Writing about Achilleus and Ares was a thing waiting to happen for a long time. When I approached my brilliant co-writer Raev Gray with the idea, the Iliad and Troy had been sitting in my brain for something like 25 years. I grew up on the stuff – a collection of the mythology was one of the best gifts I ever got as a kid. Sex, passions, violence. I inhaled it all.
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Achilleus was one of my favourites – the greatest warrior who ever lived. His rage at the death of his ‘friend’ Patroklos, his bottomless, sacrilegious revenge had to have roots in love, I never doubted that. When I studied Ancient History (yup, got a degree in that), I learnt about the various interpretations of that relationship. “Did they or didn’t they” wasn’t a question that would have interested the Ancient Greeks.
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I have to admit I was pretty excited when they put “Troy” onto the big screen in 2004. I’ve seen the – admittedly pretty trashy – film a dozen times. I even own it. But it never satisfied me. A million versions of the Iliad, and a million versions that never got the whole point – the point I saw in it.
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The big question that Achilleus faces is this: live long and raise a family, become a well-respected elder and king, or live short and win lots and lots of glory. As we all know from Homer’s story, he chooses the short life, and glory. Then his friend/lover/comrade Patroklos dies.
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And the question is – have you made the right decision, Achilleus? I never doubted that he’d sacrifice his own life for greatness – but would he sacrifice Patroklos? If he could give it all back in return for Patroklos’ life, would he?
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And that’s the core of all romance fiction, isn’t it? How much are we willing to sacrifice? What are we really made of?
- Aleksandr Voinov
http://www.aleksandrvoinov.com/
http://www.aleksandrvoinov.blogspot.com/
FaceBook – Twitter: vashtan
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Wow! How beautifully said. It is all about what we are willing to sacrifice to have what is most important to us, either as writers or as people. Nothing else really matters in the end. How poignantly put, Aleks. Thank you for that insight.
I suspected you had to have a degree in some kind of history! You are too good at portraying it for simple interest.
@Brita: That degree isn’t actually *that* useful – it makes me more aware of possible errors, and I actually kept away from writing historicals for a long time, thinking I couldn’t possibly do them justice. But I’m slowly coming out of the woods there.