Welcome to the Raptor of Spain!
The Raptor of Spain: A Webserial is my attempt at an alternate history novel posted in serialized format on the web. In short, Alternate History looks at history and asks ‘What if it had gone differently?’ ‘It’ can be anything from a battle to a the birth of a person, to a butterfly flapping it’s wings differently or someone holding their breath on a mountain top one instant longer than in our own history. Small changes can alter the timeline in big ways. Each change is known as a Point of Divergence (PoD).
The Point of Divergence for the Raptor of Spain is that the mother of Abd ar-Rahman, a Berber Christian from East Africa, has more influence on him than in our timeline (OTL). The PoD is not a single change, but the culmination of small changes throughout his life until the moment he enters our history directly: the destruction of the Umayyad Caliphate by the Abbasids. In our history, Abd ar-Rahman first fled to Mesopotamia, then to North Africa and finally to Spain where he seized power and created what would become the Caliphate of Cordoba and a unified front against the Christian Reconquista of Spain. This project began as a timeline on AlternateHistory.com(AH) and that timeline, updated Tuesdays and Fridays, continues to this day–300 years after the PoD. Does it ever end? I know exactly when and how, but that is my secret.
The webserial will cover the life of Abd ar-Rahman. While the timeline goes far beyond that, I wanted to re-write the early parts of it into a stand-alone novel-type form. For those who have and are still reading the timeline, it’s a chance to look back on what I’ve learned from the input and experience while getting a closer look at the changes to the man himself and more importantly the theme of the timeline which was not clearly articulated there but will be here in the closing chapters. There will also be a few changes from the timeline at AH but all for the better I hope. You are of course, welcome to read both.
It’s important to remember that information on 8th Century Spain is hard to come by for either side, Muslim or Christian (though harder among the Christians). While I try to keep the story grounded in historical facts as much as possible, as the saying goes: ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’ That said, my philosophy is that the truth usually makes a good story even better.
Copyright. I dislike the copyright regime used and I believe it should be changed. But, I also believe in the premise: people’s works should be protected. I am not going to allow people to claim this work as their own or post it all over the internet. The timeline itself remains on AH.com. The serial is on this blog. Excerpts for the standard fair use purposes are fine of course, but plagiarism is not.
Finally, no offense is intended to any parties, religions or countries and remember, this is a work of alternate historical fiction. If you find yourself upset at my changes, then you can always go look up what really happened and rest assured that nothing I’ve done has actually changed anything.
After 500 words I hope you give the Raptor of Spain a chance and let me know what you think.
