is surprising, given that I am an epic, insane fan of the relationship between Marcus and Una, and Noriko gets in the way of this relationship. But I feel that McDougall’s handling of the messy, miserable, painful political marriage between Marcus and Noriko is so skillful, precisely because it takes into account the emotions and personalities of all involved.

The operative word here is ‘political’. Marcus is the heir of the Emperor of Rome. Noriko is the daughter of the Emperor of Nionia. Their two countries are, if not at war, certainly in a very tense situation, where any action could potentially be misconstrued as aggressive. There have been several attacks in Terranova and ‘Nionian Terranova’ – the two superpowers’ territories in what we know as America – and both sides are blaming the other for the violence. Marcus has come on behalf of Rome to the neutral territory of Sina to try to organise a way for the two powers to coexist peacefully. He seems to be making progress, and for a while it looks as if the peace parties on both sides will prevail.

Everyone’s forgotten Drusus, of course.

Back in Rome, Drusus manages to convince the Emperor that not only was he wholly innocent of a vicious attack on Una, but also that he was innocent of any violence towards Marcus’ parents and Marcus himself. He manages to manipulate his way back into the Emperor’s good graces, and to discredit Marcus and the circle around him – Varius, Una and Sulien. Suddenly, Marcus finds himself under attack by the Roman state. In a split second, he makes the decision to trust the Nionians with Una and Varius (to prevent them from being captured by Rome and certainly harmed). Put it this way. He owes the Nionians a huge favour.

On Noriko’s part, she’s been brought up to know that she would make a political marriage, potentially with someone to whom she feels no connection. And she’s no innocent. She was brought to Sina with the intention of being married to Marcus, and, rather than blindly submit to her fate, spies on him and familiarises herself with the political situation.

This doesn’t mean that either of them had to go ahead and get married. But in Rome Burning, McDougall brilliantly uses the ‘problem’ of Noriko to demonstrate the development of Marcus’ character. One thing that is very hard to deal with as a reader sympathetic to Marcus is his decreasing idealism and increasing ability to compromise on things which he previously would’ve considered intolerable. He frees the slaves working in the Imperial house, but doesn’t abolish slavery. He justifies decisions like that with the need to make change gradually, much to the horror of people who knew him as an idealistic teenager, like Una. With the case of Noriko, Marcus weighs up the decision as he would any other political conundrum: will the benefit of the marriage outweigh the personal costs to himself?

The really awful thing about the marriage is that although it’s a political success, it’s a personal disaster for all involved. Una, who refuses to be Marcus’ mistress, leads a grief-filled existence apart from all her former friends. Marcus himself resents Noriko for not being Una, and for the fact that he felt compelled to marry her to avert disaster. Noriko, despite her low expectations, is miserable married to Marcus, knowing that she doesn’t have his love (she is aware of Una, and in fact had several conversations with her before marrying Marcus) or even his attention in any sense. In fact, she’s so unhappy she even finds herself drawn to Drusus (despite Una’s warning to stay the hell away if she values her life), perhaps sensing that misery loves company.

The story of Marcus, Una and Noriko is odd, almost folkloric or premodern in its sensibilities. Folktales (in particular those from Japan, oddly enough) and premodern literature abound with stories of (passionate, emotional) people struggling to put duty before love. There is a tension, perfectly teased out, between the personal and the political, and it is articulated very well in Rome Burning. In this unhappy trio we can see the distress caused when any three thinking – and in particular, intensely self-aware, introverted – people are forced by their intelligence to conclude that the situation that makes them miserable will make everyone else happy, safe and much better off. It’s heartbreaking to read, and I’m intrigued to know what happens next.

Sophia McDougall on Livejournal

For those of you who have Livejournal accounts, you might be interested to know that Sophia McDougall has recently set up a blog there. She can be found at sophiamcdougall. So far, she’s only got two entries, but the second one includes some wonderful pictures of Marcus that really help to give an idea of how vividly she pictured him while writing Romanitas and Rome Burning.

While you’re at it, if you’re only Livejournal, you might consider joining Romanitas Fans, the community I set up for discussing all things Romanitas. Membership is moderated, simply so I can avoid spammers, but if you’re a genuine blogger and not a spammer, I’ll approve you straight away, so don’t be put off by the moderated membership.

That’s it for now, but I should have a couple of posts up in the next few days.

