 Time or alternate time? What if the Nazis had won the Second World War (Fatherland – Robert Harris, The Man in the High Castle – Philip K Dick) or England had remained Catholic (Pavane – Keith Roberts, The Alteration – Kingsley Amis) or if Alaska rather than Israel had become the Jewish homeland (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon)? Or perhaps if Roosevelt had lost the 1940 election and right-wing Charles Lindbergh had become US president (The Plot Against America – Philip Roth)?
These are serious works. No aliens, no time-travellers slipping back to points in history to change it, no fantasy or magic, just a development of history on a different course triggered sometimes by a very minor historical event. I recommend Erik Durschmied’s The Hinge Factor – How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History which shows how easily this could, and has, happened.
So what if it did?
The trigger causes a “point of divergence” (POD) splitting it from “our timeline” i.e. the history we know and live in, to the “alternate timeline” in which some or many things have changed to create a new, alternate world. Quite a number of things in the alternate world will seem the same as the ones we know in our normal time which gives us a false anchor. Others, including social structures and attitudes as well as politics and nations, may be disturbingly different.
Scientific investigation into parallel universes and alternate worlds has prompted new thought and writing. With the advent of the Internet, wide-ranging discussion and speculation has appeared in newsgroups, blogs, and produced sites like Althistory Wiki, Alternative History Weekly Update and a well-respected magazine AltHist which publishes alternative and historical short stories. The Historical Novelists’ Society embraces alternative history in its remit and is including a session on alternative history in its September conference.
In books, film and television, alternate history has often been flavoured with time travel or timeslip, e.g. Sliding Doors or Eric Flint’s 1632 series of books or fantasy such as Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell or Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. Steampunk, which originated during the 1980s and early 1990s, incorporates elements of alternate history as well as science fiction, fantasy, horror and speculative fiction.
As with any other genre or sub-genre, the writing varies, as does the plausibility of themes and plots. Personally, I believe you have to know your own timeline history well, or know how to research it methodically and extensively before attempting to “alternate” it. New terms have been created in alternate history discussion groups to deal with anomalies. Said to have originated on the usenet group soc.history.what-if, the term “alien space bats” is used to criticise implausible alternate histories or an improbable deus ex machina. Dan Hartland in Strange Horizons called alien space bats “everyone’s favourite SF plot McGuffin”.
 Dawn of an alternative time? For me, the most appealing alternate history stories are those set naturally in their world without info dumps or long explanations. Yes, we need some clues, and yes, we need character 1 to tell character 2 to duck when a steam-driven arquebusque loaded with a radiating bullet is about to blow their head off. But we don’t need a full explanation of how the technology was developed. Keith Robert’s Pavane suffers a tad from this. In her Eve Dallas detective series set in 2057 J D Robb effortlessly describes the futuristic elements as they arise, and only in bare, scraped detail. These are not alternate history as such, but crime stories set in a different, though possible future. I use them to illustrate the style I’m aiming for.
Writers can use techniques such as photos, pictures, the new person asking the long-standing resident, reading the info online, reading a map, or asking a guide, getting an older relative/mentor to recount something to fill in these gaps, but not in a dump-y way. The essential thing is to get the alternate world’s history right and then develop it around the story in a plausible way. This is not easy and the odd spreadsheet helps…
At its best, alternate history challenges fixed ideas while providing entertainment. Readers, especially those who haven’t tried an alt history book before, are intrigued by the different setting, but are still after the things I listed at the end of this post – in summary, a cracking good story with emotional grip. In my own books, where the POD was over 1,500 years ago. I use an alternate world not only as a setting but as an essential interactive layer – a mix of culture clash with temperament clash.
 Running from her enemy And plot? In my first Roma Nova thriller, INCEPTIO, the heroine, from a version of the New World that looks reasonably familiar to us, is having enough trouble dealing with an uncompromising special forces officer from a very different Europe, let alone struggling to stay alive when a vengeful enforcer is attempting to obliterate her.
Alternative history gives us a rich environment in which to develop our storytelling. I’m taking full advantage of this, but above all, I’m aiming to give the reader some damn good thrillers!
