Alpennia Blog: Anchored in Time

It was interesting, if occasionally disconcerting, to see the variety of time-periods that readers assigned to Daughter of Mystery. I don't think anyone placed it significantly later than the intended date, but a fair number placed it in the 18th century (rather than the early 19th) or even as "medievalish". If one missed connecting Alpennian references to "the French wars" with the Napoleonic era, then there were only one or two solid anchors in time, such as a year mentioned in passing when Barbara is trying to calculate when her mother might have been a student at the Orisules' convent school. This omits the array of historical context provided by material culture, such as references to particular clothing styles. Not everyone is expected to pick up on such subtleties, even if a regular reader of historical fiction.

The Mystic Marriage was similarly only loosely anchored in real-world time references. There are several places where explicit dates are mentioned, but one might be forgiven for viewing the stories as floating in a very hazy alternate past where almost anything could happen. And some of the anachronistic survivals, both in Alpennian culture specifically and due to the preserving effects of the magical traditions, could easily cause a reader to think the story was set in a somewhat different era than intended.

The political intrigues in Mother of Souls, however, are strongly dependent on viewing real-world European politics of the 1820s through a lens that involves magical interference as a significant factor. This came to a head in chapter 16, when Barbara is collaborating (conspiring?) with the Austrian spy Kreiser to try to narrow down the possible sources of the weather magic that is disrupting Alpennian politics. (It's disrupting rather more important things in other regions. One of Barbara's lessons in this book is to expand her scope of interest a bit beyond the bickering of the council of nobles in Rotenek!)

Thus, although I had done initial research on the topic when drawing up the overall outline for the book, a great deal of the drafting of chapter 16 involved clarifying a timeline of events--both real and fictional--concerning the restoration of King Ferdinand to the throne of Spain, the discussions and outcome of the Congress of Verona, and the upcoming death of King Louis of France. Frankly, this sort of thing terrifies me because this isn't a period of history where I have an existing deep background to draw on. If I get too specific, I will undoubtedly have more knowledgeable readers calling for my head! My safety (like the safety of Alpennia in the morass of European politics in general) lies in the fact that my characters are dealing largely with peripheral issues. With plots and counter-plots that are necessarily kept secret, with effects that involved plausible deniability. Even Kreiser isn't entirely certain that he hasn't been set this quest as a decoy for the machinations of his own superiors.

You can go far by knowing how to sketch a few suggestive lines and let the readers fill in the details as they choose. The 19th century military historians will no doubt fill in an entirely different back-story than the fans of regency romances. And some will be content--as Barbara is--with dealing with only those parts of the grand tangle that confront them directly. In general, I find it useful to make suggestive sketches in areas where I know my own expertise is lacking. (Such as sword fighting.) And then I try to adjust the level of detail where I do have expertise to match. Ideally, that leaves my readers cheerfully ignorant of where the boundaries between the two are!