Ye Olde Genovia, Capital: Sexy Duloc.
Okay I finally got my hands on some Alice Coldbreath and I’m starting with the Brides of Karadok series.
I want to like them so far, but I’m struggling to grasp the layout of some of the geopolitical worldbuilding as the references, particularly to the regional religion(s), are so all over the place. It’s so broadly medieval so far it’s starting to raise some questions in me about the political fallout for a time and place such as Karadok is, I think, supposed to be…’cause it’s also borrowing a lot from the Early Modern period of European history, and is not leaning so heavily into magic as to be more Tolkienish in its basis, so I wanna delve more into the the unspooling of medieval court politics and ramifications of what I’ve noticed so far in where Coldbreath seems to be taking inspiration.
Just finished Wed By Proxy (ehhhhh in a few parts and the leads were pretty mid but I liked the knife stuff and the servants and letting witches be witches.) References to gods etc and general Northern parallels had me settling in my imagination on a Norse-style pagan pantheon or perhaps something more Game of Thrones-y, where this series has some evident roots, particularly in seeming to callback reference the Wars of the Roses or even the Norman Conquest. (Though then it ofttimes feels way more akin to The Tudors in some of the interiors and clothing descriptions. And the Renaissance decor really pops, I can appreciate.) Very early medieval, with a smidge of Vikingish resistance, fine, cool, I can work with that structure.
🗡️🐈⬛
Anyhow, I’m starting The Unlovely Bride and just got to the roadside shrine and now I’m wiki-article-spiralling because suddenly here in the South (I think?) they’re literally referencing an established general “church” and no one has explicitly said they’re Christians/Catholics so far but there’s kneeling to pray and priestly gestures that could or could not be a sign of the cross but that’s what springs to mind; and I know I’m overthinking this, I know, I KNOW. But I’m a regular Gone Medieval/Not Just the Tudors podcast binger and my ADHD brain keeps pingponging all over trying to build an idea of this setting and time which keeps referencing various inspiration points from across 1500 or so years of our real-world European history and and I think it’s overheating trying to make sense of this fictional nation of Karadok.
🧠💨
Like geographically it’s vaguely Northern Europe and that’s fine I don’t need a geopolitical topographic map (but also why isn’t there one you cannot tell me Coldbreath has never doodled one and I Would Like to See It! If the Karadokians have a decent one, hook a sister up and LINK ME.) There was a War and it feels vaguely Plantagenet but also vaguely conquesty for the north so I guess this is kind of Saxon v. Norman in a way but without the English Channel, presumably. Heck why not a splash of the English Civil War and Restoration?
⚔️🛡️
I can handwave the way homes and institutional buildings are laid out/furnished across such a range of old medieval and then WELL into Early Modern architecture, and the rich people’s clothing a mishmash of all those centuries too, because it’s the Aesthetic, I get it, I would write that lavishly, too… But now I’ve hit the haphazard wedding ceremony and I SO badly wanna know what the heck this state religion is and where it came from.
✨🙏🏻
And I have a lot of Questions, because while medieval and Early Modern can blend visually in interesting ways, if Karadok as a medieval nation is speedrunning the spread of Christianity across pagan western Europe and into Eurasia as well as the early church schisms, most pointedly the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodoxy sects, AND now treading very near to paralleling a later time and place where these religious establishments and politics spill into the seismic social and cultural changes of the Reformation…in the wake of a civil war and/or war of conquest within the last handful of years, I’m like…That Is a Lot. And I wanna know moooore!
🕰️🧐
And I know I’m overthinking it and pagans and Catholics and Protestants can coexist in historical fiction, but my now brain keeps seeing words like “saint” and “father” and I’m like WHEN ARE WE, THOUGH? Because those three groups really didn’t get along with much ease in most of Europe for the last millennia or two. I guess I’m just finding it tricky trying to reconcile this piece of Karadokian worldbuilding with the general concept of following these nobles intermarrying within a system of cautious diplomacy and uneasy sociocultural healing after VERY recent war/conquest…with there somehow being no real conflict so far with the North/South interfaith blending of paganism and Catholicism with the serial number filed off. Wartime Trauma inspiration drawn from the Harrying of the North and the Pilgrimage of Grace, essentially happening both at once with the Argent King’s unification of Karadok, WHILE the southern Catholics would apparently still also still trying to convert the Northern pagans would be WILD to see.
🧎🏻♀️➡️🗿
I’d argue, historically, blending old European pagan traditions with Christian conversion, as well as later reformist clashes within the churches of Northern Europe, either took a lot longer* than ~5 years King Wymer has had…or did not go THAT smoothly—as seen in historic examples of wars of religion, major theological schisms, persecution of heretics, Armadas, etc…
*like generations longer, AND being sneaky about it, i.e. somehow deciding adding Eggs to Easter—and calling it Easter—as a church festival made spiritual sense…
📜🪶
I know I’m only 1.002 books into the entire series and I don’t even know if I’m reading them in the correct order, but I’m both fascinated and utterly lost and want to know so many more details about the hodgepodge of pseudo-historical politics of this world. Is any of this ever really clarified/gone into in more depth, perhaps in books set more firmly within the king’s court at Karadok after WBP and TUB?
📖📚🕯️👑