Preliminary Notice of Publication
Ru of the Picts
A forthcoming account of newly uncovered northern material, provisionally arranged and not yet safe in translation.
A group of fragments recently brought to editorial attention appears to preserve an early northern account of the Severan campaign in Caledonia, a missing woman later improved into a princess, and a young man whose importance may have increased considerably in transmission.
No claim is made here that the material is genuine, complete, early, internally consistent, or wise to publish. It is enough, for the present, that the sources disagree with unusual discipline.
The resulting book, Ru of the Picts: Book 1 — Ethne and the Empress, is being prepared as a dry historical comedy about empire, memory, bad evidence, and the Roman habit of writing things down until everyone else becomes easier to manage.
The Playlist
A listening companion to the book, one track per chapter. This is modern reception music, not a reconstruction of anything the Picts actually sounded like.
Full track-by-chapter listing and character motifs →
Reader Notices
A formal mailing list will be opened once the editor has selected a compliant processor and a privacy notice that does not itself require excavation.
Request notices by email Until a proper list exists, this link sends an ordinary email. Your address will be used only to reply about Ru of the Picts unless you explicitly agree to receive future notices. Any later mailing list should use double opt-in, clear consent, unsubscribe links, and a named data processor.Editorial note. The sources announced here have been reconstructed responsibly and in accordance with standard academic practice, at a respectful distance from certain recent attempts to read the Herculaneum papyri. The present editor accepts no responsibility for any passage that turned out to prefer a better story. Readers are encouraged to consult the primary sources themselves, once the present editor determines which ones those were.