Review: Forgiving Nero

Mary Ann Bernal, Forgiving Nero, (‎Whispering Legends Press, 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57097873-forgiving-nero

The story of two star-crossed romances, with some liberties taken with history

(The fictional) Traian Aelius Protacius, guards the boy Lucius (Nero), sent to live with his aunt Lepida during the rule of Caligula while his mother Agrippina is in exile. Attending the boy is slave woman Vena, a secret Christian, to whom Traian is attracted.

Nero asks for a tutor to teach him the lyre (cithara). He performs for the children of slaves and freedmen. He longs for a world where he can play his music and marry Acte, but Agrippina sweet talks Claudius into betrothing him to his daughter Octavia, Nero’s adoptive sister.

Seneca tutors him in other studies. Paul of Tarsus visits Vena’s Christians.

This is the story of two star-crossed romances. Nero can’t marry Acte because his family demands his dynastic marriage to Octavia. Traian marries Vena, but it must be in secret due to her class as slave.

It twists history as we know it on quite a number of points: treats Octavia as in love with Nero (they hated each other); Nero’s music as proficient (his talent was described as mediocre); Nero trusts in his mother’s goodness (he banished her to rid himself of her influence and had her murdered); Camulodunum is a picture of peaceful assimilation (the Boudicca revolt showed, viscerally, how much the British tribes hated the invaders); Claudius is killed by his wife giving him poisoned mushrooms (that was Augustus); Britannicus is killed by poisoned water (it was hot soup that was cooled down by adding poisoned water); Domitius Ahenobarbus is some guy who gives Nero a villa (he was his biological father); Acte wants to be empress (Nero’s interest in her was already replaced by Poppaea by the time he rid himself of Octavia); Acte is interested in Christianity (that was Poppaea, who was interested in Judaism); Domitia Lepida generously offers her villa to Acte (there seems to be no reason for inventing this in either woman’s character arc); Agrippina burst through the curtains of her hidey-hole onto the Senate floor, shouting what was to be done (this was too outrageous even for Agrippina); Poppaea suddenly gets a brainwave that she needs to bear Nero a son (everyone would have known that the emperor needed an heir); Nero rejects proposals by midwives to perform a Caesarean section in order to save Poppaea’s life (Lex Caesarea prohibited performing the operation unless the mother was dead or dying, and the mother was not expected to survive).

I don’t mind non-historical invention in historical fiction, but there should be some point to it, some reason for the storyline to be different from what we are familiar with. This history is juicy enough without outright inventing stuff.

The alternating references to the emperor as Lucius or Nero are confusing. I get it that he changed after becoming emperor, but he should be referred to by one name in each timeframe.

The writing style tends to the Telling rather than Showing, the dialogue quite stilted. For such a familiar story, we really need the writing to offer something special. It gets poorer as the pages progress.