Servant of the Underworld Aliette De Bodard

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Extras…

Author’s Notes

The Historical Setting

The bulk of this story is set in Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec/Mexica Empire, in the year 1480. Of course, the events in this novel aren’t historical – but I have tried to keep the setting as historical as possible.

This has two drawbacks: the first is the scarcity of sources about life in the Aztec Empire. The second is that most of those sources were written after 1519: after the Spanish invasion, and forty years after the events of this book. Quite aside from questions of reliability, there is also the problem that the Aztec way of life had no doubt changed between 1480 and 1519. Also, inevitably, I will have mangled some of my sources; any glaring historical errors come from me, and not from the sources I consulted.

I did twist history in several respects. The post of Guardian, and its attendant worship of the Duality, is an invention of mine. The Aztecs did have a concept of the Duality as supreme gods, but they seemed to have been content to have that remain an abstraction, and worship mostly the expressions of the Duality (such as the Lord and Lady of the underworld). Similarly, I gave the clergy of Mictlantecuhtli the responsibility of funerals, whereas we have no evidence of a widely organised religious body in charge of that aspect of life (it’s likely the clans would have taken care of their own). I also twisted their worship slightly by not having them offer human sacrifices; in reality, like most cults, they would have relied heavily on those.

Similarly, most of the characters in this book are fictitious, the exception being those of Imperial Blood. Axayacatl and Tizoc were both Revered Speakers of the Mexica Empire.

As for Teomitl… The successor of Tizoc was his brother, a young man named Ahuizotl. Not much is known of him, other than that Ahuizotl was not his real name, and he took it on ascending the throne – but no reason is given why. Ahuizotl is known for two things: his military conquests, which brought the Mexica Empire to its greatest extent yet; and his massive refurbishment of the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan. He died in a freak flood in the year 1502, said to be the anger of Tlaloc and Chalchiutlicue.

The “Obsidian Snake” to whom the Goddess Chalchiutlicue refers in chapter twenty is the literal translation of Ixcoatl, a previous Mexica Emperor who was the grandfather of Axayacatl, Tizoc and Ahuizotl.

As to the conflict between Tlaloc and Huitzilpochtli: an interpretation commonly put forward is that the Rain-God Tlaloc was the god of peasants and farmers, and that his was a very old worship. There is evidence that a rain-god with similar features to Tlaloc was worshipped in the time of Teotihuacan, about one thousand years before the beginning of the Aztec Empire.

Huitzilpochtli is a newer god, most probably the tribal god of the Aztecs – but the Aztecs elevated him to the highest rank in their divine hierarchy, twinning him with the Sun-God Tonatiuh and promoting his worship on a massive scale. Obviously, there was some room for divine discontent.