A wanton demoness posing as an English aristocrat, rampages across Henry VIII’s Cambridge using her penchant for bringing out others’ wickedest urges, to debauch and defile everyone in her path. The envious are seduced to collaborate, the virtuous are persecuted to lose faith, and everyone over 18 gets their freak on. To endure, her survivors, including an earnest young tutor and his students, are forged into more passionate, tenuous versions of themselves.
This world begins with the actual historical record of natural events, people, and geographic locations in the early modern period when it is set, right down to what I was able to learn with the resources available to me of fires, improvements, and reconstructions of specific buildings such as the Doge’s Palace in Venice. It then adds supernatural dimensions, creatures, and plots *not* reported in any verifiable histories of the time. After much consideration of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and ancient pagan ideas about hell (most of them considered apocryphal or heretical within their respective religious traditions), I threw out most of the specific historical theories and proceeded to incorporate a physical realm from ideas about virtue and vice that would be widely recognized in at least most Western traditions. The result shares some terminology with Dante, but its relation to Dante’s inferno would be a challenge to many of his (and the Christian theologians’ who influenced him) ideas. I hope it will feel familiar while encouraging readers to seriously reconsider what concepts of hell tell us about how we live our lives.
In most respects, the natural human world in the story remains as true to known, actual historical events, people, and locations of the 16th Century as I could make it. Rather than altering known history, or making additions inconsistent with it, I tried to add details consistent with everything we do know. For an example of an event, the story includes an acqua alta in Venice on October 31, 1517. Historical records mention such an event in 1517, but I could not find a specific date for it. The date I picked is neither the most nor least likely, but possible. As an example of people, Earls of Warwick were created both before and after the date of the story; but the title was vacant during the time of the story. The location where Fensmere Manor is set did have buildings in the 16th century which were subsequently destroyed, and has been the site of a country home, but I did not find specific information about the buildings that existed at the time of the story. Some features of the manor are a bit early compared with when they became common in England, but they were possible and known at the time.
The liberties knowingly taken with the historical record of the natural world are narrow, idiosyncratic, egregious, and intentional; although they are not always what you might expect. For example, there were actually dildoes and other sex toys in the sixteenth century; and even predecessors of corsets and high heels. But not the actual corsets and stiletto heels as depicted in some of the AI generated images. In addition to being a matter of taste, there are practical problems with the actual dress of the time that would interfere with steamy scenes. Not hygiene–several historical sources insist people of the time were as clean as their technology and station allowed them to be, regardless of what things had been like 200 years before, or became again in the time of Versailles. Rather, as an example, the sources indicate extravagant women’s fashions, rather than consisting of complete garments, could have different sections that were laboriously pinned together and effectively assembled into what appeared to be complete garments. That sounds like quite an impediment to passion, and perhaps even an absolute bar to women cavorting away from their own chambers (imagine what she would look like in the morning, walking home with clothes pinned together by her paramour rather than her skilled lady’s maid…).
All that said, in taking certain liberties with history, I take comfort from the fact we are learning more about the renaissance and early reformation periods all the time, often upending assumptions about what was and was not possible. Some years ago, an entire book about medieval society was titled and marketed based on the fact that women didn’t wear underpants during the medieval and early modern periods. Then, a few years ago, excavations at an Italian castle unearthed a huge cache of underwear, including women’s underpants, from the period. I doubt a true stiletto would have been technologically achievable in the early 1500s, but blockier high heels would have been, even if we don’t see examples of them. Another respect in which I have altered history, but take comfort from the recent discoveries of social historians, is the age of consent. In Tudor England, as in parts of the United States until quite recently (and perhaps even today), people under the age of 18 could be legally married. In practice, however, there are indications underage marriages were rarely practiced; and when they were, it was typically for purposes of diplomacy, business, or estate-planning, not love or even friendship. Parents didn’t want their children being married before they were ready; and nobody thought it would be a good idea for children who couldn’t even support themselves yet, to be getting married or having children. Accordingly, in this world, the age of consent is 18 for all purposes.