cap_ironman

In Rome, people who were captured in battle were kept as slave, and supposingly, honour rather than chains, keeps them from running.

The AU I've been figuring out though, has UK successfully fighting off the Romans with the leadership of Steve Rogers, who is then de facto King, and Tony, who is one of the many sons of the Roman Emperor, is sent as a gift, an honour bound slave, and Steve is like, 'wut', but keeps Tony for insurance.

With the cliche of Tony eventually sleeping in Steve's bed because he can't stand the cold English weather.

That actually sounds quite interesting.

I chime in in favor of historial Roman/Greek AU for slavefic. That, or possibly some fantasy/sci-fi other world or futuristic-in-space setting.

Tony could be a Roman and Steve could be a captured Germanic slave, maybe, though I like

hohaiyee's King Steven of Britain plotbunny better, I think. Oooh, or you could essentially substitue Steve for Venutius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venutius), make the first century British revolts led by Venutius and Boudica (Sharon, maybe?) sucessful instead of having them be defeated, and Tony could be a Roman officer of the 9th Legion who is captured and enslaved.

Slavefic set in an AU of the modern-day US would need major amounts of historical handwaving, like making the Civil War not happen and changing the structure of US society so that slavery wasn't racially based, which would be, like, industrial grade handwaving -- you'd basically be doing alternate history, and there'd be a snowballing amount of little changes that would result from those major changes that you'd have to keep track of, and I suspect that's an excessive amount of worldbuilding to have to do for a kinkfic.

or you could use the world building thing used by several other slave fic writers. And say that sometime in the last century , slavery was introduced as a way to get the poor fed and off the streets. With people selling themselves or their children to feed their families.

Basically indentured servitude? Close enough! :D

The Southern history geek in me gets out of control sometimes.

I did see a slavefic that had a modern-style setting that worked once ("My Slave I Bequeath To"), that was set after a nuclear war had devastated the country and society had been completely restructured, but in general, modern American setting slavefic AUs don't work for me unless they're some kind of "the Confederacy won" AU.

Or AUs where slavery is/was applied across racial barriers right from the 17th century (i.e. there are a lot of white slaves as well as black slaves) and there'd never been a Civil War -- so slavery was still in place in the 20th/21st century. But again, lots of worldbuilding and alternate history groundwork's necessary with those if you're doing a "this is the 20th/21st century and there was never a Civil War."

that sometime in the last century, slavery was introduced as a way to get the poor fed and off the streets. With people selling themselves or their children to feed their families.

After people had just fought the bloodiest war in US history in order to end slavery? A writer would have a hard time selling legal slavery in the sense of people actually being owned as property being reintroduced, especially for white people. For one thing, it would require passing and ratifying another amendment to the constitution to undo the 13th amendment, and probably the 14th, too, and I doubt you'd get that many 19th century politicians publically supporting the idea of making white people slaves. Especially in the South.

You might be able to make a sort of debt-based indentured servitude work, though -- where it's not an official legal status, and it's not *called* slavery, but where people are essentially trapped with no way out of a situation of economic-based servitude, the way sharecroppers and tenant farmers were essentially trapped by debt into a kind of de facto slavery (or the way prostitutes in places like 19th century San Francisco were trapped in defacto slavery by pimps who'd paid to bring them over from China and claimed that they had to work off the price of their ticket to America -- but who of course planned to never let them quit working for them).

There were white indentured slaves on the plantations (after they Emancipated the slaves in 1838 in the British West Indies), so Tony could be a plantation owner and Steve an Irish indentured worker (a LOT of those came to the BWI in the late 19th C).

I must admit, I do have issues with slave fic, in that I can't see how the position of slave and master forms the basis a healthy relationship. I might have been poisoned by history and studying the complex dynamic between the slave master/his slave and some serious Stockholm Syndrome (raised in the BWI, we did a LOT of history with slavery etc in school). There are a fair bit of pitfalls writing this sort of fic.

How did England get along with Scotland and Ireland when the Roman invaded?

I always think that if people work with each other, love their neighbour, everything will be better. There is this Chinese proverb and fable about how the mouth and teeth must protect each other. It's about this country that allows an Empire free passage to conquer its neighbour, and, on returning, the Empire conquered the country that allowed it through as well.

My Steve is very Irish, and the alternate history is, United Kingdom was formed centuries earlier, consensually so there is no infighting, therefore, when the Romans came, they were able to fight the Romans off, maybe with the help of France.

It's usually very hard to capture and hold a country unless there is infighting that makes it vulnerable and impossible to organize against a greater enemy. China first fell to Europe only because of infighting between the ruling Manchurians and the Hans (and White Lotus Society), then to Japan during the Nationalist vs Communist. Ireland was divided between the Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics. The First Nations were warring with each other when the Iroquois allied with the French settlers, etc.

My history specialty (as you can probably tell from the tl;dr babbling at lilaeth) is US history, so Roman Empire Europe I mostly know about from Western Civ class as a college freshman, and some hobbiest-style casual reading.

I'm not actually sure how well the various celtic/pictish/etc. tribes in England got along prior to the Roman invasion, but the Romans IRC never got to Ireland. They gave up on Scotland after a while, too, and just built a fortified wall between it and England to serve as a barrier. England was kind of the fringe and frontier of the Roman empire.

They conquered most of Europe through having better weapons, tactics, and discipline than the guys they were fighting. A Roman shield wall was nearly unbreakable, for example, and Romans charged, retreated, etc. as a unit, while celtic, gallic, and germanic tribesmen fought as individuals.

