The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood

by Diana Gabaldon

  I still didn’t know what his part in the story was, though; he might just have been a superficial antagonist—something for Jamie to escape from, a generic British officer after a Highland criminal. Every time he turned up, though, I got a stronger sense of his personality and the nature of his feelings toward Jamie—not by any means just duty-to-catch-a-criminal or even personal vengeance—much more of a personal interest/obsession. Why was that? I wondered. So then Jamie explained (to me, as much as to Claire) his past history with the captain.

  Well, plainly a villain: here he is raping Jamie’s sister (Jamie thinks he did, at this point in the story), as well as stealing chickens, etc. (At this point, I wrote the scene that occurs early in the book where Frank and Claire visit the Reverend and Frank talks to him about his notorious ancestor.)

  But then Randall catches Claire while she’s fleeing from Jamie, hoping to get back to the stones. And I realized that he was a lot more interesting than I’d thought. As Claire remarks to herself in the scene in his office, a sadist with a sense of humor is very dangerous. And then, of course, he proved to be impotent with her, when she wouldn’t act fearful. I hadn’t previously realized that he was, in fact, a sadist, not just your average everyday rapist. So that added another dimension to his relationship with Jamie, didn’t it?

  At this point, the notion of what happened at Wentworth began to stir in the back of my mind: not in any detail, and I had no idea how we’d ever end up there—or where “there” was, for that matter—but the idea of Jack being in the position he wanted, with physical mastery over Jamie. What on earth might happen then? (The classic, of course, would be Jamie overpowering and killing him, but somehow I didn’t think that was what happened…. )

  Anyway, I didn’t have the courage to try writing something like whatever was going to happen at Wentworth just then, but with the vague notion of it, that was enough for Jamie to confess to Claire (after he spanks her, on their long walk together) that the captain wants his body. But, see, I knew that about Captain Randall, long before I wrote that piece of the story; hence that part (and a number of others) exist as they do only because I knew who this guy was—though I wouldn’t have learned who he was, had I not been writing scenes involving him. I normally do discover characters as I work with them; I rarely, if ever, try to psych them out ahead of time.

  In response to a post questioning why Jamie kept his word to Jack, while in a (much) later book concluding that he’s not bound by the oath of loyalty he was forced to swear as a condemned prisoner:

  Jamie comes to his conclusion about the validity of his oath to the crown over a long period of time, following considerable thought, and as a matter of reasoned principle. He didn’t have time or capacity for thought regarding his word to Jack Randall, and it isn’t a matter of principle; it’s a clear and urgent matter of saving Claire’s life.

  I didn’t mention it elsewhere—because surely to God there’s sufficient other reason without that, and because the sort of reader who thinks Jamie is Superman just won’t see it—but bear in mind also that Black Jack Randall is an experienced sadist, and he’s plainly already been working to soften Jamie up (helllooo? Kept in chains? Breaking hand with mallet?), both physically and psychologically, with the intent of raping him. By the time he nails Jamie’s hand to the table, he’s achieved a major degree of psychological dominance; Jamie’s giving him his word cements that.

  Jamie’s bargain is just about the last bastion of his rationality; once Claire’s gone (and presumably on her way to safety), he surrenders to despair (he says so; you see him do it). There’s no point in fighting anymore—and the thought of fighting doesn’t enter his mind. He’s achieved what he had to, and he’s ready to die. You don’t suddenly turn around from that point without some remarkable stimulus—and he doesn’t have one. Randall comes back into that cell with total power—both physical and psychological—over him.

  It’s the necessity of coming back from that—rather than recovering from abuse and degradation—that nearly costs him his life again at the abbey. As I said, you don’t come back from a position of such abjection without some remarkable stimulus—and Claire is able to give him that stimulus at the abbey.

  From a discussion on Stephen Bonnet vs. Jack Randall:

  Black Jack Randall, on the other hand, is capable of love and self-awareness—he knows he’s a pervert; he hates himself and turns that hate outward when he can—but still can act selflessly on his brother’s behalf.

  I never considered Jack Randall to be a gay character. He’s a bisexual sadist—a pervert. Not gay. I mean, look at what’s actually in the book: he attacks two women, two men. He doesn’t succeed very well in the attacks on women that we see (Jenny and Claire), because of who he’s dealing with and the fact that he’s interrupted. But we know he does molest women on other occasions, because of what Frank tells Claire about the letters of complaint about his ancestor.

  His attacks on Jamie and Alexander MacGregor have more impact on us because these are successful, as it were. But it’s hurting people that he likes, not having sex with men, per se.

  As to his line to Jamie, “Tell me that you love me”—maybe he feels that compelling a declaration of “love” while the person is being abused is the symbol of his complete victory over this person; the indication that he’s succeeded in mastering and destroying his victim, mentally as well as physically.

  EPILOGUE

  Let me conclude by noting that I probably come to this material from a different perspective than most people. I’m a biologist by training, with a specialty in animal behavior. I see human beings in the same evolutionary context as other animals, and I see behavioral patterns in terms of purpose and effect, not morality.

