I recently came across a historical fiction epic that was in a different mold than the usual, in a good way.
Tavington’s Heiress is essentially an original story, but it was published by the author as a fanfiction of The Patriot, a vaguely historical epic film from 2000, staring Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, Jason Isaacs, and a few other actors you might recognize. The movie is set during the American Revolution and the Patriots are very firmly treated as the protagonists. The fanfic follows the other side, allowing the villainous British Colonel Tavington to survive and go back to England, where he has numerous fictional adventures among the Georgian aristocracy. You can find it here. Be warned; it’s over half a million words, and while it doesn’t linger lovingly over descriptions of violence or sexuality, it’s rightly rated for mature audiences and doesn’t pull punches when showing and telling how brutal life could be in the late 1700s.
Which is the most surprising part. Georgian England and its colonies were very different from what they are today, and it was startling and refreshing to find a story that shows a nuanced, intelligent view of people, places, and cultures of the time.
Let’s be clear- it’s not a nice, little historical romance. That’s not the point of the story. Various characters are tortured, murdered, sexually abused, shot in duels, wounded in battle, and subject to all manner of other horrible things, violent and nonviolent. The cruelties of slavery and war are explored thoroughly, as are what we would call the limitations of medicine and technology, but are simply part of life for the characters.
However- and this is important- nor does it fall into the other common trap of historical fiction, where everyone is awful except for one or two of the main characters, who are fighting against the general awfulness of their setting. Instead, the characters are treated as people, who say and do things of astounding stupidity and occasional brilliance, but mostly moderate cleverness. They have their own motives, goals, and desires, and are very pragmatic and determined about how they get around the obstacles in their way. They’re not real, but they are pretty realistic for characters from that class and time period, when society was changing fast, and it was possible to to make or break one’s fortune, if only one had a bit of luck and the boldness to grab opportunities as they came up.
The late 1700s were the very beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, the era of plantations, colonization, massive-for-the-time enterprises like the East India Company, and near-constant warfare. Life was chronically uncertain in a way that most of us have never dealt with; most modern catastrophes tend to be acute, like car accidents or the temporary loss of a job. Three hundred years ago, even sheltered and wealthy people had to contend with the hardships of life, only partially mitigated by their money and the labors of their servants. It was not an easy time to be alive, no matter your sex or social class.
There’s no room for modern morality, either. It’s fashionable, nowadays, to have characters assailed by doubt or qualms of conscience, and there are some characters in the story who fit that mold, like the soldier who becomes a clergyman. But not the protagonist, who goes around fighting, dueling, and killing people without turning a hair. He occasionally pauses to consider his wife’s feelings when he sleeps with another woman, but it’s usually after the fact, and consists of, ‘must have a bath before she notices another woman’s scent; don’t want to upset her.’ And yet that particular incident occurs after they’ve gotten over their initial rocky start and become a loving and happy couple. Fidelity doesn’t come into it. For the man, anyway; adulterous women are not so tolerated, which is historically accurate and has some basis in biology.
The presence of so many child-characters is also unusual but historically accurate. It’s not often that the difficulties of traveling with babies and toddlers in a carriage are discussed in fiction, but it’s here, and the servants can only do so much to keep the kids happy for hours at a time. Characters have (and lose) realistic numbers of children, and the author gives us a wide variety of personalities and parenting styles that are reasonable for the period.
I think the best way to describe this story is, unflinching, unapologetic, but not depressing. A difficult balance to achieve and a rare one, in historical fiction of the past couple of decades. If you like historical fiction, I encourage you to check it out. Sadly, the author passed away a few years ago, so we won’t be getting any more of her work, but what’s available to us is excellent.
Mad Genius Club 
12 responses to “The Past is Another Country”
*chuckles* I suppose I’m not surprised someone did a fanfic of the villain from The Patriot. That was the first thing I ever saw Jason Issacs in, and I remember thinking at the time that such a dreadful villain as he was had NO business being that good looking! Still hated him, he was really dreadful–but goodness that was a good historical era for the actor. (Although I do gather, for all that he’s played mostly villains in his career, Jason Issacs is himself a lovely person.)
Wow! Sounds like my kind of book, especially how everyone DOES NOT think like a modern, neurotic, childless denizen of Manhattan.
