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Historical person
Charlemagne is represented in the linked historical fiction and non-fiction through religion, belief and institutional authority, empire, conquest and resistance, and family, marriage and personal loyalty. These works approach the figure through the surrounding events, relationships and political conflicts rather than through a standalone biography.
In Angus Donald’s Blood of the Bear, Saxony remains under the Christian rule of Charlemagne, and refusal of baptism or church taxation is answered with execution. Angus Donald’s The Last Berserker places Charlemagne within a narrative shaped by court politics and dynastic power, military command and battlefield decision-making, and religion, belief and institutional authority. Other novels featuring Charlemagne include Angus Donald’s The Saxon Wolf.
In non-fiction, Charlemagne is discussed in Nick Holmes’s The Inheritors of Rome. In Nick Holmes’s The Inheritors of Rome, Holmes follows the fragmented societies of western Europe, the consolidation of Frankish power and the empire of Charlemagne, while also examining the resilience of Byzantium and the political, commercial and intellectual strength of the Islamic caliphates.
Series
The Fire Born series follows Bjarki Bloodhand and Tor Hildarsdottir through the wars of the late eighth-century north. The Last Berserker and The Saxon Wolf place the siblings inside the resistance to Charlemagne’s conquest of pagan Saxony, where Bjarki’s bear spirit gives him extraordinary power at the risk…
All books in this series
Non Fiction
Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.