More info:
Alt Hist: Historical Fiction and Alternate History -The new magazine of Historical Fiction and Alternate History
Alternative History Weekly Update
Wikipedia – Alternate history article
Uchronia: The Alternate History List is an online database that contains 2900 alternate history novels, stories, essays and other printed material
Althistory.wiki
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. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, a new Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, 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. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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Seeing this title, many people immediately think of the Second World War in Europe – the fall of France in 1940, the harsh German occupation, the bravery of the resistance and the Allied liberation in 1944/45. In the Far East, it was as brutal, but in a different context. Life under occupation for most people range from difficult to lethal, but it was characterised by deprivation, impoverishment and loss of personal and collective freedoms, including of expression.
But these cycles have occurred throughout history. Some would say Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, its occupation by Rome over hundreds of years, ongoing rebellion and uprising and eventual collapse of Roman Gaul which led to freedom, albeit a freedom that was consumed by war and land grabs by newer conquerors and a loss of stability and relative prosperity.
Going back to the twentieth century, Hitler and Mussolini were defeated, but in Spain Franco stayed in power after a bitter civil war from the end of that war in 1939 until his death in 1975. Although seeming to become a modern European country in the 1960s and early 1970s via a pragmatic military alliance with the US, industrial renewal and the opening up to mass tourism, Spain retained its authoritarian, fascist nature – the ‘iron hand in the velvet glove’ – until the new 1978 constitution and the thankfully peaceful transition to constitutional monarchy and democracy.
Portugal endured nearly a half-century of authoritarian rule: first a dictatorship following the 1926 coup d’état, then from 1933, the ‘Estado Novo‘ (New State) ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar with all the trappings of dictatorship including the notorious secret police (PIDE) until 1968, when he had a stroke. Salazar was replaced by Marcello Caetano, who was deposed during the ‘carnation revolution’ of 1974. It was the end of the Estado Novo (the longest-lived authoritarian regime in Western Europe), and the dissolution of the Portuguese Empire. The NATO countries had tolerated the fiercely anti-communist regime out of realpolitik when the Cold War was at its height.
Being frivolous for a moment, the military coup that started the Portuguese revolution had two secret signals to begin. The first, aired on Emissores Associados de Lisboa at 10:55 p.m. on 24 April was Paulo de Carvalho’s “E Depois do Adeus” – Portugal’s entry in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest!
The two late 20th century liberations from brutal regimes were relatively peaceful, but the 1940s one was hard won – a war of invasion and attrition involving hundreds of thousands of fighters, galactic amounts of military matériel and crushing debt for decades afterwards. Lives were ruined, dreams shattered and countries devastated and new forms of dictatorship overtook the eastern part of Europe with the cycle repeated.
Many films and books emerged in the 1950s and 1960s based on events from the Second World War conflict; they continue to hold a fascination for a new generation of writers today. Moreover, stories set in the former Eastern Bloc in Europe, for instance, the Karin Müller detective series, are becoming very popular. We’re particularly interested in the stories of individuals’ personal resilience, endurance and resistance.
These essential themes have been highlighted not only in historical fiction, but in imaginary genres, as we see in Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and Star Wars. It’s a way of exploring how we might feel and act in such circumstances. Would we keep our heads down and try to ignore things, be realistic and work with the regime or would we commit small acts of sabotage or resist the occupation actively with the terrifying and highly likely risk of imprisonment, torture and death?
I found myself wondering the same as I wrote INSURRECTIO – the story of a power-grab and establishment of a brutal, fascistic regime in the 1980s – and RETALIO – about endurance, resistance and determination to liberate a homeland. Although set in the imaginary Roma Nova, these were not easy books to write. Even though I was experiencing terror, brutality, sacrifice and outstanding courage at second hand, as the child of parents who fought in the Second World War against tyranny and repression, I felt I needed to.
———
If you would like to read about the 20th century power grab in Roma Nova and the story of resistance and retaliation, you can download the ebooks of INSURRECTIO and RETALIO via these links and order the paperbacks online or through your favourite bookshop. (INSURRECTIO paperback) (RETALIO paperback) 
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. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers.
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 newsletter. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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 The family of Drusus, National Museum of Civilisation, Rome (Author photo) Some Roma Novans, particularly the founding Twelve Families, pride themselves on their descent from named Roman ancestors such as Mitelus, Julia Bacausa, Apulius. As a small colony determined to survive in an unstable world, the children of those founders made a decision in the fifth century to keep records so that they did not intermarry to extinction.