  Violence is a necessary part of life for all organisms. Even plants conduct chemical and mechanical warfare, against each other and as defense against animals that eat them. Whether we perceive violence in a given situation, and what we make of it, depends much more on our own frame of reference than it does on objective reality. And that frame of reference tends to be both idiosyncratic and extremely malleable.

  Sex is also a necessary part of life for all organisms. And given the physical logistics that attend both sex and the further aspects of reproduction, it shouldn’t be in any way surprising that sex and violence are deeply entwined in the human psyche. (Any woman who’s given birth knows just how violent reproduction is.)

  Looking at other animals and their sexual behavior, you very often see an explicit linkage, wherein the mate of the dominant gender (and it isn’t always the male) will physically subdue their mate before completing the sexual act (these can be pretty various, too…). The evolutionary argument for this is that by exhibiting physical force, the dominant mate is proving his (or her) genetic quality—i.e., you don’t want a ninety-eight-pound weakling fathering your children. And thus—by extension of the argument—human evolution has produced a tendency for females to find exhibitions of strength by males sexually arousing and to be attracted both to physically imposing men and to men whose obvious character is powerful, violent, or both. Political correctness, of course, would have none of this, but evolution has been around a lot longer and has more to say about it.

  Anyway, the point is that I see sex as not only a matter of reproduction in humans but as a form of very effective communication (these two purposes are plainly not exclusive). And like all channels of communication, sex can carry a multiplicity of messages. Therefore, as a novelist, you can use scenes involving sexual material to communicate a tremendous range of emotions and information—and the fact that the frame of reference you provide is a sexual one means that the viewer’s attention and response will be enhanced. Sex is so important to humans that they’ll watch anything have sex. And their attention will be instantly drawn to anything with a sexual context, whether the specifics of the situation are personally attractive to the individual viewer or not.

  The downside, of course, is that it’s easy to a
buse that innate interest—and almost any advertiser will do it, sooner or later. So do a lot of artists—writers, filmmakers, painters, you name it. My personal feeling is that one shouldn’t do this; that it’s appropriate to use both sex and violence in art if there is a clear and specific reason for doing so—but not just to draw in eyeballs. I hope I’ve done it right.

  * * *

  1 Ever seen a parent whose kid has narrowly avoided being run over by running out in the street? They generally don’t scoop the little fiend up and hug the dickens out of him—they normally grab the miscreant, whack him on the bottom, and bellow, “What’s wrong with you?!?”

  2 I’d bet pretty heavily on Door #3 being the correct one, but I’m a natural-born gambler.

  3 There are some romance authors who used it openly and repeatedly—within a single book—for the clear purpose of sexual titillation. I don’t wish to seem to cast aspersions—styles in literature change, but I believe I can reasonably cite Bertrice Small’s work as an example of this style.

  4 That’s not a rhetorical question. The answer is yes.

  5 I’m having a T-shirt printed with the slogan: Life is too short to waste on people who think I’m mentally ill.

  6 N.B.: Bear in mind that with regard to the Sabines, the “rape” actually meant abduction, from the Latin word “raptio.” However, the women were abducted and carried away into forced marriage, so there is an overlap of meaning.

  7 Interestingly enough, marriage didn’t happen at a particularly early age in the Highlands. Average age at marriage for a woman in the eighteenth century was about twenty-two, and about twenty-six for a man. The reason given by the author of the research paper that I read on this subject was that the difficult economic conditions of the Highlands made it very hard for a young man to come by enough money, land, or livestock with which to support a wife and family. In fact, most young men eventually managed it by a process known as “ligging,” which essentially meant begging tools, stock, furnishings, etc., from friends and relatives.

  8 In some Highland areas, women did go out with the grazing flocks in summer, to the shielings—the high meadows—where they remained for some weeks, leaving the men to tend the croft. However, this was also a very social activity, and the women went in groups, not alone.

  9 Certainly it’s a word.

  10 Why? Because both words are labels that carry a lot of emotional baggage, that’s why. I don’t think it’s right to lumber people with assumptions and preconceptions when they’re already suffering the effects of traumatic assault.

  11 Going on the statistical model, this amounts to one rape approximately every 1.3 million words, which hardly seems excessive, but, as noted above, pure math may not be an appropriate yardstick to employ.

  12 In case you were wondering, and you probably were, human nature being what it is.

  13 Also referred to as Edward.

  14 Alas, the production team didn’t see it my way and cast a separate actor to play Alex.

  15 I rather doubt they’ll ever find that out, for sure….

  16 Though he’s much more likely an opportunist, much like the Old Fox, Simon Fraser—willing to play both sides against the middle and join whichever side looks like winning.

