I’ve always loved mythology in all its forms. These are the stories that inform our collective unconscious; these are the raw stuff of our dreams. Gods and monsters, heroes and villains, saviors and victims. All our archetypes derive from myth. The challenge is to make of them something new.
The earliest seeds of Kushiel’s Dart were planted in my mind many years ago, when I discovered the passage in Genesis about how the ‘sons of God’ came in to the ‘daughters of Men,’ and they bore children to them. That was the first glimmer of the idea of drawing on Judeo-Christian tradition and wedding it to an element of sensuality.
In 1997, I took a commission to write the text for a coffee-table book on angels. Since the topic had already been strip-mined, I elected to research angelology and develop selected stories as narrative mythologies. I went straight to the source material, books of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, compilations of Jewish legend and folklore. In doing so, I encountered the same story in greater detail: Rebel angels engaging in congress with mortal women, betraying divine secrets and begetting a powerful nation.
Ultimately, of course, they were destroyed for it. What I thought was interesting was the subtle suggestion that their realm posed a threat to the sovereignty of Heaven. This is the story I adopted for Kushiel’s Dart, and that realm the basis of my fictitious nation of Terre d’Ange. I wanted to take it in a very different direction and give it a medieval setting, placing it within the framework of epic fantasy. This is how Elua came into being, an angelic deity wholly of my own creation.
Conceived in the womb of Earth of the commingled blood of Yeshua ben Yosef, or Jesus, and the tears of Mary Magdalene, Elua is a wandering god who represents a union of the chthonic with the celestial. Since he belongs fully to neither, he is reviled or ignored by all. The angels who abandon Heaven to become his Companions do so out of love, not rebellion. Once they’re on mortal soil, they become enamored of the pleasures of mortality; hence, the nation of Terre d’Ange is begotten.
Each of the angels I chose has a distinct character and motivation. Kushiel, ‘the rigid one of God,’ is one of the most unusual. As a presiding angel of Hell, he was in charge of administering punishment; little else is written of him. There is a human need for atonement and expiation. What, I thought, if Kushiel truly loved the sinners in his charge? What if they loved him in turn, and welcomed his cruelty as mercy? What if this aspect were turned loose in a society whose only real more was, “Love as thou wilt?”
Thus, a mythos was born.
The story of Kushiel’s Dart is set a thousand years after the advent of Elua and his Companions, who have long since struck a bargain with God and Earth and departed the mortal coil. Their descendants, however, bear their blood in their veins. Onesuch is my heroine, Phèdre nó Delaunay. As one who is marked by Kushiel’s Dart, Phèdre bears a distinctly dubious gift.
This is the source for a dark sensuality that permeates the book. I don’t think, in the annals of literature, there has ever been a heroine quite like Phèdre. It was a challenge and a joy to write in her voice. Ultimately, however, I think she does triumph as an epic heroine, and that triumph lies not only in the feats of courage, wit and will that propel the action, but the fact that she never loses sight of compassion. Above all, that is what it means to be stricken by Kushiel’s Dart.
And that, for me, is a myth worth believing.
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Jacqueline Carey is the bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Kushiel’s Legacy series of historical fantasy novels and The Sundering epic fantasy duology. Her next novel, Saint Olivia, is scheduled to be published this May, and to be followed by the seventh installment of Kushiel’s Legacy, Naamah’s Kiss, in June!
This essay was originally written for Borders in 2001 and is reprinted here with the permission of Jacqueline Carey. All rights remain with her.
You can visit Ms Carey at her website www.jacquelinecarey.com
I came across this article when I was writing my review of “Kushiel’s Dart” for BSC – apart from the wonderful heroine Phèdre and the exotic yet familiar world of Terre d’Ange it was Carey’s reworking of the Judeo-Christian mythology of angel that drew me in. Not only does she succeed in crafting a plausible mythos but the whole Kushiel series explores the different aspects of a society where Love in all its manifold forms are held as a sacred tenet.
It is very nice to see all of these author essays here on BSC. This site has always been great but you have now taken it to whole new kinds of awesomeness. Gentlemen, I salute you!
Thanks Trine!
We are just trying to keep it fresh, and sometimes oldies but goodies do that!
I have another one I’m putting up later this evening!
No greater epic has ever been told. Simple as that. Her words are beautiful and her story telling and magnificent. I am obsessed with her novels. She showed how love can change a nation and the world. She captured the divinity in love, something that should never be forgotten.
This is one of the things that I like so much about Carey’s novels, that she explores love as a divine force that can effect change in the world. I also love how she in “Kushiel’s Chosen” and “Kushiel’s Avatar” sets out to explore the ethics of compassion.
This is one of the greatest stories ever told and will be enjoyed by all lovers of fantasy for many years to come. It is complex and intricate, and I enjoyed each story from cover to cover. Jacqueline Carey is a true literary genius.