Morganna will now be making an appearance in Chapter 1. She’s likely to have a larger role in Chapters 3 and 4.
As I’m now starting to write some of the main female characters, I’d particularly welcome your thoughts on the gender politics of Arthurian Britain. I found the original stories’ portrayals of women too limiting, and wanted to weave in material from Dark Age and Medieval history to build stronger and more interesting female characters.
I’m going to use Queen Anna (Mordred’s mother) as an example to illustrate my thinking, both because she’s the model of Queenship that Mordred will be most familiar with and because she’s going to have a considerably expanded role in my story.
Queen Anna was brought up in Uther’s court in Londinium. She’s therefore well versed in the intricacies of courtly politics, and also more highly educated than most of Gododdin’s nobility. This has given her a reputation for wisdom. Some of Anna’s herb-lore might be taken for witchcraft, although no one’s likely to object to that unless she starts poisoning or cursing people.
As I’ve explained in Chapter 1, King Lot spends a lot of time trying to hold down the frontier. Anna has taken ownership of much of Gododdin’s governance is his absence. She metes out justice in her husband’s name, and has also taken charge of the day-to-day running of his court. Because Lot’s known to listen to Anna’s advice, it also wouldn’t be too unusual for a claimant to make overtures to her in the hope that she’ll represent their case favourably to the king.
If an enemy were to besiege Gododdin’s capital in Lot’s absence then she’d probably be very capable of organising the defence.
However, her political power-base largely depends on her relationship with King Lot. If Lot were to die or set her aside then she would lose much of her current influence, and might be forced to enter a nunnery (although even that could provide an ambitious noblewoman with significant opportunities for advancement). There may also be a more general tendency for men to think of women in terms of their proximity to other men (e.g. Lot only refers to the woman that Wastrel Mordred may have impregnated as “Gwair’s daughter”).
There’s probably also also a cultural expectation that a woman’s “worth” is linked to her fertility. That isn’t a problem for Anna, but may well become one for Guinevere if she and Arthur aren’t able to have children.
Mordred will, of course, remain entirely within the reader’s control - and it will be down to you to decide what he makes of all this. Morganna is also likely to be a character that subverts some of Arthurian Britain’s gender norms, and seeks to turn them to her own advantage.
Is any of this likely to raise red flags that would detract from your enjoyment of the story? Obviously, happy to hear from you if you think there are things I could be doing better.
