That Bastard, Conrad of Montferrat

In my research for TWS Book 2, Hero's Army, I keep coming up against this guy Conrad. The crazy thing is, he's actually dead by the time my protagonist Henry arrives in the Holy Land (or, as the Crusaders call it, l'Outremer - the overseas). But he's a really, really interesting case of tainted history.

See, if you read the old chestnuts of English historical fiction like Walter Scott, Conrad's always the baddie. Conniving, evil, wizened, ugly, sadistic, sexually... ahem... experimental... really, they can't find enough nasty things to say about the guy. But if you actually look at the events of his life, you run into some cognitive dissonance.

First of all, he's a hottie. The Byzantine chronicler Niketas Choniates described him as "of beautiful appearance, comely in life's springtime, exceptional and peerless in manly courage and intelligence, and in the flower of his body's strength." (Heck, I'm a straight male, and even I feel a little tingly.)

The Evil Overlord List

Once a year, it is incumbent upon us - Aleinu, as my people would say - to print a link to that classic of fantasy, the Evil Overlord List.

So there it is.
Mwa-hah-hah-hah!


PS - Some of you more alert readers may notice that my own evil overlord, Geoffrey Plantagenet, has committed some of these faux pas - notably, numbers 26, 30, 36, 53, and maybe sorta kinda 8 and 98. But six out of a hundred? That's not bad, faithful readers!