Revolutionary Yule

From the Vault: I’ve participated in a number of December booksignings at historic sites that date from the time of the American Revolution. Site visitors are often surprised at the simplicity with which the grounds and interiors of historic buildings are decorated for the holiday season. The decor reflects the way people in America approached Christmas during the Revolution. I originally wrote about this simpler approach in 2009 in Mystery Readers Journal, vol 25 no 1. (The pictures weren’t in the original.) What I’ve learned about Yule and Christmas has influenced my personal seasonal celebration. This year, Yule and the winter solstice fall on the same day, 21 December. Seasons greetings to all my readers.

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Camp Follower, the third novel in my mystery/suspense series set during the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War, depicts a Yule celebration in the backcountry of South Carolina.

Why Yule and not Christmas?

Victorian Christmas tree celebration

Contrary to popular opinion, Christmas wasn’t a big holiday for the Colonials or the occupying British. There was no Christmas tree, no roasted goose, no weeks of baking and flurry of gift giving, no packing the church pews for a joyous Christmas Eve/Day service, no bearded plump guy in a red suit whizzing around the world in a sleigh full of goodies. Decades later, Prince Albert would initiate some of those traditions, then they’d gather momentum over subsequent decades into what we have now. But it wasn’t happening yet during the Revolutionary War years.

Misrule

Christmas was, in fact, in transition. For centuries, the pagan festival of Saturnalia had been on the Church’s calendar as Christmas. The season was a time of widespread “misrule,” when folks indulged in excessive party behavior that resembled a cross between our modern-day Halloween and Mardi Gras. By the winter solstice each year, the harvests were in, the stock was freshly slaughtered, and the first alcoholic beverages of the season were available. People of all classes had idle time on their hands. Many used it to evaluate a year nearly ended and assess ways to approach the new year. But many commoners also chose to let off steam and vent carnal desires at this time. These people turned class stricture on its head by rioting, destroying property, and indulging in licentious sexual behavior. By custom, commoners often invaded upper class homes in mobs and demanded food and drink. The wealthy provided food and drink for them, a form of largesse, a “treat” to divert a “trick.”

So desperate were the Puritans of Colonial America to distinguish themselves from devotees of this seasonal revelry that they outlawed public celebration and acknowledgement of Christmas within their community for many years. However, not everyone who settled in North America was a Puritan. A number of settlers weren’t even Christians. In the years as the colonies and territories took shape, a range of seasonal celebratory behavior manifested itself in homes and in public.

House in the Horseshoe decorations

In December 1780, most people associated with King George III‘s empire, regardless of religion, still honored the ancient, annual rhythm of solstices and equinoxes in some form. Makes sense, when you consider how many of them made a living off the land and thus had to stay attuned to the seasons. For the winter solstice, they might have decorated their homes with some greenery, or had a feast and/or dance on Yule. The winter solstice and Christmas Day occur close together, some years almost atop each other, so those people who were Christians might also have attended a service in church on Christmas Day. But this would have been a somber, simple service with no glitz. Conservative Protestants — especially those of the backcountry, folk persuasion — frowned on making a material big deal over the birth of Jesus, just as the Puritans had discouraged it.

Camp Follower renders Yule as it might have been in 1780, celebrated on what is technically Christmas Eve by a British regiment camped in the hinterlands of South Carolina. The regimental commander entertains his officers and their ladies with a feast, and plenty of food is distributed among the rank and file — echoes back to an age when the lord of the manor distributed largesse among the poor in effort to circumvent their Saturnalia carousing. During the Yule festivity in Camp Follower, everyone dances and drinks a lot. And the next morning, the chaplain preaches a brief, quiet Christmas sermon for those few who can make it to the service.

