A tale as old as time.
When I hear that expression, I think of The Iliad, a story first passed down orally, and then shifting like the sands every time it was transcribed and translated over thousands of years. When I sat down to begin drafting Blood of Troy, I read multiple variations of The Iliad and Odyssey, and watched various TV shows and movies about it, too. Each had their minor and major differences from one another.
It was important to me to do many things when drafting this story: cherish the characters in ways that are authentic while bringing originality to a tale that has been passed down for thousands of years, flip readers’ preconceived notions, and respect the history and the character of Helen. As I said in my previous author’s note in Daughter of Sparta, history has been written by the winners, each finding is up to interpretation, and nobody knows what the truth is. Which begs the question: What is the true story of Helen of Troy?
At one point in Daughter of Sparta, Apollo tells Daphne that she will never truly know him, and that much is true of any Greek myth, particularly the Trojan War. In actuality, we do not know much about the Trojan War, other than that archaeological evidence points to a war between the Achaeans (known then as Ahhiyawa) and Troy (known then as the city of Ilius/Wilusa), and that the famous city was on the northern banks of ancient Turkey. This is a time and place steeped in both magic and realism, when science wasn’t yet developed enough to offer rational explanations for things, so people spun the myths we hear today to explain the phenomena they were experiencing. It is also important to consider who would be spinning such tales. Even The Iliad changes depending on the translator. It is also important to recognize the liberties I have taken with the story while acknowledging that perhaps these are not liberties at all but much closer to the truth than we know, with our limited knowledge of what actually befell people on the shores of Troy and the heights of Mount Olympus.
And so with Blood of Troy, I sought to create a story that was both authentic and original, that does not diminish the myth that has persevered for many millennia, and that would still be a new experience for readers. To do so, I accrued a stack of sources almost as tall as I am. In addition to the (what felt like endless) list of books and articles I used for reference in Daughter of Sparta, I can thank the insight and wisdom found in Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman; The Trojan War: A New History by Barry Strauss; Helen of Troy: The Story Behind the Most Beautiful Woman in the World by Bettany Hughes; A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War by Victor Davis Hanson; The Histories by Herodotus; Women at War in the Classical World by Paul Chrystal; The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War by Caroline Alexander; Warfare in the Classical World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons, Warriors, and Warfare in the Ancient Civilizations of Greece and Rome by John Warry; and Battles of the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Chronological Compendium of 667 Battles to 31 BC, from the Historians of the Ancient World by John Drogo Montagu.