usurpers… what is true?

For the story of Brethren there were a lot of gaps to fill in as only a few lines about the Ordovice tribe survive in recorded history. All I had to go on was that they attacked a fort and burned it to the ground and in response, Agricola took the Twentieth Legion to punish them for it. For Usurpers, the opposite was true; there was both legend and historical record to work with. So much so that I had to reverse-engineer the surviving information and make a story out of it.

From the Mabinogion, an ancient book written in the 12th century but compiled from much older oral stories, comes the Dream of Macsen Wledig. Of course, a powerful Roman dreaming about the most beautiful girl in the world and marrying her once he finds her in a far way land is of course the stuff of fantasy… but I wanted to pay homage to a book so important to early Welsh literature, so came up with a story to tie the mythical to the real.

The fictional Macsen Wledig is the historical Magnus Maximus, a general known to have served in Britannia, Africa and on the Danube under his uncle Theodosius the Elder and alongside his cousin Theodosius, who by the time Usurpers is set, had recently been made Emperor of the East. In AD 380 Magnus was granted the important position of Dux Britanniarum and so returned to Britannia. His few years on that mysterious island survived, in an understandably garbled way, in legends. In the Mabinogion, as was as a pair of other early texts; the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, commonly attributed to a Welsh monk called Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). These are both more works of fiction than historical records, but the tradition is that he was married to a local girl, Elen of the Roads, or of the Hosts, daughter of the powerful Octavius.

Magnus Maximus

A teenage girl having influence enough over a 50ish-year-old general to get him to build hundreds of kilometres of military roads through the mountains of North Wales was a bit of a stretch at first, but I like writing strong women, and although there is no evidence at all for it, the way I settled on is not beyond the realms of possibility. Elen’s name still survives to this day. I have walked and driven down sections of Sarn Helen in North and Mid Wales.

The old woman who is the thread between the Mabinogion and the historical record is another invention of mine. Another strong woman that I had a lot of fun writing.

The settling of the Deisi on the west coast of Wales is attested to in both written and the archaeological record. LINK Magnus Maximus was known for using Rome-friendly tribes to use as a buffer on the borders of the empire, so it could have been him who invited the Deisi to settle in what is today Dyfed and the Llyn Peninsula. Many of the proliferatin of stones with Ogham writing on them come from this period.

Kenon, the Conan Meriadoc of the Historia Brittonum, supposedly attempted to lead a British army against Magnus, who he mistakenly believed to be an invader. He then went north to bring a Pictish / Scotti army south to fight Magnus. In some sourses these raids are thought to have taken place down the Dee and across what today is Cheshire. Personally though, I don’t think the rough Northerners would so easily follow a pompous little Southern nobody in battle, even if he was a son of an important Roman general or administrator. My mum is from Yorkshire, and she wouldn’t be having that! In Usurpers he does bring an army south, but not as its leader… Also, I didn’t want to leave his name as Conan as I felt it would be too synonymous with Arnie in a loincloth. (Conan the Barbarian.)

Andragathaius is a real character and was a Batavian Master of Horse under Magnus.

What Andragathius might have looked like.

Kenon’s dice tower. In the museum of the magnificent Roman fort of Rutupiae there is an exquisite dice tower made of intricately carved bone. Looking at it through the glass, I was absolutely mesmerised by it and wanted to include it in the story.

The Cult of Galli. Roman sex-changers… Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Adherents of the Goddess Cybelle really did castrate themselves. Archaeologists have even found the tools they used to commit the act. The Wikipedia page is here. Graves have been excavated in the north of England of male skeletons with female jewellery. Here

Still with Kenon. How did he get to the Dee estuary from north of the Wall? I spent a wonderful afternoon with Marion Blockley of the Ironbridge Coracle Trust LINK learning how the ancient Britons made primitive little boats that the raiders would have got up the Dee in. That raid of approximately 381 is credited to the Picts and Scotti (Irish tribes who would later give their name to the land beyond the Wall) but I wanted to tie Padarn and his son and grandson of future books to North Wales, so used the Votadini tribe in the story.

As in Brethren, all the places names in Usurpers are real. Segontium is the fort above Caernarfon, Caerhun is Canovium, another fascinating place in stunning North Wales. Deva is Chester and the Wall is of course Hadrian’s Wall. I had a wonderful few days exploring this incredible place. Anyone interested in Roman history needs to spend some time there.

And last, but not least, the Welsh flag! The draco on the cover isn’t just a coincidence! One theory is that when it was first adopted by the Welsh kings of Aberffraw in the early 400s, it was because they wanted to symbolise their power and authority after the Romans withdrew from Britain. LINK