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dolorosa_12Day Thirteen: Favorite female character in a book
Noviana Una (Romanitas trilogy by Sophia McDougall)
Noviana Una makes me want to be a better, braver person. What she endures, what she achieves, and what she becomes are so inspiring to me that I struggle to find the words to describe it. Spoilers for the entire trilogy follow, so I've put them behind a cut.
The Romanitas trilogy takes place in a world in which the Roman empire never ended, but rather survived until the present day. Rome spread to conquer the world. The only other world power is Japan ('the Nionian Empire'), which also has an empire, with the two empires facing off across a wall that divides the American continents. China has survived as an independent country, acting as a buffer between Rome and Nionia in Eurasia, and there is also a confederation of independent African states. Along with the Roman empire itself, several institutions of empire have survived, most notably religion, gladiatorial games (mainly as a form of execution), execution by crucifixion, and slavery.
Una begins the series as a recently escaped slave. She is driven by a single motivation: to rescue her brother Sulien (also a slave, accused of a crime he didn't commit and facing crucifixion) and flee with him into some part of the world where the Roman empire doesn't reach. She has endured only hinted-at horrors during her time as a slave, and she is deeply traumatised, closed in on herself, and furious.
She also possesses the ability to read people's minds and manipulate them telepathically. This is not the powerful blessing it would seem to be. Rather, Una finds it an intolerable intrusion, yet another way in which her mind, body and very self do not belong to her.
Through a series of extraordinary circumstances, Una and Sulien fall in with Marcus, the escaped imperial heir, whose life is in danger from shadowy forces close to the Emperor (his uncle), and whose parents were secretly fighting to abolish slavery. This meeting with Marcus sets Sulien, and, above all, Una, on a dangerous course that will see almost the entire world arrayed against them. War between Rome and Nionia becomes inevitable, and it's a war which engulfs the whole world. Whereas at the start of Romanitas, Una would simply like to find a hole to crawl into in order to avoid the attention of Rome and Romans, as the series continues she finds herself either the ally or the antagonist of every major player in the war, as well as the leader of a worldwide slave rebellion and the facilitator of an underground railroad helping slaves escape into safer regions.
Several things about Una stand out to me. The first — and this is down to McDougall's writing — is that the sheer physical and psychological effort involved in being Noviana Una is always emphasised. She feels everything deeply, and the state of living in constant fear, living with constant trauma, and of wanting ownership of her own body and mind takes a heavy toll. Una never seems to rest, even when she's sleeping, and there's a prickly, nervous guardedness about her that's always apparent. I find her fear very refreshing, and have always appreciated that her determination and sense of moral rightness doesn't take that fear away. Una is always aware of the extreme danger of what she's doing, and it scares her.
On a related note, while the trilogy is always emphatic that Una's anger at her experiences, at the injustice of slavery, and that her unwavering desire to change the world are entirely reasonable and justified, the fact that she's right doesn't mean that her path is easy. Even deeply sympathetic Romans like Marcus and his cousin Makaria, the Emperor's daughter, can't quite imagine what it's like to be Una, to be always afraid, and thus can't quite understand her sense of urgency on the issue of slavery. Once she and Sulien are freed by the Emperor at the end of the first book, Marcus and others like him can't quite grasp why that's not enough — and if sympathetic and well-meaning Romans can't understand, you can imagine what an uphill battle Una faces. (I sort of love that by the end of the series, Una essentially gives up on convincing the privileged to grant her and her fellow slaves the rights which she comes to understand have always belonged to them. It's a nice echo back to a conversation she has in the first book with Sulien, in which she contemptuously sneers that she 'doesn't want some nice man to come and rescue' her and own her benevolently: she wants to exist as a person without anyone needing to grant that status to her.)
