Why I Wrote… Byzantium Express
- Jul 3
- 7 min read
By Alexander Rooksmoor.
I was eager to write an alternate history spy novel and naturally Constantinople has always been a good place for such stories. As Istanbul, it features as a locale in From Russia with Love; The Murder on the Orient Express starts there, while Graham Greene’s Stamboul Train goes the other way; Sweet Waters’ by Harold Nicolson is set nearby in 1913. The most recent prompt for me was Time and Time Again in which a portal allows travel back to a 1914 Constantinople and a triggering of a variety of timelines.
There was also something of a reference back to Agent of Byzantium by Harry Turtledove, which I listed as one of my five for the Lavender Isle. Turtledove envisaged medieval Byzantium as pre-empting the timescale for various technological innovations. The Byzantine Empire of my novel features is not linked to such a turn in history, but still, by 1914 their armed forces have already switched to an oil-powered navy – lacking coal supplies but having some oil – and using armoured cars for warfare.
Since I wrote Byzantium Express in 2019, it has proven to be one of my favourites among my alternate history novels. I have sought to identify why that is the case. In part I was satisfied that I had managed to produce an alternate history. I has also ended up with some romance, something I rarely include in my novels. However, I feel that a prime element arose because of how far the novel is set after the initial point of divergence – in fact multiple divergences.
As I noted in my article on writing Streseland, many of the most popular alternate history scenarios need far more than a single point of divergence. As with Nazi Germany winning the Second World War or the Confederacy their civil war, to have a Byzantine Empire in 1914 required starting at the end and then working back to find various divergences which would lead to that outcome. To me the Battle of Manzikert was a starting point. More important, though, was the failure of who became the Ottomans to lift themselves in the 13th Century out of the malaise other Seljuk clans had fallen into. The breaking of the oaths of the leaders of the 1st Crusade, let alone the plain theft and vandalism of the 4th Crusade, need not have happened. Given how differently other leaders of the 1st Crusade, viewed their oaths to the Byzantine Emperor, the very possible death of Bohemond of Taranto who defied the oath, would have led to a very different form of crusading following.
With Byzantine possessions restored and no Crusader States, that whole path for the Levant would have been altered. From these aspects, I envisaged, rather than the Ottoman Empire, a series of Turkic and Arab beyriks across the region. In part this reflected reflecting the diversity of Islamic and Christian denominations there, which are often overlooked by Western commentators.
Some aspects, it increasingly seemed to me, arose as much from the position of a state at the north-eastern end of the Mediterranean controlling access to the Black Sea rather than from whoever the country was ruled by. As a result, I felt European intervention would differ little from the equivalent interventions in the Ottoman Empire. In fact, given that the Byzantines had controlled territory in Crimea, the Crimean War made a bit more sense than it did in our world. The British church built in Constantinople to commemorate the war, that I feature in this novel, exists for real.
It seemed that despite an enduring Byzantine Empire, the impetus of the ethnic and geographic situations would mean many of the motives of the neighbouring states would also remain in this alternative. It was probable in the late 19th/early 20th centuries that the Albanians and the Bulgars would want to break free of the foreign Byzantine as much as they did the Ottomans in our timeline. Despite their religious similarities and perceiving themselves as heirs of the same heritage, Russian leaders were still likely to want to control the Straits that potentially barred commercial and naval shipping from leaving the Black Sea. Thus, the shape of the conspiratorial context was formed.
I think the reason I picked a British spy to be the outsider coming in was because 19th/20th Century British policy makers were always obsessed with the Eastern Mediterranean. I also wanted to highlight the genuine schemes by Alfred Milner and his coterie to get Britain into war against Germany rather than being allied to that country or neutral. At the start of the novel, Christopher Thompson, through his father, represents that faction of influential men that worked so hard for that outcome and in our history succeeded even when almost everyone in the British government had been opposed to such involvement.
In terms of British agents being undercover in a foreign country, I drew on the witness seminar involving testimony from former members of SOE, including the SOE’s historian, M.R.D. Foot, that I attended in the late 1990s. These people’s accounts of the naïve/foolish/arrogant, and hence dangerous, behaviour of British contacts especially operating in France really coloured my portrayal of those Britons that the protagonist, Eugeneia [sic] Cranston is compelled to work with. I seek to have a 50/50 gender balance as far as possible in my novels. While I have had female protagonists sharing equal billing with a man, I had not produced a novel in which the woman alone was the lead character. This felt to be a good story in which to address that.
