Interview with Kate Quinn, Author of Empress of the Seven Hills

I recently reviewed Kate Quinn’s Empress of the Seven Hills. Kate’s irreverent and lively vision of Roman life appeals to me, and I’m delighted she’s agreed to an interview. How could I resist someone who named her dog Caesar?

Kate grew up in Southern California. While a freshman at Boston University studying Classical Voice, she wrote her first book, Mistress of Rome, finding the warmth of Rome in her imagination preferable to the Bostonian winter. She wrote Empress while her husband was deployed in the Middle East. “I realized that my Roman legionary hero in Empress of the Seven Hills was fighting in the same part of the world where my US Navy husband was deployed. Life imitating art, or art imitating life? I have no idea!”

Enjoy her entertaining answers.

Judith: You have a way of creating determined women characters who push hard for a particular goal only to find that they are pretty miserable when they get it. How did that idea end up being so important in your novels?

Kate: The trouble with writing about historical figures is that the end is already written for you. How do you create suspense about your characters when your readers just have to go to the Web to find out their fate? I may not be able to change what happens to my historical characters, but I can affect how they feel about the things that happen to them. The heroine of Empress of the Seven Hills is Vibia Sabina, a historical figure you can easily find on Wikipedia if you want to know how her life turns out – but how she gets there and what she really thinks about it may surprise you. It ended up surprising me!

Judith: Romance in your novels can be decidedly juicy, but it tends not to have a happy ending. Do you think finding long term happy love was harder in the Roman world or do you have as pessimistic a view of the prospects for 21st century romance?

Kate: What I love about writing romances in historical settings is that the goal of historical marriage was not necessarily love. Marriages were so often contracted for money, for politics, for family advantage – under those rules, love was reduced to either a by-product or an extra-curricular activity. And that gives a novelist so much scope, so many more roadblocks to throw in the way of your characters as they try to find their happily ever after. And they are trying to find it – people in the past might accept such things as arranged marriages and political alliances while many of us today do not, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still trying to find love in their own way. An ancient Roman girl’s roadblocks might be rival families and arranged marriages while a modern woman’s are ex-wives and leaked sex tapes, but human beings have not changed: whether born in the 1st century or the 21st, most of us are looking to find that long-lasting love. And I think we have about the same chance of finding it. In fact, I’m kind of jealous that Roman girls got to conduct their love lives entirely without Twitter.

Judith: You excel at creating a fully developed picture of the Roman world in your books. What’s your favorite detail about Roman life? Anything particularly crazy and hard to believe?

Kate: What strikes me most when I do my research isn’t the crazy hard-to-believe stuff about the ancient world – it’s the similarities that keep cropping up to modern life! I did a lot of reading about the Roman military when writing Empress of the Seven Hills, since my hero Vix is a legionary climbing the ranks as a career soldier. My husband is a sailor in the US Navy (he was deployed when I finished the book up) and what struck me was just how universal the military experience can be. Sure, my husband deployed to the Middle East under a Stars and Stripes flag and Vix marches to conquer Parthia under an eagle standard. But whether they are 2nd century legionaries or 21st century sailors, fighting men still hunker down when off duty to grouse about superior officers and complain that their feet hurt and that the local alcoholic beverages suck and that last flogging/latrine-cleaning punishment was way too harsh considering all I did was put mud in the Exo’s/centurion’s boots . . . As I wrote, I ended up trying to underline the similarities. My husband brought me a pearl necklace from Thailand when he came home from deployment; Vix brings his wife a pearl ring from a captured Parthian prince. My grandfather told me that in Korea whenever you got liquor, you made a footbath out of it before drinking it since your feet were infected from marching – and Vix does the same thing when he gets his ration of sour Roman wine called posca. Vix, my grandfather, my husband – they would have had a lot to talk about.

Judith: If you had to become one of your characters, whose life would you choose? What appeals to you about it?

