Tom Holland

So it's kind of like Roman Italy in the 5th century AD with an ineffectual Roman emperor surrounded by Gothic guards.

Completely, and that's... Do you know, I actually thought about that while we were recording the last episode.

The parallel with kind of barbarian mercs who are working for you.

And the difference, of course, is that the Spanish are going to come in such overwhelming numbers, I suppose.

Also...

that they feel no aspiration to become an Inca.

Exactly.

So that's the other big difference.

Yeah.

There's no place in the Spanish worldview to tolerate the cults and the gods, for instance, of the Inca, whereas the German mercenaries, they all became Christian.

Well, the German mercenaries want to become Romans, don't they, to some degree?

Whereas the Spanish have no desire to become Peruvians.

No.

And actually, at the end of this coronation ceremony, Tupac Cualpa gives Pizarro ceremonially this white feathered headdress and says, this is a tribute to my overlord, Charles V. And that is a sign of where power really lies in this dynamic.

Now, in a lot of accounts of the fall of the Incas, this is when the story ends.

Atahualpa is dead, the Spanish have the gold, the Spanish have a puppet emperor, the Spanish have won.

So they finish without any mention of the... The percussion-based death.

Do you remember that from your children's book?

It would have been.

I mean, it would have been tremendous.