With these foundations established, having the Byzantine Empire not only lasting beyond 1453 but persisting to the 20th Century, meant I needed to show how its culture, and indeed its capital city, would have developed in those additional four-and-a-half centuries. For some things this was not too difficult. I found that even the modern Greek Army makes use of some ranks used by the Byzantines. The level of development of the civil service, military, police and secret police and other official positions before the empire’s fall, needed minimal adjustment. The law is seen to have changed little, except along the lines adopted in Greece of our timeline. As it was, even in our history the Gregorian calendar, still used by Orthodox churches, remained in place in public life Greece until 1923, so I had no need to change that. Furthermore, Istanbul was not formally called that until 1930, well after the establishment of the Turkish Republic.
(That got me thinking about Turkish divergences which led to my book Taken in Lycia but that is a story for another day.)
I did hold a little more to the old Greek numerals than was the case, but felt I would use them in the context in which Roman numerals are still used across Europe today. As for the currency, Byzantine money was ancient but complex. I came to rather envisage the empire as being rather like the British Empire and so, despite the difficulties for business, holding on to non-decimal currency as a signifier of historic importance. I spent far too long exploring how many folles or basilica made up a hyperpyron, let alone what kind of spending power they would have had in 1914. Similarly, I retained Byzantine historic measurements just the way that Britain retained its bizarre Imperial measurements at the time.
Clothing is something that is not usually a challenging aspect for alternate history stories, especially those close to the point of divergence, and tends to come down to different uniforms. However, looking at photographs and paintings of Russian and Balkan garb of the era and finding out things about Byzantine women wearing red leather boots and cylindrical earrings, I realised it was probable that Byzantine particularism would lead to different styles emerging from what was worn, at least in Western and Central Europe, and to some degree in Russia too.
For food, I adopted a mix of Greek classic dishes tempered with Turkic and Arabic influences. Wine is produced in modern-day Türkiye, but I felt it liable to be more extensive in Christian Anatolia than in an Islamic state. Naturally pork would feature more often there than was the case in our history. The food element, as well as aspects such as what art, music, hunting and other hobbies were important for this novel because the protagonist was going to be mixing in upper class society. It seemed probable, for example, that some Greek artists or performers who in our world went to Paris, would have flourished instead in Constantinople.
In addition to featuring genuine artists I included companies, a number of Russian commanders and the actual Patriarch of Constantinople Germanus V (1835-1920); that role continued even when the city had fallen to the Ottomans. This is something I like to do in my novels. I recognise some would challenge it on the basis that parallelism is a false premise for alternate history. However, for me, it shows what aspects would not have changed with the divergences I featured, as much as I show what would be different.
As for the geography of the capital city, much is unchanged. The Hagia Sophia has remained a cathedral but many churches featured are in Istanbul still today anyway. Street and railway station names were altered though to fit the names of notable people in this enduring Byzantine history.
Authors often say that characters go off in directions that they had not originally intended. I had studied the Orthodox denominations when at school and had seen particular celebrations at first hand when holidaying in Greece. Naturally I was going to feature this church in the novel, in part to bring out those similarities and differences to our timeline. Yet, I had not anticipated religion becoming so important to the protagonist. Working undercover though, with a Byzantine identity, Eugeneia becomes connected to her mother’s heritage and anyway increasingly adopts characteristics of the Byzantine role she is playing.
That tendency also led to the development of the romance element. The behaviour of Eugeneia and Artur at the time, even for the sake of British interests, would have be seen as outrageous. Yet, ironically while tying Eugeneia to acting as a married woman, she sees the whole part she is acting as surprisingly liberating.
Overall, I guess alongside all the fun that I had in detailing 20th Century Byzantine society and getting in a plot a little like the 1978 movie version of The Thirty-Nine Steps, the character arc of Eugeneia and to some degree Artur Xanthos too, were what made this book one of my favourites.
Byzantium Express is on sale from Amazon, Smashwords, and all Books2Read markets now.
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