I love Una's uneasy relationship with her own name. She was not born with the name 'Noviana' — it was given to her in recognition of the fact that the Emperor, of the Novian dynasty, granted her freedom as a reward for her rescue of Marcus, and it makes it sound as if she was at one point owned by Marcus, or by a member of his family. Given that she and Marcus fall in love and have a relationship, that implication of former ownership is intolerable for her. But when she's captured by Marcus's usurping cousin Drusus in the third book and accused of treason, that name, Noviana, becomes a weapon. Drusus strips Una of her freedom, denies her right to the name, and tries to cut a deal with her by which she admits to treason in an open court and will only have to be executed privately (I think by firing squad although I can't quite remember that detail). Una, despairing, initially goes along with it, until she gets to the court and realises by listening in on the crowds' thoughts that she has more support than she suspected. So then she quietly but firmly names herself as Noviana Una, and speaks her truth. I have to admit I danced around the room when I first read the courtroom scene. I have such a thing for women who have suffered injustice and false accusations standing firm and calmly (or furiously) speaking truth to power, bearing witness to injustice.
Two final crowning moments of awesome for Una: she leads the slave revolution/rescue mission from the among the stacks of the Library of Alexandria, which makes my librarian heart sing. Also, the denouement of the series involves Una at the head of an angry mob of escaped slaves and free Romans and Nionians who have suffered injustice at the hands of Drusus, and it's as if the living embodiment of his crimes has come to confront him. I love it.
Day Fourteen: Favorite older female character
Day Fifteen: Favorite female character growth arc
Day Sixteen: Favorite mother character
Day Seventeen: Favorite warrior female character
Day Eighteen: Favorite non-warrior female character
Day Nineteen: Favorite non-human female character
Day Twenty: Favorite female antagonist
Day Twenty-One: Favorite female character screwed over by canon
Day Twenty-Two: Favorite female character you love but everyone else hates
Day Twenty-Three: Favorite female platonic relationship
Day Twenty-Four: Favorite female romantic relationship
Day Twenty-Five: Favorite mother/daughter and/or sister relationship
Day Twenty-Six: Favorite classical female character (from pre-20th century literature or mythology or the like)
Day Twenty-Seven: A female character you have extensive personal canon for
Day Twenty-Eight: Favorite female writer (television, books, movies, etc.)
Day Twenty-Nine: A female-centric fic rec
Day Thirty: Whatever you’d like!
Noviana Una (Romanitas trilogy by Sophia McDougall)
Noviana Una makes me want to be a better, braver person. What she endures, what she achieves, and what she becomes are so inspiring to me that I struggle to find the words to describe it. Spoilers for the entire trilogy follow, so I've put them behind a cut.
The Romanitas trilogy takes place in a world in which the Roman empire never ended, but rather survived until the present day. Rome spread to conquer the world. The only other world power is Japan ('the Nionian Empire'), which also has an empire, with the two empires facing off across a wall that divides the American continents. China has survived as an independent country, acting as a buffer between Rome and Nionia in Eurasia, and there is also a confederation of independent African states. Along with the Roman empire itself, several institutions of empire have survived, most notably religion, gladiatorial games (mainly as a form of execution), execution by crucifixion, and slavery.
Una begins the series as a recently escaped slave. She is driven by a single motivation: to rescue her brother Sulien (also a slave, accused of a crime he didn't commit and facing crucifixion) and flee with him into some part of the world where the Roman empire doesn't reach. She has endured only hinted-at horrors during her time as a slave, and she is deeply traumatised, closed in on herself, and furious.
She also possesses the ability to read people's minds and manipulate them telepathically. This is not the powerful blessing it would seem to be. Rather, Una finds it an intolerable intrusion, yet another way in which her mind, body and very self do not belong to her.
Through a series of extraordinary circumstances, Una and Sulien fall in with Marcus, the escaped imperial heir, whose life is in danger from shadowy forces close to the Emperor (his uncle), and whose parents were secretly fighting to abolish slavery. This meeting with Marcus sets Sulien, and, above all, Una, on a dangerous course that will see almost the entire world arrayed against them. War between Rome and Nionia becomes inevitable, and it's a war which engulfs the whole world. Whereas at the start of Romanitas, Una would simply like to find a hole to crawl into in order to avoid the attention of Rome and Romans, as the series continues she finds herself either the ally or the antagonist of every major player in the war, as well as the leader of a worldwide slave rebellion and the facilitator of an underground railroad helping slaves escape into safer regions.
