I’ve just finished the third Hild rewrite. I’m feeling good.
Now I get to have fun with supplemental material: glossary, family tree, map. All that cool stuff. For now I’m keeping things fairly barebones, as plain as possible. So the glossary has only about seventy terms on it, and no pronunciation guide. For example, the word Gesith is described as member of king’s personal warband, elite status. But it doesn’t explain that gesith is supposed to be pronounced (if my admittedly small of understanding of Old English is correct) something like ‘yesseeth’.
The map is going to show relief features–mountains, valleys–and a handful of rivers important to the story. Plus deliberately vague territorial names. (The boundaries changed all the time, and historians argue vigorously; I’m not setting myself up for that one. No no no.) And mostly-accurate settlement and/or royal vill names. In this round I won’t be adding roads or nifty little pictures of the kind commonly found on ye olde anciente mappes. But I’m happy to take suggestions for the published version.
Hild’s family tree is interesting. I just drew it out for the first time (literally drew, with a pen and yellow pad) yesterday. Some of it is speculative, some of it is just flat invented. Let me tell you, it took a bit of thought to fit it all neatly on one page. It… Ah, fuck it, here you go:
click to enlarge
I’ll be making this prettier with some cool graphics programme or other. Er, that is, a friend will be, because I’m seriously crap at this kind of thing. I’m still happier with pen and paper. Hey, at least I now have an iPhone to take pictures and you don’t have to cope with the iPod’s crapcam anymore.
I’m guessing medievalists will have some quarrels with this. Bring it on.
For YAY!!
This is truly eye candy. :)
To the medievalists I say “socks to you” or something rude :).
I know you have been as historically accurate as you can, and you can. If people try to correct your medieval history or your family tree it will only be out of envy. I'm glad to see you having such a good time.
Congrats! You can always suggest they look up the term “historical fiction.” (What part of “fiction” did you not understand?)
Oddly enough, that is EXACTLY what I expected your writing to look like. ;D
No, no, no. I really like the fighting! Er, discussion. No, more than that, I love it. It's enormous fun, and I learn a lot.
Good.
This brings back memories. Unfortunately I can't see it well enough to read it. Seems like a lot of Alt Clut in there from what I can read….
Reminds me of an old non-fiction project I had going on Æthelfrith, I may have to look that up.
hefenfelth, if you click the pic it expands nicely. But I'll be posting a nice, readable version sometime this week. (Thanks to the help of a friend!)
If you do dig up the Æthelfrith project, I'd love to hear about it.
Alt Clut is so mysterious…
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