What I, personally, think is important in a period-based piece is irrelevant to your story. Seriously. Write the story you want/need to write, in the style you want to write in. Just be aware that I, personally, and some other readers may not enjoy it.

But since you asked...

I, personally, heard an alarm or two going off as soon as I read "alternative lifestyles". There ARE no alternative lifestyles in the 11th century. There is The Lifestyle -- which may be less strict than you imagine in some ways: this isn't the Victorian era -- but anything else is shocking sin. Saying "alternative" implies that there are choices or options. As far as I know, people simply didn't think that way about such things.

It isn't enough to imagine that people thought the same way we do, except that the Church and its rules were stricter. They really didn't -- they literally couldn't -- think about certain things as we do. (Try convincing a random 1820's South Carolinian that slavery is a crime against humanity, for instance. *Does. Not. Compute.*)

I, personally, do not like to read modern-day stories dressed up in armor and surcoats and pointy princess hats. I like to read historical fiction that seems well-rooted in its historical context. Obviously my own story breaks this rule a lot -- both because I didn't take it seriously enough at the outset (I hope I am getting more realistic in recent times, however) and because I simply make mistakes in my own understanding of how things were, as François can attest.

But an author who violates my own understanding of how things were, incorrect as it may sometimes be, loses lots of points with me. With readers who really enjoy historical fiction, you violate their understanding at your peril. Even the fact that I continue to write about fireplaces in the 11th century would surely turn a lot of hard-core historical fiction readers off of KoL totally! Though I personally am a lot more forgiving about technical details like that than I am about people behaving in inappropriate manners for their time period.

Anyway, on to the specific question. Godefroy is an excellent choice for an example. He's the sort of easy-going fellow who rolls with the punches, yet is very respectful of rank and so on. Marrying Leila was the boldest thing he ever did, to be sure.

But I wouldn't go so far as to say that he didn't care what people would think. If the roles were reversed, and Leof had been keeping Lady Eadgith as a sort of child-rearing prisoner, never invited into public, and put Leila (not his lawful wife by the only definition Godefroy allows) in her place... Godefroy would not have had an affair with Eadgith. (Some people might, but not Godefroy.) However, Leila was fair game. She was Leof's discarded mistress, nothing more. To Godefroy's mind, lord or not, Leof had no claim on her.

I'm also not sure whether he would have personally married her if he hadn't had Conrad already. A man like Godefroy likes his heir to be white and Christian and of irreproachable ancestry. Primogeniture means it is not such a big deal for the kids of the second wife.

As for the Odile question... my biggest objection is this part:

And suppose that they are both fundamentally opposed to marriage and want to live together as common-laws

That actually seems a lot less likely to me than the idea of a ménage à trois.

Why wouldn't they want to marry? There's no anti-patriarchal, anti-Clerical movement in the 11th century. (Or medieval era in general.) There's no feminist movement telling women to refuse the "love, honor, and obey" part of the vows. There's no concept of being a "non-practicing Catholic" or whatever. This is the kind of idea that would be so foreign to a medieval person that I would put the book down at that point.

Now, that said, lots of people DIDN'T get married in a church. In my era the concept of getting married in the presence of a priest was itself pretty novel. They didn't actually marry in churches yet at all -- they gathered in the groom's or bride's house and had a feast, and pronounced vows, and traded cows, and so on.

But people did get married. For plenty of common people it looked pretty much like what we would call common law marriage: they just started living together, with more or less ceremony, but they were married in the eyes of their society, the eyes of the law, and the eyes of the Church. So I am not even sure that a state of "common-law married, but not really married" is even conceivable to them. They're either living in adultery (i.e. there's some impediment to their marriage, such as an existing marriage) or they're effectively married.

All that assumes the accord of the guardians of the persons involved, of course. If a girl ran off, her father could drag her home by her hair. She had no right to decide for herself. And since marriage among the nobility is an affair of alliances and property exchanges and not of love, that seems very likely if it were Odile and Godefroy. He would probably spank her with a rod while he was at it.

Also, people were much more profoundly impacted by the opinions of their neighbors at this period. (This is still true, though perhaps to a lesser extent thanks to TV and so on, in very small, isolated towns today.) This is particularly true in my period, where neighbors were literally LEGALLY responsible for each other's actions; and was particularly true in rural areas. You just could not get away with too much naughty business, unless you were up and determined to be the village crazy woman and didn't care if kids dared each other to throw dog shit at your door and the people jeered at you whenever you went to market.