  17 With great thanks to Kristin Matherly, who kindly compiled all of these questions and comments for me.

  18 Irresistible editorial note from Kristin: More like Batman.

  19 Form Letter #13: Not all books are for all readers. I hope you enjoy whatever you read next.

  PART FIVE

  HISTORY AND HISTORICAL FICTION: ORGANIZING THE PAST

  HISTORY, HISTORICAL FICTION, AND THE THREE LEVELS OF LIES

  I. THE FACTS—OR: WHAT REALLY (SORT OF) HAPPENED

  eyond the most basic of physical events—this battle occurred on this date, this person was born/died/married/ascended a throne/made a proclamation—there are very few unequivocal “facts.”

  Almost any recorded event affects more than one person. That being so, both the effects of an event and the immediate perceptions of it will be as varied and numerous as the people who participate in it and are affected by it.

  Even the most objective of accounts (and virtually none of them are) will be substantially altered by the author’s choice of subject and focus.

  Example: Henry VIII’s desire for a son had a major personal impact on (to name only a few) Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth Tudor, and Thomas More. While all of these people were affected more or less negatively (fatally in two cases), the impact on each of them would have been quite individual.

  On a larger scale, Henry’s schism with Rome—which was part and parcel of his difficulty—had enormous and long-ranging effects on his subjects—who all experienced events individually, as well as collectively. And at the base of things was the (retroactively deduced) fact that Henry appears to have suffered from syphilis and died of scurvy—both conditions that might have rendered him poor father material. Meaning that ultimately, one individual’s bad health habits resulted in an upheaval that affected hundreds of thousands of individuals over a period of eighty-odd years.

  In other words, there are a number of “facts” involved in any historical event, most of which probably have some objective basis in reality. However, “what really happened” depends not only on facts but on the frame of reference in which those facts occur. This being so, we pass on to the next level of “history.”

  II. THE DOCUMENTARY RECORD—OR: THE FIRST LEVEL OF LIES

  Speaking personally, and just as a quick illustration of the theoretical accuracy of historical accounts:

  I’ve been interviewed repeatedly (as in hundreds—literally, hundreds, if not thousands—of times) about my books, my background, and other common topics. Interviewers tend to ask the same questions1 about these things. E.g.:

  “How did you get the idea to write these books?”

  “Are you Scottish? Why did you pick Scotland?”

  “How did you get published?”

  “What’s your daily writing routine?”

  “How did you get from being a scientist to being a novelist?”

  “Do you use your scientific background in your writing?”

  Etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum…

  (One interviewer, to whom I’d sent copies of previously published interviews as background material, called to thank me, adding, “But I’m chagrined to find that I asked all the same questions everybody else does!”2)

  After the first fifty or so times, I found that I had evolved a shtick: the same (reasonably interesting and/or witty) lines used over and over in answer to these questions.3 That means that every single interviewer who’s asked me these questions for the last twenty years has got the same answers, usually word for word.

  I naturally don’t see every interview, but I have seen a lot of them. If I’m telling all the interviewers the same things, presumably most of the interviews should be reasonably accurate, give or take human error like the recording device failing in the middle or trouble in note-taking, that sort of thing. So…are they accurate?

  Not on your tintype. I paused to calculate this once: out of roughly eight hundred interviews (that I’d seen), two of them were entirely accurate. Just two.

  Now, I am not a controversial person (in the political sense, and the questions asked are not normally controversial). I.e., I think we can dismiss the possibility of deliberate misrepresentation in interviews (reviews are another matter…but reviews aren’t meant to be factual, and interviews are).

  And, in fact, almost all the mistakes made in interviews are apparently due to one of two basic causes: inattention on the part of the reporter, or space constraints that resulted in a misleading omission or juxtaposition.

  One very common example—my association with universities is as follows:

  B.S. in Zoology from Northern Arizona University

  M.S. in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD

&
nbsp; Ph.D. in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology from Northern Arizona University

  Followed by:

  Post-doctoral appointment, University of Pennyslvania

  Post-doctoral appointment, UCLA

  Assistant Research Professor, Arizona State University

  In all justice, there are three universities in Arizona, all of which include the words “University” and “Arizona” in their names:

  Arizona State University (Tempe)

  Northern Arizona University (Flagstaff)

  University of Arizona (Tucson)

  It’s therefore not unusual for me to read an interview that states that I was either educated at or worked at the U of A (University of Arizona)—though this is in fact the only state university with which I’ve never had an association.

  Okay, that’s not accurate, but neither is it a particularly big deal. I mean, who cares? Nobody—now.

  But what IF we move down the ages fifty years or so, and some bright soul gets the notion to write a biography of me?4

  As my potential biographer sits down to go through Google’s collection of guff about me, they may well find several pieces purporting to be interviews with me, stating that I went to the University of Arizona.

  In search of someone who may have known me there, or of evidence of my student life, my biographer goes to the U of A alumni association, or perhaps the records office, and requests information—only to be told that I was never there.

  What does our biographer conclude? That I was one of those people who aggrandize themselves by claiming degrees and awards and medals to which they’re not entitled? They might, were they a superficial researcher, particularly if they came across several interviews with this same (very common) mistake.