An aside about The Patriot. My husband, Bill, was an extra on the set!
It was filmed just south of York, SC. Bill reported for duty every day for about four days for the huge battle scene. He saw Mel Gibson from a distance. Being on the set led to star power by proxy because he still, despite long days as an extra, had to report to work at the Rock Hill Herald. His coworkers were all Mel, Mel, Mel, tell us about Mel.
In York, which church Mel Gibson was going to attend was a HUGE topic of conversation. Our Episcopalian ladies were all set to lure him away from the Catholic church a few streets over! I think even the Baptists were eager to coax him to services.
This is another thing that jaded, neurotic, childless, modern Manhattanites don’t understand.
Because Bill was on the set — and they knew it when they hired him! — he wrote a story about his experience for the Rock Hill Herald. This led directly to Sony contacting the film to find out why some reporter was running around on the set. Since his employment paperwork clearly stated he had said he was a copyeditor at the Rock Hill Herald, Sony couldn’t do anything.
No, you can’t see him in the battle scenes. He’d recently shaved off some period-appropriate facial hair (who knew this would happen?) and had to be relegated to the back lines. If he hadn’t shaved, he’d have probably been easy to spot in the background.
“Fidelity doesn’t come into it. For the man, anyway; adulterous women are not so tolerated, which is historically accurate and has some basis in biology.”
I have an older friend who was in his thirties when he first heard the concept that marital fidelity applied to men.
His wife’s married. He isn’t!
Though in this era there are those who argue that actually wifely infidelity is no more a problem as long as the woman is already pregnant.
You make this sound very interesting, but also a little surprising as the qualities you praise are really not what I would expect from someone writing fanfiction of The Patriot, a film that had all the historical accuracy that one expects from Mel Gibson. I have to admit that I’m somewhat prejudiced against a work associated with that film, not so much for the movie’s historical blunders, nor its at times truly incompetent battle representations, but because I despise it’s fundamentally racist depiction of the hero/slave relationships , which when you look under the surface are pretty much “lost cause” propaganda.
The protagonist sounds to be a complete arsehole – which is fair enough – but I’m not clear to what extent the other characters do not have a care for “modern morality” (or maybe what was modern fifty years ago, before the more recent excesses which we call “modern” or “post modern”). It is quite easy to find real people from the Georgian period who would disapprove of the protagonist’s activities and, for example, abhor both the slave trade and slavery itself.
Still, you’ve convinced me to give it a try and I’ve bookmarked the page (though I’d be happier if I could just download the whole to read off-line).
the one incident you describe reminds me of the scene in The Longbow Murders (tongue in cheek medieval mystery) where Richard I (acting as detective) decides he can’t torture one of the suspects because his wife is in residence and she would find it upsetting. 😀
The genre has a lot to do with the children. That sort of slice-of-life would require that you go on with life during it because there’s no end point.
Now, I have put parents into stories. Sometimes as many as two in the course of the tale. But there’s a reason why Winter’s Curse is the only one with more than two — because that’s when the children appear in an epilogue.
That’s because high fantasy plots logically have conclusions, after which you can take up life again. Having children can be feasibly deferred for that long.
Sometimes as many as two children. Ooff. Quite a thing to leave out.
Siblings are complicated. I sometimes wonder if people write the lone orphan hero child just because it’s so much work to write children and families!
Last time I wrote a protagonist going home, where he was one of seven siblings (six surviving to adulthood), this vastly increased the complexity of what was supposed to be a short story. By the time I was done, it was a full novel, because each one was a full personality with their own desires and aims, and the dynamics between them made a short, sharp, bittersweet “No man can step in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he’s not the same man” into something that took a novel to the explore maturity, roads not taken, regrets, forgiveness, feuds, mercy, judgement…
And I didn’t even get into more than two of the swarm of nieces, nephews, grandchildren….
*shakes head*
And now I’m writing an adorable plot moppet who has her own ideas about getting loose from mommy and exploring an airship, and the adults who are trying to protect her without explaining the very ugly political situation going on, because my back brain hates me.
Very true. Every character who does not serve a plot function is clutter, and every character pressed into plot function complicates it.
And that book is the deepest (but still enjoyable) of the series.
Btw, my wife (an only child) has no clue about sibling dynamics, especially since I have 4 siblings.