Background - This story has been stewing around in my brain for many years now ... I'm not even sure how many myself. It's something I've worked out in bits and pieces over time and I'm so grateful to fandom for this challenge so that I could get it all down on paper, so to speak. While I'm certainly no expert, my education and work has been in history for some time now, and I've spent the last few years in particular researching the time period written about here for another project that I may yet get to in the future sometime. It's been good to use that knowledge in a story such as this. That said, please do comment here or PM me if you have an objection to some of the historical choices I've made here. I'm always up for learning something if you happen to have specialized knowledge that you'd like to share. One of the challenges in writing a historical story is to get the "feel" of the story down - to engage in truthful worldbuilding - so that the reader is immersed in that alternate existence. While I've tried to do that in this piece, I'm may have flubbed up.
The period of Late Antiquity has been an area of particular interest and passion for me. The crown prince of Late Antiquity (the Mediterranean from 300 - 700 ad) - indeed the founder of historical specialization in that time - is scholar Peter Brown. Should you have an interest in learning more about the period, a good - at times lyrical - introduction to that era is
The World of Late Antiquity. I must confess a great affection for Peter Brown, whose sheer love of history, sweeping vision, and dauntless scholarship have so inspired my own passion for history. Should you have 38 minutes and an interest, you can hear him expound about Late Antiquity and the Silk Road in the below video:
Story Rating - I realize that my rating of this story as Gen may conflict with the vision some readers may have of the genre since it includes a het storyline and indeed some pretty explicit sex. I thought long and hard about the genre and I chose Gen because the overall thrust of the story is not on a romantic relationship but on the adventure. The romantic relationship is an important part of the story, but it does not sum up the story. I view this as a "romance" only in the traditional sense of the word, as an adventure of the heart and mind, one that includes love relationships but is not defined by them.
Character Names - My lovely beta
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corbyinoz has been instrumental in helping me choose character names that were true to the time period while still being recognizable to the reader. Alas, while the name "Jared" is apparently a biblical name, it seemed more likely that his middle name, "Tristan", would be a common for the time period. The Norse origins of the name "Jensen" seemed to argue for its use in the story.
Should you wish to ask questions about the story before you invest the time in reading it, or if you have other comments or questions, feel free to ask them here.
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