History has recorded enough aggression during the Revolutionary War at the time of the winter solstice, Yule, and Christmas to imply that Colonials didn’t regard those days as a spiritual period. Seems peculiar to those of us in the twenty-first century who are accustomed to a winter holiday that’s sacred (and commercial!). It also threatens those who are only comfortable with a picture of this country’s founding mothers and fathers as the Christians we recognize today, not as an amalgamation of people of different faiths whose spirituality occupied a zone in the evolutionary continuum. Regardless of religious persuasion, however, Yule in Revolutionary America does appear to have been a time of relaxation. Most people still used that period to reflect on a year almost over, as their ancestors had done, but widespread “misrule” was no longer the rule.

The concepts of reflection and relaxation seem so sane to me during this frenetic time of the year that I incorporated a peaceful Yule celebration into my family’s winter holiday schedule several years ago. My sons now enjoy Yule more than Christmas. We haven’t had any whining about material gifts since Mom brought back Yule.

You might say that my rediscovery of Yule has been a revolutionary gift that my historical research imparted upon all our lives.

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The Winner of Shadow of the Alchemist

Michele Drier has won a copy of Shadow of the Alchemist by Jeri Westerson. Congrats to Michele Drier!

Thanks to Jeri Westerson for offering insight on the contribution of alchemists to modern science. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.

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Crispin vs the Alchemist

Jeri Westerson Author Photo

Relevant History welcomes back Los Angeles native and award-winning author Jeri Westerson, who writes the critically acclaimed Crispin Guest Medieval Noir mysteries. Her brooding protagonist is Crispin Guest, a disgraced knight turned detective on the mean streets of fourteenth-century London. Jeri is president of the southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America and is vice president of the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime. When not writing, she dabbles in gourmet cooking, drinks fine wines, eats cheap chocolate, and swoons over anything British. You can learn more about Jeri’s books, watch a series book trailer, and find discussion guides on Jeri’s website. For more information, read her blog, friend Jeri on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter and Goodreads.

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My sixth Crispin Guest medieval noir, Shadow of the Alchemist, has hit the bookstore shelves. Crispin, my disgraced knight turned detective on the mean streets of fourteenth-century London, has faced many foes, dealing with many religious relics and venerated objects. Each object seems to possess a power of its own, either something everyone wants to get their hands on, or can’t wait to get rid of. A Veronica’s veil, Crown of Thorns, the Spear of Destiny, and now the Philosopher’s Stone. Crispin doesn’t believe in the power of these mortal objects, preferring his intellect to the suspicious ramblings of priests and frightened and greedy merchants. But there is something about these objects, something that gives him pause.

Men of power have tried to thwart him, either wealthy merchants, noblemen, or lowly servants. Crispin has seen them all. But this time, he comes up against his Moriarty of sorts, involving a chase down the shadowy streets of London, between men who know the secrets of poisons and purges, sorcery and forbidden sciences. An alchemist.

There are many challenges for the author when writing historically. First and foremost is the contract the author has with her readers. That is, the history must be true and correct. Only with this solid framework in place may the author hang her fiction upon it. Without the proscenium of real history, there is no reason for the reader to stick around and dally in the rest of the play on offer. So a worthy foe for Crispin must be a man of his time. He’s had his share of noblemen to cross swords and wits with. He was once a nobleman himself and so to clash with those he used to know works well. But this time, I thought it would be fun to set him up against an alchemist, those medieval scientists whose lives and works were a mystery to those around them.

We have a perception of the alchemist, of the medieval equivalent of the mad scientist. And we have it also from the time period itself. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, for instance, Chaucer gives us the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, from which we can derive that many alchemists were deemed to be charlatans. And no doubt, many were, the precursor to the snake oil salesman. And yet many were also quite sincere in their doings. They were truly the first scientists, truly trying to understand the chemistry around us and doing experiments rather than relying on the faith of philosophers of the past. The Greek philosophers influenced physicians in the medieval period with their conclusions of the human body and its cures—without ever picking up a pipette and seeing if any of those conclusions actually possessed a basis in fact.