Tweets and apologies

This is going to be a brief post, but I can promise you I’ll write something of substance in the next week. I’m back home in Australia for Christmas and thus have access to my copies of Romanitas and Rome Burning. I’ve been rereading Rome Burning this morning. I got so angry at Drusus at one point that I started shouting at the book and punching it. It was the part where SPOILER ALERT Drusus convinces the Emperor that Una, Sulien and Varius have been working nefariously on Marcus and that everything they said about Drusus’ crimes was a lie. For some reason (perhaps my journalistic background and heritage) the notion of misrepresentation – that one’s actions can be misconstrued and twisted – outrages me more than just about anything.

In any case, I plan to write a post about Noriko and a character study of Varius very soon.

Now for the apology. In my post about Holzarta I claimed that Delir was a Christian. Sophia McDougall has since pointed out to me that this is incorrect. Delir and co are in fact Zoroastrians – which, given they are Persian, should’ve been obvious to me. I’m sorry for my mistake.

Sophia has recently set up a Twitter account. You can follow her at @McDougallSophia. While you’re at it, if you’re on Twitter, I’d love it if you followed me. I can be found at @ronnidolorosa.

That’s it for now, people! I hope to write something more interesting soon.

News on the Savage City release date

Sophia McDougall sent a very long message to members of the Facebook group, revealing some fantastic news for Romanitas fans. Rather than being published in 2011, the third book in the series, Savage City, is now going to be published in the autumn of 2010!

Sophia also reveals that she will be reediting Romanitas and Rome Burning and making a few changes, but nothing that requires old readers to read the newly-edited books. She also says that she will be writing some Romanitas short stories and posting them on her website, when she gets a new website. So good news all around!

I reproduce her message here:

“I met my shiny, slightly telepathic new editor today. It’s the first time I’ve met someone who has read all three books and is not one of my parents. Indeed as far as I know it is the first time such a person has existed.

“So along with other pressing questions I needed clarified, (such as DID YOU LIKE it and ARE YOU SURE YOU LIKED IT and CAN YOU JUST SAY ONE MORE TIME THAT YOU LIKED IT BECAUSE I AM NOT SURE I HEARD YOU CORRECTLY) I asked her just when she was going to publish in 2011, because it was seemed an awfully long time off, but I had got myself used to the idea and hopefully it’d be EARLY 2011, yes? And I’d been thinking of things I could do online (pictures? Romanitas short stories?) to fill the time…

“Except before I’d got into all of that she said, “What? No, we don’t want to publish in 2011, we want to publish in autumn 2010.”

“You know, the same autumn 2010 it was going to be before. And there was much “…”ing by all.

“So I really don’t know how that happened, because I have had lengthy conversations about 2011 and Why It Must Be So with my agent and he seemed extremely sure at the time. I think he and my Orion editor Jon and my new Gollancz editor Jo were kicking a lot of different ideas around when they met and clearly wires must have got crossed.

“…Although now I am slightly terrified when I get to the internet cafe tomorrow there’s going to be a “Wait! No! 2012, in time for the Olympics!” email…

“But as far as *I* know this evening, all my 2011 angst and my Dark Hints of Something I Must Blog About At A Later Date were for naught. So. Hooray!

“And those Dark Hints I speak of were to do with this: I had also got the impression from that Gollancz wanted me to re-edit Romanitas and Rome Burning quite extensively. Indeed my agent thought when we were done, Romanitas and Rome Burning would be really quite different, worth buying all over again, and I should encourage my readers to do just do that.

“Now, my fairly predictable problems with this were twofold:

“1) How can I ask anyone who’s been following the story to go back to the beginning (and that’ll be £15.98, please)? I can’t. That would be massively unfair.

“2) Even if I could ask you to do that, I don’t have it in me to do that level of work on this series. Not after seven goddamn years. Poor old Romanitas and Rome Burning NEED a nice new copyedit and a proofread (see this grey streak in my hair? That’s the Great Copyediting Disaster of 2007), and there are a few little twiddles I wouldn’t mind doing while I was at it…but overhauling the series to the extent people would actually need a new copy just to carry on? Oy.

“So my plans were to reach some sort of consensus with Jo what I could and couldn’t do and then post something about it. And the consensus seems to be that… that was all a bit of a misunderstanding too, really. In fact, it ended up with Jo more on the “Eh, maybe we should just leave it as it is” side and me more like, “Well, come on, surely now we must do SOMETHING!”

“So, we are going to spruce them up, a little bit, probably, but it won’t affect the story or the characters and shouldn’t be particularly noticeable. You certainly CAN buy many new copies just because you might have lost your first one or it might have received a tragic stain from a teacup, or you might – I’m just thinking aloud here – want to give copies to all your friends. But you won’t NEED to.

“I think all you should need to know about the changes I have decided I AM going to be making is this:

“1) I am going to rename the aircraft because frankly “spiral wing” is a bit crap and I have known this for years. So now they are called “volucers”. If you could just… pretend the other name didn’t happen…? That would be very kind.

