It’s often impossible to pinpoint exactly where the idea for a novel or a trilogy comes from, but in this case I can pick out three specific concepts that fused together to produce the storyline from which the trilogy grew.
Firstly, it was my belief that history is usually only written by the victors and often that history is slanted to reflect the glory of the victors and the degradation of the losers. Hence the quotation on the right. I was also intrigued by the ‘what if’ questions provided by the concepts of Alternative History. 'What would have happened if' becomes a powerful question, when you take a small event and turn it on its head. The genre of Alternative History is dominated by four points in history – the fall of the Roman Empire, the American Civil War, and the Allied victories in the First and Second World Wars. What would have happened if the Roman Empire hadn’t fallen? What would America have been like without the Civil War? Or if the South had pulled off a victory? How about the Kaiser winning the First World War? Or, God forbid, Hitler winning the Second? It should be evident that I’ve chosen the first of these for the setting here.
Secondly, many years ago I saw a book cover, I’m sorry but I couldn’t now tell you what the book was or even who it was by, but the cover portrayed a very strong image. That picture of a Roman legionary riding into battle in the turret hatch of a modern battle tank, and this image stuck in my mind. The idea of how a Roman legion would fight, given exposure to more modern technology was born. I haven’t modernised Crastus’ Fighting Fifth to this level, but I’m sure you get the thought pattern.
Thirdly, for some, at the time bizarre, reason I thought about a defensive technology incorporating flood defences, how at the approach of an attacking army, the citizens of a city could raise some huge sluice-gates which would flood the area around the city, making it difficult if not impossible for the enemy to approach within range of the walls. Once I started to plan this out, it became startlingly obvious the gates would have to be away from the city itself, otherwise they would be a weak point in the defences. If they were away from the city, they would have to be defended by their own fortresses, and to prevent them being surrounded you ended up with a ring of fortresses around the city. From there the idea of the Seven Sisters complex was born.