The Alphabet in Historical Fiction Challenge: C

We had some extra time to do this letter and I've finally found the time to post mine!

Each fortnight the ladies at Historical Tapestry will post a new letter of the alphabet and you do a blog post about a work of historical fiction that has that letter:

• as the first letter in the title
• as the first letter of the author's first or last name
• the first letter of a character's first or last name
• the first letter of a place where an historical event took place

So here is my post for the second letter of this challenge: C

The Winter King, Bernard Cornwell

From the back cover:

It takes a remarkable writer to make an old story as fresh and compelling as the first time we heard it. With The Winter King, the first volume of his magnificent Warlord Chronicles, Bernard Cornwell finally turns to the story he was born to write: the mythic saga of King Arthur.

The tale begins in Dark Age Britain, a land where Arthur has been banished and Merlin has disappeared, where a child-king sits unprotected on the throne, where religion vies with magic for the souls of the people. It is to this desperate land that Arthur returns, a man at once utterly human and truly heroic: a man of honor, loyalty, and amazing valor; a man who loves Guinevere more passionately than he should; a man whose life is at once tragic and triumphant.

As Arthur fights to keep a flicker of civilization alive in a barbaric world, Bernard Cornwell makes a familiar tale into a legend all over again.

This was the first of Cornwell's books that I ever read and it was positively remarkable. Instead of the usual Arthurian story that is full of Merlin and magic, knights in shining armor, and Camelot, we have a a story that breathes life into a possible historical basis for the legend behind Arthur. If you are looking for a fantasy or romance, this is not the Arthur book for you. The story is told through the eyes of Derfel, a Saxon child raised by the Britons and a ward in Merlin's household. He works his way up through the ranks to become a great solider and one of Arthur's close friends. Through his eyes we see an Arthur that really "could have been." He is not a king but a powerful lord. He is a great man and respected but just a man with his own faults and weaknesses; Merlin is not beside him helping out with lots of magical spells. We see a gritty, harsh, dirty 5th Century England full of superstition, violence, and bloodshed, only a generation or so removed from the Roman occupation. The descriptions of scenery, battles, etc are positively amazing and you will feel like you are in the middle of it all. Cornwell has included characters that we are familiar with but some of them (Lancelot in particular) are given very different personalities or rolls in the overall story (Mordred for example is the true king, Uther's grandson, but a crippled infant, while Arthur is Uther's bastard son who has come to protect the child). Cornwell includes a few maps and character and places lists at the beginning which will really help you keep up with who is who and where they are, since he does not use well known names for most of the locations. I think what I enjoyed most about this story (and the next two in the series) was that they are written in such a way as to be incrediably believable; I can really believe that THIS Arthur existed.

If you enjoy this book, make sure that you read the following novels in the series: Enemy of God and Excalibur.