We do know of some alchemists of the past: Paracelsus was a scholar and alchemist from the fifteenth century, and the embodiment of what we will later call “scientist.” Among his many accomplishments: he founded the discipline of toxicology; insisted upon using observation rather than merely relying on the word of the philosophers of the past; coined the terms “zinc,” “chemistry,” “alcohol,” and “gas”; and even delved into psychology by daring to suggest some illnesses were caused by the mind.

Michał Sędziwój was a Polish alchemist and medical doctor from the seventeenth century. One of his greatest accomplishments was discovering that air is not a single substance but in fact is made up of many, one being what would later be called oxygen.

Even Sir Isaac Newton dabbled in alchemy. He believed that metals possessed an inner life of their own and tried in vain—much to the embarrassment of some of his colleagues—to create a Philosopher’s Stone.

These varied men led the way to a better understanding—and a better method to understand—the world around us. Such men, with the wrong intent, can be very dangerous. And so in a dark and dangerous London, an alchemist is on the loose who would do anything to get what he wants. A Napoleon of Crime? Perhaps. It’s up to our hero to bring him to justice one way or another.

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Shadow of the Alchemist book cover image

A big thanks to Jeri Westerson. Shadow of the Alchemist was named to Suspense Magazine’s “Best of 2013” list and was nominated for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Historical Mystery. Jeri will give away the hardcover version of Shadow of the Alchemist to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Monday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available within the U.S. only.

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Read Tuesday 2013

Today I’m participating in Read Tuesday. For today only, all five of my ebooks are discounted to $2.99 each at Amazon.

Read Tuesday banner

Read Tuesday is a worldwide event scheduled for 10 December 2013. Its purpose is to get people to (what else?) read more and buy more books. It’s a sort of antidote to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, a special day dedicated to huge book savings. Thousands of books are on sale today. What a great opportunity for readers to stock up on books from their favorite participating authors and publishers. Discounted books also make great gifts for the holidays. And Read Tuesday provides a great way to help improve literacy. Encourage someone—especially, a child—who doesn’t read much to read more. Share the gift of reading.

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Asia After the Meddling British, French and Americans Arrived

Lloyd Lofthouse author photo

Relevant History welcomes Lloyd Lofthouse, award-winning historical fiction author of My Splendid Concubine, the love story of Sir Robert Hart and a Chinese woman. For more information, check out Lloyd’s web site and author blog, and read the first chapter of his latest novel, multi-award winner Running with the Enemy.

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It could be argued that the British Empire and the United States are responsible for World War II in the Pacific and Mao Zedong winning China’s Civil War in 1949.

Before my wife told me in 1999 about Sir Robert Hart, I knew little about Japan and China. My knowledge of Japan, for instance, was the bombing of Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo (April 18, 1942) and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945.

My Splendid Concubine cover image

I knew less about China, but that changed after my wife introduced me to Robert Hart. First, I read his journals and letters that had been published by Harvard. It was while researching for several years and writing My Splendid Concubine—based on Robert Hart’s real-life love story with a Chinese concubine named Ayaou—that I discovered the horrors that had been forced upon Asia in the 19th century by countries like Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States.

The British and the French fired the first salvo starting the Opium Wars in 1839–1842 and then again in 1856–1860. The reason: China’s emperor refused to allow the British and merchants of other western countries—including the U.S.—to sell opium without restrictions to the Chinese people. In addition, the treaties allowed Christian missionaries the freedom to go anywhere in China and convert and save the souls of heathen Chinese.

As Christian missionaries were saving these souls, they converted a failed Confucian Scholar, Hong Xiuquan, who soon claimed that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ; he published a Bible in Chinese after writing and including his own gospel. Then he led the 19-year Taiping rebellion that’s considered the bloodiest rebellion in human history with 20–100 million Chinese killed by the time he was defeated. And because God’s Chinese son was against the opium trade, Christian British and French troops joined in the fight, including American mercenaries, to defeat the Taipings. As for Japan, in 1846, America made its first attempt to open Japan for trade. Commander James Biddle anchored in Tokyo Bay with two ships, including one warship armed with 72 cannons, but his requests for a trade agreement were unsuccessful.