Although Plutarch and Livy indicated the proscription of cousin marriage in the early Republic, it was legal in ancient Rome from the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) until banned by the Christian emperor Theodosius I in 381 in the West, and until after the death of Justinian (565) in the East, but the proportion of such marriages is not clear.
Roman civil law prohibited marriages within four degrees of consanguinity and whatever we know about emperors marrying their niece (Claudius) or sleeping with their sisters (Caligula), closer unions than between cousins were considered nefas (against the laws of gods and man) in ancient Rome.
Roma Novans changed inheritance to go through the female line (You can tell who a child’s mother is; you can’t necessarily guarantee its paternity.) and encouraged relationships with outsiders in order to produce the next generation thus ‘refreshing the gene pool’. Of course, they didn’t call it that then, but they’d raised enough agricultural stock to know about possible adverse consequences of inbreeding. It’s a nice piece of background to the stories that the modern Roma Novans could draw on ancient family records, so charting descent through the centuries is plausible in that timeline, even if it is a fictional one. 😉
Back to reality…
What is Descent from Antiquity (DFA) and its controversies?
 The ancestry of King Æthelberht II of Kent in the Textus Roffensis (Public domain) In European genealogy, a ‘descent from antiquity’ is a proven unbroken line of descent between specific individuals from ancient history and people living today.
It’s a gloriously romantic idea. Who wouldn’t want to claim Julius Caesar, Cornelia Africana, Livia Augusta, Trajan or Marcus Aurelius (insert a Roman of your choice here) as their ancestor? You may even by a quirk of fate have a drop of their blood in your veins, but you wouldn’t know it.
Most genealogical records in Europe only date back as far as the 1500s, unless you have noble, royal or aristocratic lineage, then you can probably reach back to the 11th or 12th century. The Anglo-Saxons, uniquely among the early Germanic peoples, preserved royal genealogies; a number of them date from the 8th to 10th centuries.
Before then, we have a great big yawning gap and a lot of myths, legends and speculation.
Individuals may indeed have a family legend that traces their lineage back to Roman times, but there are no currently available historical records to verify or dispute these.
Roman bureaucracy and record-keeping was famous and comprehensive, wasn’t it?
Yes, they were, especially when it came to recording consuls, censuses, tax, trade, property ownership and transfers, but the vast majority of those records have been lost. Such records, kept in archives, tended to be pillaged and/or destroyed – especially once Roman-governed territory was conquered by ‘barbarians’.
 Inside the Tabularium, Capitoline, Rome – the official records office of ancient Rome (Author photo) Despite this widespread loss, a few records survived. Most have been transcribed and are kept in special archives, libraries, or universities. However, of the surviving records, few contain known or relevant genealogical information. In other words, available Roman records don’t contain that much information that would help you add an ancestor to your family tree.
Mix in the Roman practice of adoption of heirs and duplication of names in families and any remaining puddles of information become even more muddy.
The widespread disappearance during the sacking or looting of Roman cities especially towards the final collapse of empire is depressing. Ancient conquering peoples such as the Franks, Goths, Alemanni were usually too busy with their fighting and looting to worry about saving important genealogically helpful documents.
 Genseric sacking Rome 455 by Karl Bryullov (1799–1852) (Public domain) Naming conventions changed over the centuries: the decline of the classic trinomina of the Romans, the ongoing use of Celtic tribal affiliation names, the single names with ‘son of’ or locality names of later groups broke many possible lines of family continuity.
As literacy fell, written records became scarcer and legends grew…
Nevertheless, some of those legends persist. The surname Neri was first found in the Tuscan hills in the city of Lucca in 1200, when the aristocratic Neri family were believed to be descendants of Roman Emperor Nero. Who knows?
In truth, Western Europeans are a mongrel lot and descendants from a mixture of ancient peoples: Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Franks, Normans, Goths of various sorts, Angles, Danes, let alone from incomers during the historical and modern periods. While modern DNA tests may indicate which groups our ancestors came from, our trail back to antiquity is lost.
Roma Nova is fiction, but I was not immune from the idea of being able to reach back through the centuries when I wrote the stories so I drew on the Roman instinct for recording everything. Somehow, the information survived. Retaining the essential nature and values of their society is crucial to the Roma Novans’ sense of who they are. And although we can’t know exactly who our distant ancestors were, the whole idea probably appeals strongly to us as well.
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. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, 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. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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