I guess my point is that I (personally!) don't agree with the premise of your title question: "Character vs. Time Period". I don't think you can divorce the character from the time period. The time period contributes to making the character what he is. (And what SHE is. And what she WANTS. And what she DOES.) Otherwise they're just modern-day people in chain mail and pointy princess hats.

See, Godefroy wants his daughter to be happy, but he also doesn't want her to burn in Hell for eternity, and he doesn't want her to be humiliated in public and called a whore, and he doesn't want HIMSELF to be humiliated in public, and he doesn't want to lose whatever alliance he has planned, etc. I don't think any of that makes him heartless or cruel. He is thinking like an 11th century man surrounded by 11th century society. Telling her "It's OK honey, I just want you to be happy" would be like... I don't know, a loving dad telling his crackhead daughter to keep on whoring herself out to buy drugs, because it's what she wants and what makes her happy. OK, it's not as physically dangerous, but it's still a really caustic situation for an 11th century girl to be in. A loving 11th century dad would step in and save his daughter from the kind of life you describe.

Obviously there's a limit to how much IT'S THE TIMES!!! you can get away with. I have problems with that myself. Poor Sigefrith, who may have perfectly normal sexual attractions for a medieval man, seems like a borderline pedophile to us. There may be nothing whatsoever wrong with Sigefrith's head, but can I let him get away with that? Will my readers put up with that?

The way the affair with Maire went down: she murdered someone, but she was a noble woman, and she killed a servant, so it wasn't a big deal, and the biggest question was "What is her husband going to do about it?" (Since her husband is her lord and master after all.) Will my readers accept that?

But to me, there is also a limit to how much you can ignore THE TIMES. I think it's perfectly OK to write about issues such as unwed mothers and homosexuality and so on, but I like to see that treated in its historical context. Either of those two topics would be hugely problematic in the 11th century -- which makes them excellent material for stories.

But in my opinion -- as someone who is writing a *somewhat* serious historical story -- you have to address them in terms of their time period. Not just for the purposes of the people around them, but even for the characters themselves. If, for instance -- and I'M JUST SAYIN -- Cubby turns out to be gay, he's not going to be feeling too keen about that. He's not going to be loud and proud. He's going to be one messed-up kid.

Still, as I said at the top, write your own story. You're not writing mine, with its unique blend of ponderous historical authenticity and Sims-based utterly anachronistic silliness, so you don't have to follow my rules.

Like I said, it's your story. Only you can tell it. And you have your own goals for it, which are not mine, etc. I seriously didn't want to discourage you in any way; but since you asked for my opinion, I figured it would be more useful to give it than to limit myself to the "It's your story" line.

Historical fiction is the only "genre fiction" that I have read. Otherwise I have mostly stuck to reading classic novels. And even then, I'm not reading the latest throwaway historical novel of the week, but heavyweight stuff like Colleen McCullough or Margaret George which is just as likely to find itself shelved in the plain-old-fiction section. So I have pretty high expectations for fiction and historical fiction in particular. My Mom is a librarian who brought home books that "came across the desk" that she thought I should read, so I was raised on a healthy literary diet.

I do stand by my assertion that -- in serious literature -- you can't divorce the character from his time period. Nor his upbringing, his social class, his family dynamics, nor anything else that goes into making a real person WHO HE IS.

There have always been rebels and people who have gone against the grain, and almost by definition those are the people who we tend to write about. Stories happen to those people.

But a person still formulates his rebellion in terms of the society he's rebelling against, and that society responds in terms of itself. The danger in putting a modern free-thinker in an ancient society is that you can see the dotted lines where you cut him out of one setting and plunked him into another. (Unless time travel is the point of your story, like Diana Gabaldon's books. And Claire had it hard at times, holding her tongue and behaving herself!) Such characters are bound to seem to underdeveloped, because there is literally nothing in their background that can be seen to have made them what they are.

HOWEVER nothing says you have to write serious literature. Not in Naroni or not at all. Fun and funny is also a worthy goal. Would a real medieval Florian gad about in his skivvies so much? I don't know, but it would be a real shame if he stopped.

Oh yeah, I totally agree on you with the choice of literature there--I'm not at all well-read in the historical fiction genre, but I can safely say that from my experience, realistic, 20th century fiction is not my favorite read for the simple reason that in today's world, it's just too plausible. Granted, there are a few exceptions (like, Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex was quite possibly the best book I ever read, probably because it played so heavily into genetics and I'm a nerd like that), but my life has mainly revolved around the fantasy genre... and RPG video games

Well, that and the crappy Christian paperbacks that my elementary/junior high pretty much exclusively kept in stock. I lost my taste for reading in general some time between grades six and seven, but retained the interest in writing, probably as a rebellion against the fact that they only ever assigned us essays

But I wouldn't say I have any problem with reading about people who think like myself. The thing I really don't like is reading about someone who--in addition to thinking like myself--practically lives my own life and someone has decided that would make a good story, because it definitely wouldn't. I only know one person whose life would make a good story, and he's one in a million there, I think.