The Japanese, similar to the Chinese, didn’t want anything to do with the Western barbarians, but those barbarians weren’t about to accept no for an answer and miss an opportunity to find new markets for their growing consumer-based economies. Customers were to be gained; cheap labor was to be had, and this would lead to increased profits for European and American companies.

A few years later in 1852, Commodore Matthew C. Perry returned to Japan and turned his canons on the town of Uraga. The Japanese demanded he leave. In answer, Perry ordered some buildings in the harbor shelled. When Perry returned in February 1854 with twice as many ships, the Japanese agreed to virtually all of President Fillmore’s demands for trade with America.

It would take Japan almost a century to transition from a primitive, feudal agricultural-based economy to an imperial industrial power ready to wage war in 1937 with a goal to take Asia back from the Western powers that were exploiting and colonizing the region. To achieve this objective, Japan attacked China because it needed China’s resources.

If America had left Japan alone, Japan may have stayed an agricultural-based economy, and there would have never been the invasion of China in 1937.

It was Japan’s invasion of China that eventually caused the defeat of the Nationalist Chinese led by Chiang Kai-Shek in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong won the civil war that had raged from April 1927 to December 1937—with a break during World War II as both the Nationalist (KMT) and the Communists fought Japan. The Chinese Civil War resumed in March 1946.

Fighting Japan cost the KMT 1.3-million KIA; 1.8-million WIA and the CCP 500,000 KIA/MIA. The KMT fought a traditional war while the Communists practiced guerrilla warfare. During World War II, most Chinese lost trust in the Nationalists who clearly wanted to return China to the way it had been before the Civil War when the average life span was age 35, and more than 95% of Chinese lived in extreme poverty and were often treated worse than animals by those at the top of the economic pyramid.

By June of 1949, the Red Army had four million troops fighting Chiang Kai-shek’s 1.5 million. What would have happened to China and Japan in the 20th century if the United States and Great Britain had not forced both countries to open markets to unwanted products and religions in the 19th century?

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A big thanks to Lloyd Lofthouse. He discusses his research for My Splendid Concubine in this video and presents a timeline of China’s history here.

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Camp Follower for a Weekend

From the Vault: I’ve participated in more than a decade of Revolutionary War reenacting with the 33rd Light Company of Foot—as one of their camp followers. Boy, oh boy, those words “camp follower” sure perk the ears of journalists and beg a clarification of what a camp follower does. My explanation often sounds like what’s in the following essay, originally published in 2010 in Mystery Readers Journal, vol 26 no 4, the issue on “Hobbies.” (The pictures weren’t in the original.) In this essay, I discuss giving voice to women of the Revolution so we can learn about “the crushing, undeniable effect of war on humanity.” Note that that voice is loud and clear in my latest release, A Hostage to Heritage.

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I write a mystery/suspense series set during the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War. Several years ago, after I’d described the hobby that best informs my writing, an interviewer said to me, “Honey, you really suffer for your art.” My hobby is Revolutionary War reenacting. During a reenacting weekend, I portray a woman of middle class who is a camp follower.

Surgeon's table at Camden November 2005 reenactment

No, I’m not a military groupie. During the Revolutionary War, any non-combatant civilian who traveled with an army met the definition of what we’d call a “camp follower.” These folks took no commissioning or enlistment vows but were paid in other ways by the army or through interaction with the army. Camp followers in the Revolutionary War included artisans such as blacksmiths and wheelwrights; sutlers like merchants and peddlers; and retainers: family members, servants, slaves, and friends.

Usually when we hear a voice from the Revolutionary War, it’s a man’s voice, a soldier’s tale. Women have a different story to tell about the war. One purpose of my series is to spotlight women in a historically accurate setting and give them their voices.

