PREFACE

It is the blessing and curse of writing historical novels that most characters in your book are biographical characters, and already in a person’s mindshare in one way or another. This book is certainly no exception to this.
Since this was the early 1500s however, very little is known about the people’s actual character (and often of their actual physical appearance, particularly if no depictions were made of them) unless they were very famous, so I have taken license with that. Where I found it available, I have tried to keep to the character traits these people seemed to have had, when the person was described in a source close to their lifetimes and is corroborated by other sources (for example, this novel’s Pedro de Alvarado is very abusive, and it is documented on sources of both Mexica and Spanish origin that indeed he was, and his appearance is commonly known through both realistic paintings and descriptions of his reddish-blonde hair from Native Americans who called him Tonatiuh). Where there was only one source mentioning how “wonderful” the person was (on both sides), I have taken that with a grain of salt.
This is because the history of the creation of the nation of Mexico has alternatively been portrayed as either a “perpetrator-victim” or “civilizer-ignorant” affair, with both concepts being a gross oversimplification. The Spanish and Aztec empires were two urban empires in their own right, and one does not create or grow an empire with stupid people at the helm. So instead I have used available evidence in way of descriptions and imagination to create backgrounds or this characters and locations and bring them to life as I believe they would have actually lived, with a mix of personalities such as you would find in any great society. I have attempted to do so respectfully and lovingly, as our Mexican heritage depends on both our parents.
So don’t be afraid to identify with one character or another. If I have stayed true to the character I portrayed, I hope you will not have been disappointed.
With love for Mexico,

David Martinez