Kate: I wouldn’t mind being Sabina, the heroine of Empress of the Seven Hills. For one thing, she’s no beaten-down slave girl or grieving widow like some of my other much-put-upon heroines! Sabina is a senator’s daughter related to the Emperor, and thus expected to take up a life as political pawn, obedient wife, and devoted mother. But she would rather travel the world, do some good where she can use her influence to help, and live an independent life without a husband or children to tie her down. So instead of wailing and rebeling against the system, she works it ruthlessly to carve out the path she wants. She plays on every advantage she has, and in return she gets to spend her days seeing the wonders of the ancient world – and at the side of a very hunky hero, too! Not a bad life. (Though of course, as you point out in Question 1, Sabina may find out by the end that her chosen path doesn’t take her exactly where she thought . . .)

Judith: You portray strong, powerful women characters. We usually think of ancient women as having much greater limitations than contemporary women. What were the major restrictions on Roman women and how did they gain power? Were there ways in which Roman women enjoyed greater freedom than contemporary women or escaped problems that haunt us today?

Kate: Roman women enjoyed some distinct advantages legally over their counterparts in, say, ancient Greece – they could retain some control over their economic affairs even after marriage; they got their dowries back at least in part if they divorced; and they mixed socially with men in a way unknown to Greek wives who were expected to keep to the back room weaving. A Roman woman’s level of freedom might vary depending on which emperor was on the throne – some emperors had a bee in their bonnet about female virtue and tried to crack down on Women And Their Proper Place; other emperors didn’t care. But in general, a Roman woman had as much freedom and power as her father or husband allowed her to have. The Roman female ideal was an obedient wife who tended her family’s interests in the background, watched over by a stern-faced paterfamilias, but this was only the ideal and not necessarily the norm – history gives us far too many examples of powerful Roman women for that. Emperor Augustus’s wife Livia was respected and consulted by her husband on political matters; Cicero was notoriously loving and indulgent to his daughter; Agrippina the Elder’s husband took her along on his military campaigns where her toughness on the battle-front was much admired. Sabina in Empress of the Seven Hills values her freedom highly, so she is careful to choose a husband who will let her have her adventures rather than a strait-laced type who will curb her behavior. And as for freedoms Roman women enjoyed that we don’t now, first and foremost I would list freedom from divorce lawyers! Roman divorce was very easy for women as well as men – one simply moved out and declared oneself single again; no need for mediation, custody battles, or court appearances. Hear, hear.

Judith: What’s been the most enjoyable aspect for you about being a successful writer?

Kate: Working at home! Office jobs are allergic to me: I hate suits, I get claustrophobic in cubicles, I’m terrible at company politics, and I miss my dog. I wake up every day happy and grateful that I can do my job on the couch in yoga pants, with no one to tell me that my “Tell Me Again How Lucky I Am To Work Here” coffee mug is not in line with the company mission statement.

Judith: What’s next for Kate Quinn after Empress of the Seven Hills?

Kate: I’m not entirely done with Vix and Sabina and their adventures, but I definitely need a break from ancient Rome. I was starting to have fantasies about writing a book where I did not once have to type the word t-o-g-a, so I jumped ahead fourteen hundred years or so into Renaissance Rome instead. My fourth novel stars Giulia Farnese, a teenage beauty with floor-length hair who became the mistress of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI. Papal politics, poison rings, Borgia intrigue, and murder in the Vatican – bring it on!

HAVE FUN TALKING TO SOME GREAT WRITERS!
Readers, don’t miss the upcoming Berkley Jove Author Chat where you can talk with some of your favorite authors. Kate Quinn will be logging on at 9pm Eastern Time for the hour-long chat, and lots of other fabulous authors have been invited also to talk about their latest releases – Norah Roberts, Charlaine Harris, DeAnna Cameron, and others.

Thursday April 12th – Berkley Jove Author Chat
WritersSpace.com