Women spinning and weaving at the Joel Lane House

Why would any woman who wasn’t a prostitute follow an army? In the Revolutionary War, territories changed hands often. The conflict pitted neighbor against neighbor—demonstrated gruesomely in the Southern colonies, where squabbling families used the excuse of war to continue old feuds. Most cities were too small to provide a defense for people. Often an army was the greatest source of protection. When a military force withdrew from an area, civilians who stayed behind became vulnerable and risked torture and death at the hands of enemies. Thus wives left home and marched to the drum with their soldier husbands, bringing with them children and other household members.

A woman who followed an army endured privation. The baggage train where most camp followers traveled was considered worthy of capture. Civilians associated with it often found themselves in the midst of battle. These people also experienced disease, starvation, lack of clothing and shelter, and exposure to the elements. In addition, civilians had to obey military rules. A woman who broke the rules might pay a fine or receive corporal punishment. She could be evicted from camp or executed.

Von Bose camp at Camden 2007 reenactment

Middle- and lower-class women coped by cobbling together some form of domestic life, normalcy within the military environment and chaos of war. Perhaps they shared a daily meal with their soldiers, or participated in a family activity, such as reading from the Bible. Since women often didn’t receive food rations, they laundered, cooked, mended clothing, and worked in the infirmary for extra pay or food.

These women weren’t early feminists. They did what had to be done, part of the innate ability of women throughout history. Yet the accomplishments of women don’t receive the attention of men’s accomplishments. Stories of war are most often told from the point of view of men, soldiers. Furthermore, we tend to regard women of Revolutionary America through the lens of Victorian society, impose Victorian expectations upon women of Georgian society.

Sometimes in primary research, we must read between the lines to hear the small voice with the true story. When women are allowed to voice their stories, a very different image of war emerges, especially for middle- and lower-class women. We hear the crushing, undeniable effect of war on humanity. I depict these women in my series—especially in my book Camp Follower, where I’ve described the suffering of civilians who traveled with the army that lost the Battle of Cowpens.

If my fiction succeeds in capturing most of what women camp followers endured, then it’s worth sweating beneath my petticoat in the summer, blowing on numb fingers in the winter, and swatting mosquitoes and eating burned food. Who said hobbies must be easy? I look for new experiences and challenges. Maybe for another series, I’ll take up ghost hunting.

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Let’s Not Skip Thanksgiving, Please

Turkey

When Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving as an annual, national holiday, he had several centuries of thanksgiving legacy in America backing him up. American schoolchildren don’t usually learn that Lincoln was the one who made Thanksgiving official. Instead, they’re taught a story of Pilgrims and Indians in the early 1600s, a legend loaded with mythological elements.

Schoolchildren also don’t hear about Thanksgiving during the American Revolution, but it was there, too. In 1777, the Continental Congress issued the First National Proclamation of Thanksgiving and relied upon governors to determine how this proclamation would be observed within individual states. Independent celebrations of thanksgiving also sprang up throughout the North American colonies and were recorded by historians. For example, George Washington declared a thanksgiving in December 1777 for his victory at Saratoga.

What all these historical Thanksgiving celebrations had in common was a need to acknowledge gratitude for friends, family, and fortune, a striving for something greater than the self in the wish that all humans might have peace. For that reason, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Unfortunately, within my lifetime, I’ve watched it become subsumed in the commercialization of Christmas. Grocery store displays jump from Halloween to Christmas with nary a turkey feather or Pilgrim hat to remind us of this holiday.

We need Thanksgiving. It provides us with time to slow down, to enjoy the company of those we love and express gratitude for life. Don’t be a Thanksgiving miser or someone who must be prodded by the big turkey dinner to give thanks. Don’t rush past it on the way to Christmas. Find a way to celebrate Thanksgiving in your heart from now through Thanksgiving 2014.

And if you need a reminder of how fortunate you are, watch this short video.

Happy Thanksgiving. May yours be safe and restful.

Regulated for Murder book cover

Pssst. Today and tomorrow, pick up Michael Stoddard’s first adventure, Regulated for Murder, in the electronic form for only 99 cents at Amazon.