“2) Whenever I say they say to people “I’m worried I didn’t make it clear enough that Varius is black. Did you realise Varius is black?” they always say something like, “No, but I did think he had dark hair! So that’s something, right?” And dark hair is NOT really sufficient, so I want to try and fix it. But I try to make that clearer in Savage City anyway.

“3) Also some people seem to think Una is platinum blonde, which she certainly is not, but that is also my fault, because I used words like “pale” and “colourless” but I meant in the sense of sort of washed out, nothing-y mouse brown.

“4) Any particularly bad sentence you may remember, or in Romanitas or Rome Burning… is really brilliant now. You do not need the new copy to check this. You can just take my word that it’s fixed. Honest.

“5) I am still going to try to write some Romanitas short stories for a new website, as soon as I can get one sorted, and I’m still going to put up my ludicrously detailed pictures, because time till next autumn still needs filling.

“Wow, it’s a relief to get all that off my chest.

“(God, if they DO tell me it’s 2011 after all after this…)”

New Livejournal community for Romanitas fans

One of my aims in setting up Longvision was finding more Romanitas fans with whom to discuss the books. I was hoping to gather a fandom community for the books, essentially. With this in mind, I’m pleased to announce a shiny new Livejournal community for all things Romanitas. It can be found here.

If any Longvision readers have Livejournal accounts, it’d be great to see you there! The community has moderated membership (mainly so that I can avert an influx of bots), but I promise to approve all applications promptly (timezone allowing). I look forward to seeing you all there soon!

Character study: Drusus

(Spoilers abound.)

Drusus, or, to give him his full name, Drusus Novius Faustus, is another member of the imperial family. He is a cousin of Marcus’, and appears to be a decade or so older (ie in his late twenties). Drusus is the primary antagonist of the series (at least in the first two books); in Romanitas he is the instigator of Marcus’ parents’ death, plotting with the Emperor’s wife Tulliola to bring about the end of that branch of the imperial family, while in Rome Burning he is at the centre of a conspiracy to discredit Marcus and his attempts to prevent war with Nionia.

Drusus’ antagonism can be traced back to two things, one personal, and one political. As the oldest nephew of the Emperor, you’d expect him to be first in line to become the next emperor, but his uncle passes him over in favour of the younger, more charismatic and idealistic Marcus. It’s not hard to view many of Drusus’ actions as the vindictive vengeance of a jealous rival. In Rome Burning, it is revealed that Drusus heard a prophecy by the Oracle at Delphi that he would become emperor. (In actual fact, the wording of the prophecy is somewhat ambiguous, and I think Drusus took it to mean what he wanted it to mean.)

Drusus’ rivalry with Marcus can also be traced to profound political differences. Marcus was raised by anti-slavery abolitionists. He grew up in a house with no slaves (and is intensely uncomfortable being served by slaves at dinner in the imperial palace) and his experiences in Romanitas (running away, living in secret with escaped slaves, and falling in love with the runaway slave Una) only serve to increase his hatred of slavery and desire to abolish it. Marcus also recognises that the more hawkish members of the Roman political establishment are advocating war in part to create a new source of slaves. Drusus, on the other hand, is quite happy with the institution of slavery, is pro-war and opposed to Marcus’ diplomatic efforts with Nionia. So for this reason, he would also like to be emperor: he feels he would do a better job.

Drusus is a thoroughly creepy and repellent antagonist. He is single-minded and selfish: although he often works with others (most memorably, with the Emperor’s wife, Tulliola, in Romanitas), ultimately he is only out for himself. He kills Tulliola without a second thought, seconds after sleeping with her, in order to keep her quiet about his role in Marcus’ parents’ death.

When he interprets some lines in the Delphi Oracle’s prophecy as referring to Una, he attempts to kill her himself. That scene was one of the most uncomfortable in Rome Burning, if only for the visceral physicality of it. It’s one of the most successful and chilling scenes in the whole series, and McDougall manages to perfectly convey the suffocating horror that Una feels as a smaller, weaker woman fighting off an attacker who physically overpowers her. I hesitate to speak for all women, but the fear of being in such a position myself has occasionally crossed my mind (usually when walking home alone at night, or if I’m alone with a guy whom I don’t trust – yes, it has happened), and McDougall describes such fears and feelings with great accuracy.

