Been working on a book from the POV of Helen of Troy. Finally someone's actually reading the draft. Hoping for some input.
I don't know if I'll ever publish it or not, I just need to write it, either way.
Heh & I've done so much research, I probably know more about the Trojan War than Homer did; & know more about the Mycenaean world than I ever thought I would.
& even if I hadn't been doing the research for the book, the time period in question is hella interesting: the legendary war happened right around the same time as the Bronze Age Collapse.
Which was this massive collapse of multiple cities & civilizations around the Eastern Mediterranean in the 12th century BCE, & nobody quite knows why.
Mycenean states took a hit, the Hittite Empire fell, Egypt was invaded & never completely recovered, cities like Pylos & Ugarit were entirely wiped off the map & never repopulated, & this mysterious group called the Sea Peoples emerged & raided a bunch of places.
& as far as anyone can tell so far, it wasn't down to just one thing: there was some famine, but not widespread; there were raids by pirates or invaders, but not everywhere; there were some economic changes & natural disasters, but nothing that should've brought entire nations down...
@Impious_Jade
Sounds interesting. Love Greek mythology.
@JerseygirlinPhilly Thanks! The Trojan War story always struck me as something that takes place *around* Helen, & while she's an object of interest, she's not a main actor - she's acted upon, instead. I thought it'd be interesting to see what the story could be like from her POV.
@Impious_Jade How are you going to portray her relationship with Paris? Abduction or elopement?
@JerseygirlinPhilly I'm portraying it as elopement.
It's weird, because marriage by abduction was a thing in Bronze Age Greece, as far as anyone can tell; & an abduction wasn't always an unwilling thing on the part of the abductee.
@Impious_Jade I always thought of it as an elopement.
@JerseygirlinPhilly Yeah. I could see it go either way. The story is so different, depending on which way you go.
@Impious_Jade You're making marble. Time to start sculpting now. Congrats.
@Impious_Jade Great job! I’d love to read it someday!
@Impious_Jade Bronze Age collapse seems to be a hot topic these days. Sort of wonder why… 🤔
@Impious_Jade I did a paper in college on the depiction of sea peoples weapons at Medinet Habu and whether they could identify possible origins
@Impious_Jade well, it could have been the cascading results of the fall of the Minoan civilization set off by the massive volcanic eruption of Thera… eventually resulting in the fusion of various surviving groups into some kind of loosely federated invading force seeking permanent and hospitable territory
A book from Helen of Troy’s POV sounds wonderful. I love historical fiction.
@Impious_Jade Congrats keep at it! Sometimes you have to write just for yourself. I'm on the fourth draft of my book though I've been a bit slack the last year.
The story kicked around in my head for something like 20 or 25 years. I made lots of notes off & on but didn't actually start writing the narrative until about 3 years ago.
I now have a draft that's over 300 pages long. It's very rough & inconsistent, but it's a draft, so it's supposed to be that way.