 Statia Mitela who features in ‘The Idealist’, the third HEROICA story, a dual timeline story, is undoubtedly rash. But she’s also courageous and altruistic.
Unlike the two other heroines featuring in HEROICA, she isn’t serving in the military, but is a senator and head of the powerful Mitela family in the mid 19th century. She has a daughter Leonia.
The Idealist is set in a turbulent time of revolutions. The 19th century, which began with the Napoleonic wars, Nelson’s invincible navy and the Battle of Waterloo, saw British and European society and economies transformed by 1900, largely due to scientific advances and industrialisation, but equally to social moments and reforms.
But 1848 was the year of revolutions in Europe; many of the events spread into 1849. In Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian politician, philosopher, activist and a lead architect of the Risorgimento, the movement to unite Italy’s many small states and dukedoms into one nation.
Success on the path to unification was followed by failure followed by success followed by failure, but gradually states and cities in the Italian Peninsula merged into larger blocks that eventually came together as one Italian state in 1871.
One significant step was the founding of a new Roman Republic in February 1849. Statia Mitela, in distant Roma Nova, was excited by the return of the ancient capital as the centre of a new republic organised on Ancient Roman lines. But it only survived until July that same year. Desperate to save the principal creator of that republic – Mazzini – at any cost, she resolved to ride to Rome to save him. But naïvely, she forgot about the political pressures on Roma Nova at the time and the consequences of her actions.
Statia stood up for her ideals and had the courage to take steps to act according to them. But things don’t always turn out as we hope.
Discover much more about Statia’s story in HEROICA
Buy HEROICA here
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. JULIA PRIMA and EXSILIUM, set in the late 4th century, tell the story of Roma Nova’s foundation. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity and Double Pursuit start a new contemporary thriller series. The third, Double Stakes is now out.
Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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 In the second HEROICA story, Honoria Mitela is a Pretorian Guard soldier in 17th century Roma Nova. She’s achieved the rank of prefect (praefectus), a senior commander. Grades and ranks still reflect the classic Roman Empire ones, something that will change in the 19th century to a mixture of classic and the equivalents of other Western army ranks. But for now, there are legates, prefects and tribunes.
Brought up in one of the ancient, established families, she knows Germanic (from her tutors) and Ottoman Turkish (from her nursemaid/maid). We learn that away from her military duties, she lives on a farm and estate at Castra Lucilla in the south and enjoys breeding horses.
Castra Lucilla, named after one of Roma Nova founder’s daughters and mentioned in the epilogue of EXSILIUM, will still belong to the Mitela family in future centuries.
Honoria is an experienced soldier in an elite unit – intelligent, competent and loyal. Although I haven’t specifically given her age in the story, she’s in her late twenties. Like other Roma Novan military, she prefers chain mail armour to plate armour, not only for reasons of tradition, but for its practical flexibility. Tough as she is, she does experience moments of what here legate calls ‘softness’.
The 17th century of Honoria’s Battle was a dangerous, violent time – an inheritance from the medieval period’s constant wars over land and religion. However, by 1683 the Enlightenment was dawning, characterised by an emphasis on reason, empirical evidence and the scientific method. Its thinkers were promoting ideals of individual liberty, religious tolerance, progress and natural rights along with constitutional government, the separation of church and state and the application of rational principles to social and political reform. An exciting period, but one of transition when changes are only beginning.
Honoria’s role in the Battle of Vienna may have been pivotal – or not. Her story takes place in an alternative timeline after all. Some historians consider the battle marked a turning point in the 300-year struggle between the Christian Holy Roman Empire and the Muslim Ottoman Empire. It was the final conflict in a hundred and fifty years of bitter military tension following the failure of the previous siege of Vienna by the Ottomans in 1529. After the second siege and battle in 1683, the Ottomans would gain no further ground in Europe and never again challenge Vienna.
For Honoria, the battle turns out to be a pivot in her personal life.
Discover much more about Honoria’s story in HEROICA
Buy HEROICA here
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. JULIA PRIMA and EXSILIUM, set in the late 4th century, tell the story of Roma Nova’s foundation. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity and Double Pursuit start a new contemporary thriller series. The third, Double Stakes is now out.
Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
If you enjoyed this post, do share it with your friends!
 Carina Mitela is a captain in the Pretorian Guard Special Forces (PGSF), the intelligence and operations service of Roma Nova when we meet her in the first story of HEROICA. But, of course, that’s not all she is. We need to know where she came from, what does she want and what does she fear? What’s stopping her? What does she like? What are her values? What are her strengths and weaknesses?
Her story in HEROICA is set between PERFIDITAS and SUCCESSIO, the third and fourth in her strand of adventures in the Roma Nova thriller series. But before I even started INCEPTIO, the first full-length novel of her adventures, Carina had to go through a ‘birthing’ process.
I had to lay some clues – her backstory
We encounter her on Page 1 of the first book in the series, INCEPTIO, working in the New York Kew Park in the Eastern United States (EUS) as a weekend volunteer. So we know she loves the outdoors and works happily with others. Moreover, she enjoys running and keeping fit.
We learn that she’s not particularly happy or unhappy in her life at that time, ten years before the story in HEROICA. Although she works hard in her day job and is prepared to stick at it, she feels she’s not achieving anything in life. This hints that she’s unsure of her abilities and unsettled, but resilient. The early loss of her parents and being fostered with cold relatives forces her to be self-contained and not a little wary of others. So she needs to feel safe. Part of the urge to protect herself makes her a smartmouth. Although by the time of HEROICA, she’s been settled for several years in Roma Nova and loves serving in the PGSF, she retains some of that personal insecurity.
One of Carina’s characteristics is her strong sense of fairness which she has the courage to put it into action. However, she has a hot temper and makes snap decisions, not always wise ones. Definitely both passionate and fallible!
A brief biography
Born in the Eastern United States (EUS), father William Brown, ex-UK citizen, mother Marina Mitela, daughter of one of the Twelve Families who founded Roma Nova in ancient times.
For her first twelve years, she lived in New Hampshire. Sadly, she lost her mother in a mysterious car accident when she was three, and her father from cancer at twelve. Fostered adequately, but unlovingly, with distant Brown cousins in Nebraska on the edge of the Indigenous Nations’ territories, she left for the autonomous city of New York the day after graduating high school. After several jobs, at the beginning of INCEPTIO she has ended up as an assistant account executive in Bornes & Black Ad Agency.
Physically, she is too tall and angular to be classically pretty, she has an athletic build, blue eyes and red-blonde hair. She doesn’t know it yet, but she bears a striking resemblance to her grandmother, Aurelia, as a young woman.
Over the four books in the Roma Nova series featuring Carina, she retains her basic character traits and values throughout, although how she expresses them and assesses her reactions develop through the stories.
She is only human, after all!
Discover much more about Carina’s story in HEROICA
Buy HEROICA here
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. JULIA PRIMA and EXSILIUM, set in the late 4th century, tell the story of Roma Nova’s foundation. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity and Double Pursuit start a new contemporary thriller series. The third, Double Stakes is now out.
Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
If you enjoyed this post, do share it with your friends!
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