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Japan Before “Shogun”

I. J. Parker author photoRelevant History welcomes historical mystery novelist I. J. Parker, who has followed the exploits of her eleventh-century Japanese detective, Akitada, in short story and novel since 1996. Her story “Akitada’s First Case” won the Shamus award in 2000. Her novels have been translated into several languages. In addition to the Akitada mysteries and stories, she has written three novels set during the Heike Wars at the end of the twelfth century, and one about eighteenth-century Germany. For more information, visit her web site.

Note: the Akitada novel Death on an Autumn River will be free in Amazon Kindle format 23–26 November.

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Japanese womanI first discovered Asian history, and more precisely that of Japan, through its literature, especially the great novel Genji, written by a court lady in the first decade of the eleventh century and thus the first novel in the world. This book astonished me by its sophistication, its understanding of the psychology of men and women, its emotional and poetic response to nature, and its probing of the human condition.

Not long after exploring Japanese literature of this period, I became interested in writing mysteries and decided to write about early Japan. I was convinced that others would also come to love this strange, wonderful, and exotic culture and discover another world while spellbound by a mystery plot.

Let me caution you. Eleventh-century Japan is not the time of shoguns and samurai. Life was far more decorous then—at least on the surface. The country was still ruled by an emperor and a complex central government. Influenced by Tang China, Japan’s culture had reached its height of elegance and artistic achievement by the eleventh century. The arts flourished, and both men and women of the upper classes played musical instruments, painted, read and wrote poetry and prose in both Japanese and Chinese. They had universities, elegant palaces, huge temple complexes, exquisite gardens and parks, and whole cities neatly laid out by the ancient rules of feng shui. The upper classes dressed in silks and brocades, enjoyed games like backgammon, chess, and go, and engaged in sports like football, wrestling, archery, fishing, and hunting.

But this advanced and luxurious culture was controlled by a large, rigid bureaucracy and supported by the labors of peasants, fishermen, artisans, and merchants. Many of the common people were very poor and lived in densely-packed, rat-infested neighborhoods. Some resorted to crime in city streets and on the highways. And in distant provinces, warlords were busily building their armies. Unlike the Chinese, who took swift and brutal action against traitors and criminals, Japan’s system of law and order forbade the taking of life, and consequently criminals flourished because they could not be effectively restrained. Except for rare special cases, exile with hard labor or imprisonment were the only available punishments, and these were frequently nullified by sweeping imperial pardons.

Japanese manAgainst this background, I conceived of men like Akitada, a civil servant representing the law, a man of honor and duty. Such men would have had their hands full, especially when crimes were committed by the privileged who could count on support from powerful men in the government. In such cases, considerable personal danger would be involved, as Akitada discovers in Rashomon Gate and in the short story “Akitada’s First Case.”

Akitada is a member of the upper classes, but his family has fallen on hard times. Because he excelled at his law studies at the university, he was given a lowly position in the Ministry of Justice where his interest in “low crime” keeps him in constant hot water and gets him various punitive assignments to unpleasant places. However, this means that he makes interesting friends (like Tora, Genba, and Hitomaro) among the less privileged but more colorful members of his society. We learn from history that human beings don’t change much over the centuries or geographic distances. Basic human traits are constant, and knowing this allows us to understand the past by identifying with its people.

Japanese building and snowAkitada has taken me on many exciting adventures. We have explored Buddhist monasteries, visited the imperial palace and its surroundings, traveled to a penal colony, delved into a gold mine, and attacked a warlord’s fortress. We have been to brothels and bathhouses, shopped at markets, viewed aristocratic gardens, and roamed among professors and students at the university. The people Akitada introduces me to are princes and paupers, officials and outlaws, monks and courtesans. We have visited eleventh-century entertainers and sword smiths, wrestlers and martial arts practitioners together.

