Warlord of Britannia
Rome, AD 61. Nero is emperor. Caius Placonius Felicitas, historian and scribe, has accepted a commission from Caratacus, one-time king of the Catuvellauni, now deposed and living in exile in Rome, to write his memoirs. This brings Caius to the attention of Burrus, Commander of the Pretorian Guard, who is anxious that the memoirs will include nothing embarrassing for the Emperor and demands the right to review the work in progress. Caius decides to write two versions, one for Burrus and an uncensored one for posterity.
Once this framework is established, the first-person narrator changes as Caratacus dictates his reminiscences, starting with a victory over the Atrebates in AD 27 and describing in detail his ascent to the throne. A huge cast of characters drawn from five British tribes as well as Rome does not make it easier to follow the power struggles both within Caratacus’s family and between the different tribes. Finally, Caratacus achieves his ambition and is proclaimed King of the Catuvellauni. Adamant to preserve the British way of life, he seeks to unite the British tribes in opposition to the threat from the Roman empire, already established on the other side of the Channel. The story ends abruptly in AD 43 on the eve of the, by then, inevitable Roman invasion.
We know from the outset that all is not going to end well for the disappointed and vanquished Caratacus, whose prosaic recollections lack immediacy and suspense. We are also left wondering what will happen to Caius, an engaging character with a wife and child, who is trying to eke out a living without falling foul of opposing factions in Nero’s Rome. Rather than dividing Caratacus’s memoirs into two parts, for everything suggests that a sequel will follow, the authors would have been better advised to confine these to one volume within an expanded ‘contemporary’ narrative.
