WHAT SHOULD GOOD FICTION on THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE CONSIST OF?
that her minions were probably better equipped by experience to run the empire than Constantine's supporters. These certainly had their own agendas and were surely using him. The truth can be more complex than a simple fiction written only to entertain.
But here is where I have a problem not only with the writers of historical fiction but with historians. Because it could have been does not mean it was and I acknowledge it in an afterword whenever I take liberties with the record. I go even further in Antoninawith the very serious assertion that Procopius was a eunuch, not merely explaining it in the afterword but footnoting it (as an optional spoiler) even though footnoting risks turning off the reader looking only for entertainment.
So, the primary purpose in both novels was to create interest in the empire among those folk who know little of it except the name Byzantium. I do think that Byzantium is getting more attention in school than in the past but for middle aged adults with a general education their eyes glaze over and they think of perfumes or china patterns, or at best of conniving eunuchs and darkened churches.
If there is plenty of room for the novelist to make reasonable extrapolations about Constantine, there is less in the case of Antonina and Belisarius. But here too one can read between the lines of the historical record (primarily the three books of Procopius) and humanize these epic characters. One contributor to an online review site criticized me for not making Belisarius out to be a plaster saint. Specifically he objected to my having Antonina spank him. But wait a moment. Besides being fiction this is not an unreasonable extrapolation. If Procopius was not in their bedroom, he did insist that Belisarius was always under his wife's power to control, either with spells or caresses. If so that minor scene thrown into Antonina to lighten up A Byzantine Slut is entirely justifiable. Belisarius would not be the first powerful man who relaxed with a dominating woman. The critic could have made a more serious charge when I made Procopius out to be a eunuch of which there is no evidence. Although that was payback for his slanders of Antonina I can say in defense that I am not the only person who has suspected it. For certain Procopius was jealous of her hold over the general which the prissy aristocrat seemed unwilling or perhaps unable to understand.