You may wonder how true to actual fact all these details are. I enjoy research, and have been working on this period for thirty years now. I know the scholarly and primary materials and do additional research for each new novel or story. But I write fiction, not history, and sometimes facts have to be bent to the story. I try to do as little of this as possible and add a historical note at the end of each novel to explain the background and any liberties I may have taken. For example, scholars don’t know for certain how long the famous Rashomon gate stood at the southern entrance to Kyoto, but the gate has enormous symbolic significance for early Japanese culture and is familiar to many western readers from the Japanese film by the same name. I used the gate for its historical connotations but explained the problems of dating in the end note.

In the process of our imaginary travels, I have become very fond of my protagonist. Akitada is by no means a perfect man. He is shy, introverted, stubborn, rash, and judgmental. He makes mistakes and suffers the pangs of conscience for them. But he does not rest until the wrong has been righted, even if it means risking his career, his life, or the lives of loved ones. In spite of all his flaws, he is ultimately a man of great courage and intelligence, though he is completely unaware of this. The women in his life love him and he loves them back, but he is an awkward and unintentionally insensitive partner. Akitada is a man of early eleventh-century Japan, but he is always human, I hope, and human nature does not change much over the centuries.

I look forward to future adventures and to watching him change from the naiveté of the very young man in The Dragon Scroll to a wiser, sadder, and perhaps more troubled middle age. The eleventh novel in the series, Death of a Doll Maker, was released this past summer, and there are many others waiting, I hope.

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Rashomon Gate book cover imageA big thanks to I. J. Parker. She’ll give away one copy of an Akitada book to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET. Then the winner may select either Rashomon Gate in hardcover or The Hell Screen in trade paperback Delivery is available within the U.S. only.

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The Winner of The Year-God’s Daughter

Kate Wyland has won a copy of The Year-God’s Daughter by Rebecca Lochlann. Congrats to Kate Wyland!

Thanks to Rebecca Lochlann for giving us the scoop on Queen Victoria’s near-scandal. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on Relevant History this week. Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.

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The Price of Queenship: Victoria’s Secret

Rebecca Lochlann author photo

Relevant History welcomes Rebecca Lochlann, who is busy working on her historical fantasy series, “The Child of the Erinyes.” The first book, The Year-god’s Daughter, is an Indie B.R.A.G. Medallion honoree and was recently utilized as a university class study guide. The series centers around a small corps of protagonists who begin their lives in the Bronze Age Mediterranean, draw the attention of the Immortals, and end up traveling through time. Right now Rebecca is deeply immersed in Queen Victoria’s world as she edits book four, The Sixth Labyrinth. You can read more about Rebecca’s books and find links to a trailer, bibliographies, and excerpts on Rebecca’s web site. For additional information, visit her Facebook page.

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John Brown

There are many articles and biographies about John Brown, the Scotsman who served Queen Victoria before and after Prince Albert’s death. He’s portrayed as a rough, ill-mannered gillie, a servant and one-time stable boy, who yet managed to charm the widowed queen out of her grief, at least somewhat. He is said to have been a heavy drinker, uncouth, rude, smelly, even “insufferable.” One reason this story captures our interest is because Queen Victoria has an ongoing reputation, true or not, of being the epitome of propriety, notorious for not allowing any unorthodox behavior or speech in her presence—except when it came to John Brown. He, apparently, could do no wrong.

Most rumor mills keep things PG, but some suggest she and Brown were lovers. There are even claims she secretly married him and had a child—a child who is sometimes a girl, and in other accounts, a boy.

While male monarchs throughout English history enjoyed mistresses of any number and some paraded them without fear of backlash, female monarchs have generally been held to a different standard. If Victoria were John Brown’s lover, she would have had little choice but to keep it secret. The scandal would have tarnished her monarchy, perhaps even blemishing the memory of her beloved Prince Albert.