Um, there was no England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland when the Romans invaded. They were simply two neighbouring islands with multiple small tribal kingdoms (18 just in what is now England and Wales). Even the name Britain (or Pritain/Prydain) comes from the Roman description of the inhabitants as painted people (Picts or Pictii). If there was a serious threat to multiple tribes, they'd band together their fighters under a temporary war leader, but he had no governing power, and otherwise they were independent.

The Romans couldn't understand the way Britain functioned with multiple tribes, each with their own tribal center, so they assumed that the Island was a single country and that Camulodunum (now Colchester) was its capital city...

The Romans gave up on what is now Scotland because the differing geography of the area made it just too difficult to police or take over. Their personnel supply chain was just too extended to commit enough troops. I've no idea why they didn't try for Ireland, but it's probably a resources problem again. In addition, some researchers are starting to wonder if the Roman Invasion wasn't quite as violent as we'd assumed - the tribes had been importing goods from the empire for years, and a number of the tribal leaders seem initially to have been happy to join the empire as though it were a franchise! It wasn't until the Roman governors started going up against the druids and ruling families of various tribes that problems occurred (e.g. Boudica's husband wanted his wife and daughters to inherit but the Romans weren't about to allow women in power).

...Even after the Romans stopped policing Britain and abandoned it to itself, the tribes kept acting seperately for centuries. Gradually more Saxon, Jutish, and Danish tribes migrated/invaded (depending on who you believe). They mingled with the population in some areas, but the Romano-British tribes that retained their original identity were pushed to the margins of the island and became the countries of Cornwall, Wales and Scotland, separating them from Angle-land/England. Even so, England as a country ruled by one individual didn't happen (permanently) until around 924-939 AD (though Offa, King of Mercia, ruled all England for twenty years in 779-796 AD). Wales finally became a single entity under Llywelyn Fawr (though I'm not sure whether it broke up agin for a while after his death) in about 1218, and Scotland didn't really unite under a single ruling family until somewhere in the eleventh century.

...All of this is just a little more complex than I can recall at the moment (and yes, I've mostly ignored Ireland, 'cos again it's too damn long!), but bottom line, unless you have everyone uniting under a War Leader and then somehow he takes political power from every single ruler in the two islands without his army falling apart in rebellion, I can't work out how the United Kingdom could be formed before the Romans get there. Its multi-tribal state was stable until the Roman abandonment left a vacuum of power. You might get the plot to work by having the Romans be the threat that the kingdoms were united against? Maybe they were more aggressive, so none of the local rulers wanted to work with them, and instead decided to call for a War Leader to consolidate the armies? But even then you've got to work out why the more distant tribes would consider the Romans enough of a threat to join the coalition...

...P.S. your plot sounds interesting *g*

It does sound interesting, you have to post this fic.

Wow, I didn't think my prompt would generate so much interesting history. This has to go into a fic.

To use a cliche 'nothing ventured, nothing gained'. I think that the complexities dynamic and the chances for the numerous pitfalls is also a great opportunity for an amazying fic...

I am going to have to take your word for it ... I just got my cliche bingo card and...yeah.

lol well cliches can make very good fic as long as its done right...

How did England get along with Scotland and Ireland when the Roman invaded?

Everyone always forgets Wales. :-(

They didn't go for Ireland properly because the Roman grip on Britain was too tenuous. They only managed to subdue what's now modern-day Wales by wiping out the Ordovices, who lived in the middle bit, and all of the druids, who lived on Anglesey. The Silures in the south were so violent that the Romans recorded the deaths of three seperate governors from exhaustion trying to keep them quiet. And the same problems were repeated elsewhere: a fact people often forget about Hadrian's Wall, for example, was that as well as being heavily defended against the Scottish side it was also defended against the big Cumbrian tribe, the Brigantes, who supposedly were a part of the Empire. They tried to claim Scotland twice, even building a second wall between Glasgow and Edinburgh during Antoninus Pius' reign, before they had to just give up. After all that it simply wasn't worth them aiming for Ireland, not when Britain was such a problem; and then, of course, all of the problems hit the Romans that ultimately led to the Empire falling, and then they certainly had no time.

Incidentally, Wales was first ruled as a single entity in 942 AD, under Hywel Dda; Hywel ruled all of Deheubarth and Gwynedd, and jointly ruled the east with Athelstan, but his coinage was used throughout as were his famous Laws. Hywel was the Man, I'm telling you...

None of which is at all relevant to any sort of slavefic, of course. I just love Classics, and Welsh history. *sheepish grin*

*grins back* I have my own favourite pockets of mythology and history, which is everything up to about 1300 AD as far as Great Britain and Ireland are concerned!

I thought the risk of over-extension was probably why the Romans didn't try for Ireland but I'm not that familiar with historical Ireland until a couple of centuries later (Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma and her era *g*).

*shuffles feet* I forgot Hywel the Good... probably the only reason I remembered Llywelyn united Wales (at least for his lifetime) is because I have a copy of Sharon Penman's "Here Be Dragons". But then I was trying to remember who permanently merged it... which on further checking wasn't Llywelyn either! Oh well!

Wow, I didn't expect my prompt to generate such a response... does this mean we'll be seeing some of these fic ideas on lj soon?

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Spata or Rome?

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epic tl;dr, sorry

If you wanted to set it in the Caribbean

My history is blurry, so fill me here;

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Re: Spata or Rome?

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Re: If you wanted to set it in the Caribbean

I hear you

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