But at the end of the day, I think I'm satisfied with the way my online stuff is going. I don't think Naroni would really work if it was at all serious. The fact that it's mainly light-hearted is really all it's got going for it, and I can live with that. Gives me a nice break from the two novels I'm picking away at, which are both darker texts (granted, one considerably moreso than the other).

Anyway, I think I might have phrased my original question incorrectly. Like, if I was writing a storyline about a gay couple, given the lovely date that appears at the top of the post, it definitely wouldn't be "Gay couple gets married and lives happily ever after with everyone supporting them". It would be more along the lines of "Two men/women, both who ended up marrying women/men because of politics/companionship/cover/etc., see each other in secret. A handful of people know, with varying degrees of comfort, but they try not to widen that circle of informed parties". Still totally implausible in the 12th century? Of course. But not quite as implausible as the first scenario, and more importantly, more of a challenge

When you know a person well enough, you can easily create a story out of their lives. A story doesn't necessarily have to be about extraordinary events in a person's life, but rather, about ordinary people who appear extraordinary until you get to know them and see why they do what they do, and why they are the way they are. Which is pretty much what Jenny pointed out. :nanimal:

And I completely agree with you on why we read fantasy or historical fiction. It's perhaps a genre aimed at people who are introverted and like to observe people rather than interact with them, and I count myself among that demographic.

I agree with you on fiction being about characters and understanding the human mind, but here's another question: isn't that the way we view fiction now? With globalization and the expansion of communication, and now that we know about a lot of cultures and we are encouraged (intolerant politics notwithstanding ) to understand so many different things, isn't it natural that we view fiction as another means of understanding people and humanity?

Take the Middle Ages, for example. Fiction was used largely to appeal to people, to convince, to persuade. I'm saying this because I've been doing some research on the vikings and I came across this paragraph that seemed relevant to this whole discussion:

Courting the woman was only natural, but frowned upon by the woman's family as unseemly. Courting might take the form of visits by the man to the woman's house, conversation with the woman, or poems of praise to the woman. While such poems of praise were prohibited by law (Grágás K 238), there are plenty of examples of them, so the law must have been routinely ignored.

(Emphasis mine)

I know poetry and fiction are not the same thing, but this stuck with me. I mean, they forbade poetry? I'd really like to know what was going on in the minds of the people who thought it was indecent.

Sorry if my thoughts are completely disorganized, by the way.

Oooh, that would be so romantic! Maybe someone could tell Gwynn about that while Finn was near, and he'd hear and write her an illegal poem. *swoons*

Apparently it didn't keep them from writing poetry at all, but I suppose they forbade it because if the man's courting was not followed by a proposal, the woman's family was offended and it could end badly

It's from this site: http://www.hurstwic.org/history/text/history.htm
In the "Families and Demographics" page

I guess bards will start showing up after great battles are won, no?

This was a great thread and I think that some really interesting points were raised but as someone who enjoys reading KoN and who never picks up a work of historical fiction because it is historical (ie someone who doesn't dive into historical fiction specifically looking for a richness of historical detail though it does enhance my enjoyment and understanding of the novel as a whole), I say go for whatever intrigue that seems like it would work for your story. I hate to speak for all of your readers, but I'm certain that they aren't reading Naroni for the historical context. We read for the humor and warmth and Florian's perpetual nudity. That is to me the engine of the story. Well, maybe not Florian's nudity. That fits under the duel columns of humor and warmth but you know what I mean.

Very interesting talk ! I think that an element of answer is that it is fiction. As such, I think fictional rules are more important than historical rules. We have a perfect example with the Kingdom of Lothere. The story takes place in real world's 11th century but there are elves But we believe it since it was said by the author that elves existed in this valley. And angels and demons too. The most important thing, I think, is to stay faithful with the universe you built. If Lothere decides that there are elves, there are elves. But if one day (and I do not presume she had such bad writing skills to even think about that ) she got bored by the elves and write "and there were no elves" suddenly, everybody would be in shock because (despite the lack of sexy shirtless elves) it would be a break with the truth of her universe. I don't know if I can completely write what I mean to, but I think that fictional matter is more important in the case of historical novel (even if you can't obviously add a cell-phone in the hand of Sigefrith !).

~The Princess Ogive Get More Chapters Foundation : waiting for more karma~