History Rhymes: Guy Gavriel Kay's new novel begins with a poet protagonist and a royal murder
In Guy Gavriel Kay's new novel, Written on the Dark, there is a segment where the powerful but ruthless Duke de Barratin is leading a group of men through the countryside and stops to get a blessing from a cleric. Instead, the cleric chides the Duke for the chaos he is causing, which triggers the royal's nasty sense of entitlement.
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In January, the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde made headlines after she gave a sermon at the interfaith prayer service following Donald Trump's second presidential inauguration. She called on Trump to show compassion towards the marginalized groups that he was already intending to target and persecute.
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Trump and his followers went ballistic. Meanwhile, an American book reviewer whom Kay has known for years received an advance-reading copy of Written on the Dark the very next day.
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'I said 'You know I wrote that a year-and-a-half, two years ago,'' says Kay, in a Zoom interview with Postmedia. 'It is an example of history not repeating but rhyming. I wasn't making any direct (reference.) I couldn't have been, I'm not prophetic in that way. I wasn't making any direct association with right now. But he said he didn't sleep that night, thinking about history and power and the people who push back against power. That effect, I love to achieve.'
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Kay is a veteran novelist who uses reflections of historical backdrops for his fantasy fiction. The famous quote 'history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes' is one of his favourites. It guides his work.
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'I like looking into history and finding things that evoke, associate with, trigger thoughts about the present without trying to pin anything down to specific repetitions,' he says.
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Kay's 16th novel is set in a world meant to reflect a turbulent Medieval France, called Ferrieres in the book, during the Hundred Years War. His hero, Thierry Villar, is a tavern poet who becomes entangled in the dangerous power struggles among members of royalty after he is enlisted by the king's provost to help investigate the brutal murder of the Duke of Montereau, the king's brother and advisor. The country teeters towards civil war as the powers behind the assassination become clear.
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So, yes, Written on the Dark begins with a tantalizing murder mystery, although it doesn't take long for the reader to learn who the culprit is. Kay says the early sparks of inspiration for the novel came from rereading Dutch historian Johan Huizinga's 1919 classic Autumntide of the Middle Ages, which had just been reissued as a handsome, illustrated coffee table book. It is about 14th- and 15th-century France and Burgundy, a time and place that Kay had not spent much time evoking in previous novels.
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