Guest post written by Sunbringer author Hannah Kaner
Hannah is the #1 Sunday Times Bestselling author of Godkiller. She has her heart in Scotland and her roots in the north of England. Godkiller is the first book in a trilogy which will be translated into Portuguese, Bulgarian, Croatian, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Spanish and Turkish.
About Sunbringer: Return to the world of Godkiller in this thrilling sequel to the #1 internationally bestselling fantasy debut, where Kissen and her companions must navigate lands of gods and demons to unravel a dark truth at the heart of their world.
Most lives aren’t remembered, and most rebellions go unanswered. Those who say history is written by the victor are usually right, while ‘the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts. . . the number who live faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.’ (George Eliot, Middlemarch)
But who decides who gets remembered? Which rebellions are quiet and which continue to echo? Which victors we do celebrate and which do we forget?
The dominant forces of empire, propaganda and cultural capital govern which stories are kept, which changed, diminished or burned. This is some of the story that I wanted to tell in Sunbringer, the second book in the Fallen Gods series. Where rebellion and text, pacifism versus violence, unrest versus suppression comes into the foreground.
This story has many precedents, ancient and more modern. For example, changing religious schema in medieval Europe and the influence of the papacy elevated certain religious texts and politicians and had others destroyed. “Heresy” was a campaign tool used to launch crusades not only in what is now called “the middle east”, but in France and Ireland, against cultures that challenged the status quo.
And this is even before we focus on the knowledge of and memorialisation of historical women, many of whom, under similar dogma, were written out of the narrative. Then, further colonialist expansion destroyed, ignored or outright lied about the histories of the cultures western Europe sought to dominate.
Now, historians like Archana Garodia Gupta in The Women who Ruled India and Janina Ramirez in Femina and are working to bring the stories and histories of women back to life.
No more unvisited tombs.
However, where there is absence and suppression comes invention as well. There is the history of our world, and then in fantasy the reimagining of our world through other lenses. This is the power of fantasy, to take inspiration from the real and twist it in a new and powerful way.
In this way, fantasy and speculative fiction reflects both who we are and who we could be through connecting to old stories and telling them new. My Fallen Gods trilogy is about faith and family and the corruption of power, but it is also about a refreshed, diverse and more vibrant reimagining of elements of European history.
Therefore, I will use this article to highlight historical women whose stories are less well known and, if you like the sound of their stories, fantasy books that may delight and intrigue you as well!
Rebel and Queen Amanirenas
After Cleopatra’s death, the Roman Empire stated its intention to move south into the Kingdom of Kush, present day Sudan. Amanirenas, their queen, struck first. After ransacking two cities, Rome retaliated brutally. Still, Queen Amanirenas continued to lead incursions against the Roman army till a peace was finally agreed, pinning Rome back in Egypt and halting their southern campaign.
What we know about this war from the Kush peoples themselves is very little, as much of their history has been lost or erased, but the story is one of a powerful woman leading rebellion against a larger empire, despite Strabo’s attempts that time to record a history more favourable to the Romans.
If you like stories about rebellion, altered histories and women against an empire, I would recommend The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi. It’s one of my favourite books depicting the pain and danger of rebellion and its impact on the rebels, while also taking inspiration from Ghanaian, Sudanese and other African histories.
Pilgrim and Mystic Margery Kempe
Written in the 1430s, one copy of the autobiographical Book of Margery Kempe survives, discovered in 1934 in a private library while the owners were looking for ping pong balls. We have few insights into the minds of women from the middle ages, and even fewer from those of the merchant and middle class (even fewer to none of working class). Margery travelled thousands of miles, at great personal risk, to make pilgrimages to holy sites and then returning to King’s Lynn to terrorise her neighbours with her visions. Margery’s self-advocacy and independence is astonishing, and so is its survival through the purges of the English Reformation and the changing role of women in Christian Europe.
It is only in the last century that we’ve learned more about the role and power of women in the middle ages, unpainting the role they have been put in as quiet, meek and put upon.
If you like the story of Margery Kempe, I would recommend For thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain, by Victoria Mackenzie, where Margery’s story is reimagined and recreated in mirror with another medieval woman: Julian of Norwich.
Philosopher and adviser to monarchs: Hypatia
Hypatia was a philosopher in Alexandria, one of the first whose lives were fairly well recorded. She advised Alexandrian prefects, counselling for tolerance between Christian and ‘pagan’ beliefs, being pagan herself. She wrote commentaries on mathematical and astronomical treaties, though her own works have long been lost in the preservation of and translation of Alexandrian texts after the city declined.
However, her influence gained her enemies as well as friends, and was killed in a horrendous attack by a Christian mob. Since, Hypatia’s story has been wrung out of her own hands, adapted and adopted into Christian sainthood as Catherine of Alexandria.
If Hypatia’s story is of interest, you may enjoy Sunbringer, the sequel of the Fallen Gods trilogy. The story takes us back to Lesscia, the city of knowledge, where the archivists fight to preserve the legacy of their history, and their god.