Several things about Una stand out to me. The first — and this is down to McDougall's writing — is that the sheer physical and psychological effort involved in being Noviana Una is always emphasised. She feels everything deeply, and the state of living in constant fear, living with constant trauma, and of wanting ownership of her own body and mind takes a heavy toll. Una never seems to rest, even when she's sleeping, and there's a prickly, nervous guardedness about her that's always apparent. I find her fear very refreshing, and have always appreciated that her determination and sense of moral rightness doesn't take that fear away. Una is always aware of the extreme danger of what she's doing, and it scares her.
On a related note, while the trilogy is always emphatic that Una's anger at her experiences, at the injustice of slavery, and that her unwavering desire to change the world are entirely reasonable and justified, the fact that she's right doesn't mean that her path is easy. Even deeply sympathetic Romans like Marcus and his cousin Makaria, the Emperor's daughter, can't quite imagine what it's like to be Una, to be always afraid, and thus can't quite understand her sense of urgency on the issue of slavery. Once she and Sulien are freed by the Emperor at the end of the first book, Marcus and others like him can't quite grasp why that's not enough — and if sympathetic and well-meaning Romans can't understand, you can imagine what an uphill battle Una faces. (I sort of love that by the end of the series, Una essentially gives up on convincing the privileged to grant her and her fellow slaves the rights which she comes to understand have always belonged to them. It's a nice echo back to a conversation she has in the first book with Sulien, in which she contemptuously sneers that she 'doesn't want some nice man to come and rescue' her and own her benevolently: she wants to exist as a person without anyone needing to grant that status to her.)
I love Una's uneasy relationship with her own name. She was not born with the name 'Noviana' — it was given to her in recognition of the fact that the Emperor, of the Novian dynasty, granted her freedom as a reward for her rescue of Marcus, and it makes it sound as if she was at one point owned by Marcus, or by a member of his family. Given that she and Marcus fall in love and have a relationship, that implication of former ownership is intolerable for her. But when she's captured by Marcus's usurping cousin Drusus in the third book and accused of treason, that name, Noviana, becomes a weapon. Drusus strips Una of her freedom, denies her right to the name, and tries to cut a deal with her by which she admits to treason in an open court and will only have to be executed privately (I think by firing squad although I can't quite remember that detail). Una, despairing, initially goes along with it, until she gets to the court and realises by listening in on the crowds' thoughts that she has more support than she suspected. So then she quietly but firmly names herself as Noviana Una, and speaks her truth. I have to admit I danced around the room when I first read the courtroom scene. I have such a thing for women who have suffered injustice and false accusations standing firm and calmly (or furiously) speaking truth to power, bearing witness to injustice.
Two final crowning moments of awesome for Una: she leads the slave revolution/rescue mission from the among the stacks of the Library of Alexandria, which makes my librarian heart sing. Also, the denouement of the series involves Una at the head of an angry mob of escaped slaves and free Romans and Nionians who have suffered injustice at the hands of Drusus, and it's as if the living embodiment of his crimes has come to confront him. I love it.
Day Fourteen: Favorite older female character
Day Fifteen: Favorite female character growth arc
Day Sixteen: Favorite mother character
Day Seventeen: Favorite warrior female character
Day Eighteen: Favorite non-warrior female character
Day Nineteen: Favorite non-human female character
Day Twenty: Favorite female antagonist
Day Twenty-One: Favorite female character screwed over by canon
Day Twenty-Two: Favorite female character you love but everyone else hates
Day Twenty-Three: Favorite female platonic relationship
Day Twenty-Four: Favorite female romantic relationship
Day Twenty-Five: Favorite mother/daughter and/or sister relationship
Day Twenty-Six: Favorite classical female character (from pre-20th century literature or mythology or the like)
Day Twenty-Seven: A female character you have extensive personal canon for
Day Twenty-Eight: Favorite female writer (television, books, movies, etc.)
Day Twenty-Nine: A female-centric fic rec
Day Thirty: Whatever you’d like!
no subject
Date: 2014-10-23 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-23 02:32 pm (UTC)Do let me know what you think if you end up reading it. I'd love to talk about the series with others.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-23 06:25 pm (UTC)I will let you know when I finish the first book. It's gone straight to the top of my to-read list. It really sounds awesome. I love alternate history and sci-Fi and interesting female characters. Plus I've always had a thing for Roman history.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-24 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-24 11:30 am (UTC)