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Druids

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Margaret
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Favourite HF book: Checkmate, the final novel in the Lymond series
Preferred HF: Literary novels. Late medieval and Renaissance.
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Druids

Post by Margaret » Fri June 8th, 2012, 9:11 pm

Annis's link to an interview with Norman Spinrad about his novel The Druid King inspired me to start this thread. Spinrad says something in the interview (apparently off the top of his head) that fascinates me:
at the time [Julius Caesar's rise] "Gaul" was basically a more Germanic country, and it was the Roman conquest, which created a "Franco-Gallic" culture, which in the end became a Latinate France. Had this not happened, France might now be "Germanic" or France and Germany might now be one country. And Rome might have turned eastward, or rather not have been pulled westward, and "western civilization" as we now know it might not exist.
So many turning points in history when things might have turned out so very differently!

Here are a few other historical novels featuring druids:

Morgan Llywelyn, Druids - also about Vercingetorix
Morgan Llywelyn, The Greener Shore - sequel to the above
Kate Horsley, Confessions of a Pagan Nun - see review
Marion Zimmer Bradley and Diana Paxson, The Forest House (a prequel to Mists of Avalon)
Browse over 5000 historical novel listings (probably well over 5000 by now, but I haven't re-counted lately) and over 700 reviews at www.HistoricalNovels.info

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wendy
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Post by wendy » Fri June 8th, 2012, 10:17 pm

It's always fascinating to consider the "What ifs"
* What if Hitler had won WWII? etc.

They also make great ideas for HF novels
* What if the American Government had agreed to send 1000 White Women to marry into the Cheyenne nation? (Jim Fergus)

But then we get back to that old chestnut about how accurate historical fiction needs to be!
Wendy K. Perriman
Fire on Dark Water (Penguin, 2011)
http://www.wendyperriman.com
http://www.FireOnDarkWater.com

annis
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Post by annis » Sat June 9th, 2012, 9:21 am

It was the Salian Franks who became Romanised, wasn't it? I'm always intrigued by the complex relationship the Romans had with the Germanic tribes. They feared the Germans, especially after the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, but made extensive use of them in the Roman army (and as the Emperor's bodyguard - a policy followed by the Byzantine emperors with their Varangian Guard). Rather ironically, the Germans to a large extent became the inheritors of the western Roman Empire. The Salian Franks engendered the Merovingians and ultimately the Carolingian Empire. The Saxons took over Roman Britain. Those Germans were everywhere!

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Margaret
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 2440
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: I can't answer this in 100 characters. Sorry.
Favourite HF book: Checkmate, the final novel in the Lymond series
Preferred HF: Literary novels. Late medieval and Renaissance.
Location: Catskill, New York, USA
Contact:

Post by Margaret » Sun June 10th, 2012, 3:31 am

Clovis and his heirs were pretty wild. I'm tempted to say the History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours reads like a soap opera, but it's actually much wilder and bloodier.
Browse over 5000 historical novel listings (probably well over 5000 by now, but I haven't re-counted lately) and over 700 reviews at www.HistoricalNovels.info

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Wolfshead
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Post by Wolfshead » Wed September 26th, 2012, 4:16 pm

I really enjoyed Stephen Lawhead's Arthurian trilogy when I was a young teenager. Re-read them recently though and only really liked Taliesin (bit too much religious stuff going on in the others for me).
Taliesin is a very good read though, quite moving in places.
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