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.