Victoria lived for a long time after Albert’s death. No doubt she could have remarried, but a Scots commoner? Romance or not, she would have been expected to maintain a spotless veneer. While people did get tired of her wearing black and seldom appearing in public, they might have reacted very differently to evidence of a sexual affair. Rumors did abound; there was plenty of whispering and conjecture. But Victoria’s outward reputation remained unsullied. There was really no other option. She had Albert’s memory to think of, as well as her children. They, too, would have been made to suffer had their mama engaged in a love affair.

It’s often said Victoria’s personality caused the dichotomy of the era—an extremely proper surface holding people to rigid decorum, while beneath lay a seething underbelly of vice, prostitution, and the callous exploitation of women and children, which most seemed wont to ignore.

An exception was the Contagious Diseases Acts, which were enacted during Victoria’s reign. Originally an attempt to regulate prostitution and annihilate venereal disease in port towns, the Acts gave authorities license to force prostitutes into detention, where they were examined for symptoms of disease. As such things often do, the law escalated to include the entire country, including London, and became so warped that before it was repealed, any female anywhere, prostitute, housewife, or child, could be whisked into custody and forced to endure a humiliating examination. (Josephine Butler, a feminist of the times, referred to these exams as “surgical rape,” eerily reminiscent of forced, modern day, trans-vaginal ultrasounds.) Stories have come down to us of frightened women fighting the officers to no avail. The police were given sweeping powers; if their suspects refused to comply they faced imprisonment. Sometimes these women were restrained in straitjackets. Sometimes they were virgins. There are accounts of this aggression resulting in suicide.

While Queen Victoria and her daughters never had to fear being mistaken for prostitutes, few other ladies could make such a claim when the Acts were in full force. In many ways Victoria herself contributed to the problems women faced. She was adamantly against women being allowed to vote, and famously said, “Let women be what God intended, a helpmate for man, but with totally different duties and vocations.”

The Royal Commission supported this attitude with their public announcement that while men who consorted with prostitutes were merely indulging in natural impulses, the prostitutes were preying on their clients for financial gain. Such widespread beliefs supported the idea of woman as “unclean,” and encouraged the pervasive conviction that females alone caused venereal disease. Consequently, only women were arrested, tested, and if infected, forcibly confined, a remedy that would have done little to slow proliferation since men were never detained or examined.

This was Queen Victoria’s world. Small wonder that she would choose to keep her romance with her Scots servant in the background, unlike many English kings, who felt themselves above the judgment of their inferiors.

Oddly, though a woman ruled as the figurative head of the country, common women could hardly get a break. Unwed mothers in the Victorian era suffered much, up to and including death, but judgment against the fathers is remarkably absent. Today we’re seeing alarming echoes of past times in a vocal resurgence of hostility toward women for any number of things, notably their own rapes. The “unclean” notion seems to be trying to make a comeback. Across the globe, in every country, girls and women are finding that equality remains an elusive goal, and it might even be theorized that progress is slowing. Listening to what some current politicians advocate suggests we haven’t come so very far from the Victorian era. There have even been disturbing suggestions that the women’s vote should be taken away. All this makes one ponder anew the Age of Queen Victoria. Could society’s pendulum be trying to swing back toward it?

John Brown and Queen Victoria

At the end of her life, Victoria asked to be buried not only with mementos of her husband, but also with a lock of John Brown’s hair, his photograph, a ring, and several of his letters. She obviously cared for this man, though we will probably never know the true extent. She lived in fascinating times, where industrial advances were exploding while human rights issues remained intractable.

Josephine Butler and the Contagious Diseases Acts make an appearance in my upcoming Victorian era novel, The Sixth Labyrinth. Before meeting Josephine, my protagonist is ignorant of the law, and of the cold facts surrounding London’s underbelly. Knowledge, coupled with Mrs. Butler’s innate strength and personality, change her profoundly.

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The Year-god's Daughter book cover image

A big thanks to Rebecca Lochlann. She’ll give away a signed paperback copy of The Year-god’s Daughter to someone who contributes a comment on my blog this week. I’ll choose the winner from among those who comment by Sunday at 6 p.m. ET. Delivery is available within the U.S. only.

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