Author’s Note

The Druid Chronicles is a historical fiction series set in Anglo-Saxon Britain during a time known alternatively as the early medieval period or the Dark Ages. Books One, Three, Four, and Five are primarily concerned with events that take place in AD 788. Book Two begins a generation earlier and recounts the events that set the main story in motion. While considerable liberty has been taken in adapting the geopolitics of the period to the needs of the story, it is generally true that:

• At the time in question, the Germanic invaders (who in this narrative will be referred to as Saxons) had conquered the southeastern lowlands, while indigenous Celts retained control in the mountainous northwest.
• The majority of native Britons had converted to Christianity by the end of the fourth century. The Saxon conversion was essentially complete by the late 600s.
• Before the conversion to Christianity, both ethnic groups were polytheistic, and elements of those earlier beliefs and practices persisted after that transition was nominally complete.

Atheldom and Derthwald, the Saxon kingdoms in which most of the series’ actions take place, are literary creations, as is Llwddawanden, a secluded valley in which it is imagined that a secretive Druid cult has continued its traditional practices despite the otherwise relentless spread of Christianity.

About Druids: Although much has been written about Druids, there is little verifiable information regarding what this apparently elite and possibly priestly class of Celts believed or what ritual practices they may have carried out. For the purpose of this series, it is conjectured that Druids were indeed priests and priestesses and that the Druids of Llwddawanden were matriarchal, subscribing to the belief that:

• There was a supreme mother goddess at the apex of an extensive pantheon of gods and goddesses.
• The spirit of this supreme deity inhabited the body of their cult’s chief priestess.
• At the chief priestess’s death, the goddess’s spirit passed on to her daughter, if she had one, or else to a designated member of the priestesses’ inner circle.

There is not, to the author’s knowledge, any evidence that a community of practicing Druids persisted as late as the eighth century in the British Isles or elsewhere, and there is no reason to think that the views and practices ascribed to the Druids of Llwddawanden have any basis in reality.