It’s partly because he dislikes Una so violently that I detest Drusus as much as I do: nobody attacks my favourite character and gets away with it! However, McDougall does take some steps to humanise Drusus. He does appear to genuinely love (as much as such a person is capable of loving) Tulliola, but it is a selfish, all consuming obsession, rather than any more noble feeling. After Tulliola dies, Drusus buys a slave woman who looks exactly like her and, well, you can imagine what he does to the slave woman. This doesn’t do much in fostering readers’ sympathy for his plight, as you can imagine. But it does help to move him away from purely cartoonish villain territory.

I suspect few readers will like or sympathise with Drusus. He appears to be a catalogue of all things despicable: violent, misogynistic, selfish, a conspiracist, a supporter of slavery and war. But McDougall tempers this with just enough hints that much of Drusus’ unpleasantness could’ve been averted if the imperial system was less flawed. So while we react with fear and disgust at Drusus’ cruelty, our thoughts are inadvertently deflected towards contemplating the cruelty of the family and system that shaped and nurtured him. Drusus is the canary in the mineshaft of Rome, not the mineshaft itself.

Change through crucifixion

[Here be spoilers.]

So, today I’m going to talk about Sulien. He’s a pretty intriguing character. Like his sister Una, he grew up as a slave. Unlike Una, his experience was initially pretty positive. He was treated like a pampered ward by his owner, who valued Sulien as an excellent money-earner. As a result, Sulien’s attitude towards slavery is initially very different to his sister’s. Una is hyper-aware of her status as a slave, which causes her a great deal of misery. (It’s interesting that their attitudes reflect their very different supernatural abilities. Sulien’s healing is an ability directed outwards, requiring him to empathise deeply with others and be extroverted. Una’s – telepathy – gives her a deep, and disturbing, insight into other people’s minds, but this turns her inwards in horror.) Sulien, in contrast, is so comfortable that he forgets he isn’t free, and it is for this reason he makes his fatal error: He begins a relationship with his owner’s daughter, a relationship which by the rules of Romanitas‘ society is utterly forbidden. When the relationship is discovered, the daughter, Tancorix, claims she was raped and Sulien is condemned to death by crucifixion.

It’s here that the latent Christ-like elements of Sulien’s character become much more glaringly obvious. You see, Sulien’s great talent, the reason he was so valued by his master, was that he had the ability to heal people’s injuries and illnesses simply by laying his hands on them. He’s not quite at the level of raising the dead, but he does have some pretty amazing healing powers.

Then we have the attempted crucifixion for a crime he didn’t commit. I say ‘attempted’, of course, because Una manages to save Sulien, and the two become fugitives from Roman justice. It’s a lot like a resurrection, in that from the moment Sulien was condemned to die, he was, in a sense, a dead man – and yet he continues to live.

I’m not suggesting there’s anything particularly odd about the fact that Sulien’s method of execution was to be crucifixion. The world of Romanitas is a Roman world, and in the Roman world, that is how some of the worst crimes were punished. However, crucifixion is an incredibly potent symbol in Western thought and literature. It can never just be execution – it’s always pregnant with some deeper meaning. It is no coincidence that Sulien, a man with the power to heal with his hands, is condemned to be crucified, and yet survives.

If we look at the crucifixion of Jesus in a religious and cultural sense, crucifixion – or rather, Jesus’ death and subsequent resurrection – had a powerful effect on society and culture. It changed the shape of Western thought, and introduced new concepts and a different way of understanding the world to society.

Sulien’s averted crucifixion and survival (in a world where Christianity is little more than a forgotten footnote) has a similarly powerful transformative effect. For one thing, it requires Una to rescue him, which indirectly causes Sulien and Una’s flight to continental Europe and meeting with Marcus. This sets in motion a whole chain of events which seem to be moving towards the abolition of slavery. If this is the case, that is a seriously big change for the world of Romanitas, where slavery is the foundation of society.

McDougall might not have directly set out to make Sulien’s life a Christian allegory, but as in much Western literature, she has done so in spite of herself. Despite the fact that Western societies are now ostensibly secular, 2000 years of Christianity hover in the background. Christian symbols are there for the borrowing, and whether you write noirish crime novels or alt-historical fantasy, such borrowing is second nature.

Book three is finished!

I’m just dropping in briefly to let you all know that the third book in the series is finished. Sophia McDougall dropped in to the Facebook group to let us all know the good news! I’m sure that all Romanitas fans will be delighted. Can I encourage you to join the Facebook group and post a message to Sophia thanking her for letting us know?

Upcoming blog posts:
Christian symbolism in Romanitas
How Do You Solve A Problem Like Noriko? How should readers interpret Marcus’ political marriage?

I promise to get back to a regular posting schedule soon. I’ve had a broken computer and the flu to contend with, which have made posting difficult.