The Real History Behind Labyrinth of Shadows

Most fantasy borrows from history. The Witch's Rebirth lives inside it.

When I started writing Labyrinth of Shadows, I didn't begin with a character or a plot. I began with a question: what if the most extraordinary moments in history — the ones historians couldn't fully explain — had a witch in them? Not a fairy tale witch. A real one. A woman the earth itself kept calling back.

The Merovingian Kings: Magic in the Blood

The Merovingian kings were not ordinary monarchs. Historical accounts describe them as possessing supernatural power — not as metaphor, but as fact accepted by the people who lived among them. Their long, uncut hair was believed to be a literal conduit for their mystical abilities. Cut it off, and you stripped them of their power. This wasn't folklore told after their fall — it was a living belief during their reign.

Their lineage was said to carry the blood of sea creatures — the Deep Ones — from beyond mortal understanding. Some accounts traced them to the Minotaur of Crete. Others whispered of fey ancestors hiding in the deep forests of Europe, watching the human world from a distance measured in centuries. The bees that swarmed around the Merovingian kings were understood as a symbol of immortality — a promise that their bloodline would never truly end.

This is the dynasty Merona walks into in Labyrinth of Shadows. She arrives in 5th-century Gaul as the Merovingians are consolidating power — and she is neither their servant nor their savior. She is something older than their bloodline. And the darkness she carries predates even them.

The Copenhagen Witch Trials and King James

The novel opens in 1590 Copenhagen with a woman named Anna being dragged through the streets to a burning pyre. She is a healer — a midwife — accused of witchcraft for crimes she didn't commit, including causing the storm that sank the ship carrying a Danish princess to Scotland.

This is rooted in the real North Berwick witch trials — one of the most documented and politically charged witch hunts in history. King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) was so consumed by his fear of witchcraft that he wrote Daemonologie, a treatise defending the burning of witches. I open the book with his words as epigraph, because they capture exactly the world Anna is dying inside:

"The fearful abounding at this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the Devil, the Witches or enchanters, hath moved me to dispatch this following treatise..." — King James, Daemonologie

Anna's story is a portal. She is not the first woman burned for knowing too much. She won't be the last. And what happens to her — in the fire, in the moment between life and death — is how Merona's story in 5th-century Gaul begins.

A World on the Edge of Collapse

The 5th century was not a stable time. The Western Roman Empire was disintegrating. A massive earthquake shook the Mediterranean. Unexplained eclipses plunged regions into darkness for years. Comets streaked across the sky. Volcanic eruptions reshaped landscapes. And in this chaos, the Huns drove the Sicambrian Franks — led by Merovech — across the Rhine and into Gaul.

History recorded these events. What it did not record — what it could not record — was the woman moving through them. Merona arrives in Gaul as a prophecy. Her powers are predicted by ancient seers. Her presence shifts the course of fate. She is neither the Merovingians' salvation nor their destruction — she is something they cannot categorize, which makes her more dangerous than either.

Where to Begin: The Free Prequel

If you want to understand Merona before the labyrinth — before 5th-century Gaul, before the Merovingians — there is a prequel short story that begins in 666 BC Assyria, at the siege of a city on the Tigris River. It's the story of who she was before she was reborn into the woman the world would come to fear. It shows the choice that changed everything.

The prequel — The First Fracture — is free. Sign up for my newsletter and I'll send it directly to your inbox. Then, when you open Labyrinth of Shadows, you'll already know why the darkness recognizes her face.

History was stranger than fiction. I just wrote the parts they left out.