by M. K. Hume
I tampered with the truth as little as possible because there was really little need. I may have given Aspar an extra son and a rather fiendish, unspoken past, but historically we know little of him or the exact number of children he fathered. What is certain is that he could have become emperor on several occasions, simply by changing his branch of Christianity. Instead, he placed lesser men on the throne and remained a powerful, enigmatic figure that no one will ever be able to unravel. I invented his passion for hunting birds.
Incidentally, Flavius Aetius did indeed have a daughter who was married off to Thraustila, the Hungvari nobleman. The story of Valentinian’s murder is also historically accurate. My Flavia could easily have been given such a name, being the female form of the gens, but history doesn’t record the daughter’s name or her ultimate fate. My interpretation is thus as valid as any other and I confess I’ve been more generous with her than was likely to have been the case, given her father’s character and the way girls were raised in the days of the late Roman Empire. I hope the historical Flavia escaped Italia and built a new life with Thraustila’s gold, but I rather doubt it.
One last detail needs explanation. The prophet Muhammad had yet to be born so Islam, as we know it, did not exist in ad 456. The people of what would become the Crescent were followers of the Christian faith, the Hebrew faith or paganism, based on the beliefs of the Amalekites. This fact made me wonder why extremists from all three dominant religions in the Middle East are so intractably at war. What are we fighting over, as Myrddion would have said? So Ali el Kabir is an invention, but thousands like him traded with Constantinople and were believers in the Jewish faith. Still others were Christian, so members of that faith too moved freely within the world of the Middle East. Their love of horses, hounds and hunting birds were strong habits of the sons of the desert.
Just recently, a friend with a Celtic heritage talked to me about the physical differences that are so prevalent in my novels. I tried to explain that, in the bitter north, natural selection decided physical characteristics. Because of my own northern heritage, I am fair-skinned, blue-eyed and very long of leg for my height, which is short when compared with others in my family tree. My mother was six feet tall and my uncle was six feet seven inches. Only the tall survived as children of the snow. Conversely, kinder climes permitted shorter folk to live. So are legends made!
My friend also discussed the term Celt, and I admit that this word is a more modern description of the tribesmen who inhabited Britain between the eras of the Picts and the later invasions of the northerners. They called themselves by their tribal names but they were cohesive racial groups and, when attacked from outside, they put aside their tribal differences and united. Calling themselves the People, which most racial groups choose, wasn’t an option for me, so I use the name Celts, given to these tribesmen by later scholars and commentators.
So that’s it! I hope you enjoyed the journey we have travelled.
I was excited by it all because I fervently believe that when we cease to learn, then we are dead. And I hope my Merlin learned a great deal that would give him strength in the trials that were to follow in his adventures with Arthur, King of the Britons.