When Thrones and Kingdoms are in Play

My guest this month is the wonderful Judith Starkston who writes historical fantasy set in the Bronze Age of the Greeks and Hittites. Her five novels bring women to the fore—whether the Trojan War captive Briseis or a remarkable Hittite queen whom history forgot, even though she ruled over one of the greatest empires of the ancient world.

Judith has spent too much time reading about and exploring the remains of the ancient world. She has degrees in classics from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Cornell. She lives in Davis, California with her husband and a rambunctious garden.

You can connect with Judith on her Website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok. Sign up to her newsletter for book news and a free griffin novella, The Scent of Slaughter and Love.

Judith’s latest release is Flights of Treason, the final book in her historical fantasy series about the Hittite queen. I asked Judith to give an insight into the inspiration and history behind the book. Please enjoy her post which reveals her approach to writing a challenging battle scene based on archaeological facts laced with magic. You can also catch up with a previous interview I did with Judith about Queen Puduhepa, the model for her fictional queen, Tesha.

Flights of Treason is available on Amazon. You can find the entire series here.

When Thrones and Kingdoms are in Play…

I began writing the true-life story of a remarkable Hittite queen because I admired her style of leadership and wanted to pull her from the dustbin of historical forgetfulness. Whether readers start at the beginning of my Tesha series with Priestess of Ishana, or jump into the latest release, the fourth and final book, Flights of Treason, I hope to immerse them in a world inspired by one of history’s least known empires and its most respected queen, the Bronze Age (1650-1200 BCE) Hittite kingdom stretching over what is today Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon. My series covers the years in this queen’s life when as a young woman she first stepped into the historical record and gradually rose to power.

A Hittite Queen

This Hittite queen was also a priestess who believed in what we call magic. I followed the premise that if the historic person thought something magical could happen, I’d let it happen. The fantastical elements grounded in Hittite culture gradually extended further into the imaginary over the series. For example, I introduced griffins, fantastic beasts found in Hittite artwork, as characters with their own realm and mythology. The result is a series that blends history and fantasy to portray a woman’s journey to sovereignty.

The series is not a tale of burning ambition or selfish striving to slash her way to the top. The historic woman’s actions and words (found on clay tablets written in cuneiform) had revealed to me a nuanced, subtle balance of self-interest and the needs of others—her family and the empire overall. She struggles with murky moral issues and doesn’t always come out on the “right” side of them, but she refuses to ignore those big uncomfortable questions. I find that a refreshing change for a story of thrones and power and for the “real” world of today.

This fourth book took me to a challenging place as a writer, an aspect of writing historical fiction that I’d managed to skirt around up to now, and one that placed me deep in my layered mix of history/archaeology on the one hand, and sorcery/fantasy on the other: the epic battle scene.

Placing women to the fore

I put women to the fore in my fiction, and therefore, in an ancient world setting, they have previously observed battles but not participated in them. In my first novel, Hand of Fire, set in the Trojan War, Briseis watches key battles, overwhelmed with emotional involvement but not wielding weapons. In the Tesha series, Tesha’s husband, a brilliant general, has gone off to do his thing at essential times. But in this book, everything comes to a moment of such crisis that no one can stand back, and Tesha has grown into a woman of many skills, including strategy and sorcery.

First off, I don’t like drenching scenes in blood and violence. Even in the context of war, a blood bath isn’t required. I think what readers care about is the fate of each now-familiar character as the battle unfolds. A good battle scene is more about emotion and keeping the reader on edge than it is about blood and guts. Or so I’ve built into my battle. Perhaps I’d call it “just enough” chopping, wounding, and violence. And this time, Tesha participates, although with her own, unusual skill set.

Here in this fourth book, the epic battle moment was set for me by the historic record. The location has been reasonably identified by archaeologists. Clay tablets, now excavated and translated, describe the battle and include at least one participant’s interpretation of what happened and how divine will played a part. One of the rules of my fiction has been to preserve the skeleton structure provided by the fragmentary “knowns” of this queen’s life. So I wrote into my plot this battle at this location.

An Epic Battle

These historical facts are still incredibly fragmentary, leaving a lot to be filled in, but they’re great for inspiration. From the most recent archaeological site reports, I found details about fortification walls that were stronger in one area than another. A river and cliffs. A dam. A meadow perfect for deploying an army, but also where the walls were strongest. A wall collapse and what might have caused it. I paired these “knowns” with the snippets found in the written record. The sword and spear warfare, the city siege, ancient engineering and battle plans all arose based on these details.

Sorcery and Demons

I added the elements of sorcery and demons that I’d woven into the series from Hittite and Egyptian mythology and religious beliefs. One of the aspects of this fourth book is the notion of an ensemble of heroes. No one alone can “save the day.” By the end of weeks of writing, I had an epic battle scene with a lot of participants, all with essential roles. I enjoyed balancing dueling sorcerers with duking-it-out armies, and a few other elements that would be spoilers to reveal. Keeping everyone’s contributions “equal” both toward the battle’s win or loss, and toward the reader’s engagement was a juggling act I’d never before tried on this scale. My brain hurt trying to pull it off. There were, of course, many edits. But in the end, it worked. Such fun.

I hope you’ll enjoy my series about a long-ignored woman in a patriarchal world who navigated into power, along with her extended group of family and friends, human and griffin. Just as griffins are a hybrid creature, part lion and part eagle, so my novels are a combination of painstakingly accurate history and wildly imaginative fantasy.

Treason threatens the thrones of the Hitolian Empire and the griffin realm. Can an unlikely ensemble of heroes save them?

As rulers of a vassal kingdom within the Hitolian Empire, Tesha and her husband Hattu have propped up a treacherous Great King. But balancing on the blade of a royal dagger is only half the problem. Unknown to them, Tesha’s blind sister is communicating with the king of the human-hating griffins.

Then hidden foes tip their lives toward disaster, and crises in both worlds collide.

The heroes fight battles with swords, claws, and sorcery. Will Tesha be forced to use the magic that might kill her daughter? Who truly unleashed these lethal strands of chaos? Will the empire—or Tesha’s family—survive?

Escape into the final book of this historical fantasy series, inspired by the true-life of a remarkable Hittite queen who ruled for decades over one of history’s most powerful empires.

“Starkston wraps history and magic together in an unforgettable package.”—the Book Review Crew

Thanks so much Judith. You’ve done an amazing job drawing the historical and mystical threads together across the series and definitely in that epic battle scene!

Flights of Treason is available on Amazon. You can find the entire series here.

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