Sir Thomas More by Hals Holbein (Accessed via Wikipedia ) During lockdown, we had Time. Remember that? I was in my probationary year of teaching: almost certainly among the most exhausting years for any profession. All my time had been taken up with school work, and I regularly stayed at school until after 6pm, having arrived there at eight in the morning. Now, children, this is not sustainable and, very soon, I decided I didn’t like working where I was. Then I realised that I didn’t like teaching at all. But, in fact, neither was particularly true: I just needed to be true to myself and to say no, which would give me the ability to manage my work/life balance in a more appropriate way. What does this have to do with historical fiction, I hear you say? Well, during March 2020, we went into lockdown and suddenly I went from working ten-hour-days to ten-hour-weeks. I met up with my class on Google Meet, I put work up for them on a meticulously designed Google Classroom, but I just h...
We at Stempster are madly knitting as part of CHAS's fundraiser (they do fantastic work, so please consider making a little donation). Thankfully, Judith has taken pity on me and, since she's also a historical fiction writer, she's written this blog about one of her real-life characters...
Most of the historical figures we’ve had so far in this series have been people who are discovered through committed research, rather than the sort of people who leap out of the history books and who are the subject of various school topics throughout the years. This time, because this blog is by me – Judith – my take on historical writing is quite different.
So, instead of sharing facts about some largely unknown people from history, I’m going to write about someone I can guarantee you’ve heard of: Alexander III of Macedonia, better known to history as Alexander the Great.
(Source: https://malevus.com/what-did-alexander-the-great-look-like/)
That said, for possibly one of the most famous people in history, the man is an enigma. He was born in Pella in Macedonia in 356BC, the second son of Philip II. Although Philip’s achievements seem somewhat dwarfed by Alexander’s, he was a powerful man in his own right and left a deep imprint on history. Alexander’s older brother seems to have had some kind of learning or mental disability so, after Philip died, he was spared Alexander’s brutal annihilation of anyone who might threaten him for the throne. In fact, Alexander quite liked being around his brother, and he seems to have been reasonably affectionate towards his sisters too.
And that is the Alexander I plucked from history and put into my writing. I gave him another sister: this time one who was not related to him by blood and who is the shared responsibility not only of the king but of his group of companions. Alexander certainly loved his companions, although he could be volatile and dangerous as a friend, and at least two members of his inner circle – Philotas and Cleitus the Black – came to sticky ends as a result of their association with him. Cleitus was killed by the king himself in a fit of drunken anger.
By contrast, Alexander seems to have been deeply in love with his second-in-command, Hephaestion. He made only slightly veiled comparisons between the pair of them and the relationship between Achilles and his lover, Patroclus, whose death is Achilles’ incentive to kill Hector in the Iliad. Alexander believed Hephaestion embodied the better part of himself so, in writing, it was possible to explore Alexander’s sweeter, more loving side by his interactions with Hephaestion. When (SPOILER ALERT!) Hephaestion died, Alexander saw his life as being over and, in fact, he died too less than a year later.
When someone is as famous as Alexander (and that accolade belongs to only very few people in history), it may appear that there would be no room to slot in fictional stories. However, many of the primary sources of Alexander’s life have been lost and with each retelling, the stories stretched to create little holes where stories can squeeze in.
So, I found a series of those little holes and wove my main character, Ophelia, into them. She is the orphaned daughter of Philip’s maternal cousin, and her brother is one of Alexander’s companions. As Alexander leads his army through India (which, I realised, is really more what is now Pakistan), she meets Calanus, the old Hindu sage who Alexander took with him as a tutor. The story starts at the conclusion of the Battle of Hydaspes and finishes the day of Alexander’s death.
Through writing from Ophelia’s point of view, I learnt about Alexander. He ceased to be a giant of history and became a man, full of human complexity and endearing foibles. I fell in love with him – particularly with the love he had for Hephaestion. Writing about him didn’t draw him out of obscurity but it drew him back into humanity.
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