Crownless

Crownless: Forgotten Queer Histories of Imperial Rome

For readers drawn to the lives hidden behind Rome’s marble facades, this collection offers three untold stories.

Crownless presents three novellas about people who found themselves reshaped by imperial power and had to learn how to survive it.

Sporus was a provincial boy until Nero decided he should become something else: a living monument to the emperor’s dead wife. Hierocles drove chariots until he caught the eye of Elagabalus, the Syrian priest-emperor whose reign scandalised Rome. Pythias tasted Hadrian’s wine for poison and became keeper of the empire’s most devastating love story.

These novellas restore voices that ancient historians dismissed as scandalous gossip. Each narrator tells how they experienced the events that shaped their lives. How did they persist without a means of survival? What choices remained when everyone else had already made the obvious ones? What was it like to remain human in the face of total power?

Inspired by the historical record, Crownless visits the internal landscapes of lives that historians neglected under Nero, Hadrian and Elagabalus. It’s a historical novel that treats its characters as humans rather than emblems and looks at how the empire changed everyone it encountered, even those who found ways to push back.

Crownless explores the concealed realities, neglected by historians of the period, during the reigns of Nero, Hadrian, and Elagabalus, relying on historical documents. This historical fiction examines the lives of its characters, investigating the impact of the Empire on all, particularly those who opposed it.

This book, designed for individuals who appreciate both literary style and historical setting, reconciles accuracy with an understanding of historical uncertainty. The result: three portraits of endurance, three different strategies for remaining human when the world demands you become something else.

Contains mature themes.