Q&A Thursdays Reprised #6: Rosie’s Question

Currently I’m reprising a Daughter of Blood (and by extension The Wall Of Night ) Q&A series that first featured in 2019—with some really great questions that I’m enjoying getting to read and think about again.

Today’s I’m refeaturing Rosie’s question on the Web of Mayanne.

UK/AU/NZ

Rosie: The Web of Mayanne is a fascinating part of the plot which really comes to the fore in Daughter of Blood. Can you tell us about how you came up with that kind of ‘thread magic’ and the influences behind it?

I suspect that the Web of Mayanne’s origins lie in my love of history and the importance of tapestry as art and artefact throughout a considerable portion of history. The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the more famous examples that records a significant historical event, albeit from the perspective of the victors. Picasso’s Guernica, although not a tapestry, is an example of a similar work but from a wider perspective. Both works, despite the differences of medium and almost a thousand years in-between record major events of their times, demonstrating that art can be an important medium for reflecting and passing on historical and cultural information. The Web of Mayanne is such an artefact, but its significance has been lost over extended periods of time. (A team of archaeologists and anthropologists may need to be parachuted in. 😉 )

The Web, with its connection to the Hunt, is also based on medieval tapestries that depicted hunting scenes, including the famous Hunt of the Unicorn and the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries. Similar scenes, including lovers in enclosed gardens, featured in medieval Books of Hours. Throw in the prevalence of myth and folklore around wild hunts, the white hart, and magical hinds, and its possible to discern at least some of the mythical threads woven into the Web of Mayanne—although I would not discount precedents from myth and legend, such as Penelope of Ithaca’s weaving, or the Lady of Shalott’s web in literature.

In terms of how I came up with the Web of Mayanne in WALL, though… I think it would be fair to say that the Web wove itself into the telling, shuttling warp and weft about the pre-existing thread of the Hunt, as the story evolved. The Lovers version in Daughter evolved out of the first Hunt, based on the evolution in medieval tapestries that I understand saw more attention given to more domestic and intimate images in the late Middle Ages. And then, of course, there’s always Sir Thomas Wyatt’s famous line:

“Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind…”