Elodie Harper

a lose-lose game?

Do you continue the cycle of violence, this endless trading in atrocities, or do you seek a compromise?

For me, that was actually the heart of the book and the source of my fascination with the story of Boudicca's daughters and the particular daughter that I chose to focus on.

was what might that relationship with Rome have looked like afterwards?

We know there were these high-profile Roman figures like Togedubnus, like Cartimandua, who collaborated with Rome.

We know there was Caraticus batting around in the Roman capital doing his thing, living the high life, not living the high life.

Yeah, how did people adapt?

How did they compromise?

What might that have felt like emotionally to compromise if you were the daughter of Boudicca?

That's what they think gets me.

They must have been frozen.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely fair enough, I think.

And then Caraticus is some extraordinary figure in the middle, the rebel who's brought to Rome in chains but manages to convince Claudius to free him and then lives a retired life in Rome.

It's extraordinary.

And I think the thing I also wanted to explore with

Selina is that it was incredibly common at this time for conquered people to, women in particular, be obliged to marry Roman settlers or Roman veterans.

And so the relationships become even more murky, morally grey and problematic.

And I do think that

It's so tempting with the distance of history to tell stories of goodies and baddies and heroic narrative arcs that we can feel good about as opposed to thinking about just how psychologically messy this period must have been.

also potentially for some of the Romans as well.