Finding Inspiration for a Novel Series in History Class

As a freshman at Dartmouth College, I took several upper-level history courses. This wasn’t because I was an advanced student but because J. C. Adams, one of the school’s great professors, was retiring and it was the only chance I had to take his courses.

(Where Is My History in Regency Romance?)

So, by my senior year, although I had more than enough history credits to graduate, I still needed to take an entry-level history course to complete the college’s requirement. I chose Medieval Studies 101. We students called the course “Kings and Queens,” and it was taught by Professor “Chuckling” Charlie Wood.

When I took my seat in his class, Wood asked, “What are you doing here?” He knew I’d already completed an upper-level course on the subject.

“Filling in a pre-requisite.”

He chuckled (hence the nickname). “Well, just don’t fall asleep on me. It sets a bad example.”

The thing is, he was a great professor. He was as entertaining as he was informative. Rather than teach students what happened in history, he pushed us to discover why events happened the way they happened.

One of our assignments was to read The Song of Roland, an epic poem about one of Charlemagne’s greatest knights who is betrayed and left to die at the Roncesvalles Pass in the Pyrenees. Despite my years as a history major, I’d never read it. And after finishing the assignment, I was surprised that it wasn’t very famous. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey before it, Roland is oral history that was handed down through the ages and finally written down for posterity.

I swore then, that if I ever wrote a novel, it would be based on The Song of Roland.

Years passed. I married, had children, and had a successful career. I always thought about writing what I called “The Roland Novel” but began to suspect I’d never get the chance. My life was too busy for such an undertaking.

One day, to my great surprise, I was offered a sabbatical. I knew it’d be my only opportunity to write a novel. But thinking about writing a novel and actually doing it are two different things. For one, as oral history, The Song of Roland didn’t jibe with what really happened.

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I had to make a choice: Write the fantastic story of Roland or write a story based on the historical facts available. I chose the latter.

Researching the history proved to be another problem. Few history books compellingly covered the time period. (I got a kick out of finding one written by Charlie Wood.) Yet, even after finding several good sources, I couldn’t find the beginning of the story. I kept looking for an excellent place to start the tale—and came up empty. I started working backward in time trying to piece together a compelling storyline.

I moved from Charlemagne’s generation to his parent’s generation and finally found it in the wake of Charles Martel’s death (Charlemagne’s grandfather). Martel’s daughter, Hiltrude, fled his court in the middle of the night to seek out an enemy’s love. She crossed half a continent to reach him. Historians called it “the scandal of the eighth century.”

That was a story I could tell. I began to write, and, once I started, I couldn’t stop. Anvil of God, Wheel of the Fates, and Crown of a King came out one after another, and yet, after all that Charlemagne is still only three years old.

I have yet to write The Roland Novel, but I finally can see it on the horizon. Unfortunately, Charlie Wood is no longer alive to read it. It’s too bad because I know for sure that it would have made him laugh.

Check out J. Boyce Gleason’s Anvil of God here:

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