Samuel DenHartog's Blog: The Road to 1,440 - Posts Tagged "moctezuma"
Gold, Gods, and the Fall of an Empire in “Ashes of the Feathered Throne”
Empires do not fall quietly, and they rarely fall cleanly. In Ashes of the Feathered Throne, I set out to capture the collision between two worlds, one ancient and ceremonial, the other hungry and unrelenting, without reducing either to stereotype. The story follows Isobel Greystoke, an English traveler drawn into the wake of Hernán Cortés’s march through Tenochtitlan. With no banner to serve and no side to truly call her own, she becomes a reluctant witness to a war wrapped in both gold and blood.
The world of the Mexica is not just a backdrop. It breathes with heat and ritual, with resistance and sorrow. Every temple, every offering, every shifting alliance speaks to a culture under siege and determined to endure. The conquistadors are not made into heroes, but they are not stripped of complexity either. What pulled me most was the human layer beneath the violence: the friendships formed across language and loyalty, the impossible decisions made under pressure, and the way a person’s sense of honor can survive even inside the machinery of conquest.
At the heart of the novel is a story of trust, loyalty, and forbidden love. Isobel’s bond with Cuauhtli, a nobleman of the Texcocan and brother to King Cacama, begins in caution but grows into something that neither war nor politics can easily define. Their relationship is one of shared risk and quiet defiance, forged in the margins of a collapsing empire. It is not a love untouched by fear or grief, but it offers both of them a reason to hope, even as the world around them burns.
I wrote this book not only to revisit a turning point in history, but to explore what is left behind when empires fall. Some ruins are visible, carved in stone. Others are hidden in memory, in silence, in all the stories that were never told. Victory is not always what survives. Sometimes, what remains are the ashes and the memory of the throne that once stood there.
The world of the Mexica is not just a backdrop. It breathes with heat and ritual, with resistance and sorrow. Every temple, every offering, every shifting alliance speaks to a culture under siege and determined to endure. The conquistadors are not made into heroes, but they are not stripped of complexity either. What pulled me most was the human layer beneath the violence: the friendships formed across language and loyalty, the impossible decisions made under pressure, and the way a person’s sense of honor can survive even inside the machinery of conquest.
At the heart of the novel is a story of trust, loyalty, and forbidden love. Isobel’s bond with Cuauhtli, a nobleman of the Texcocan and brother to King Cacama, begins in caution but grows into something that neither war nor politics can easily define. Their relationship is one of shared risk and quiet defiance, forged in the margins of a collapsing empire. It is not a love untouched by fear or grief, but it offers both of them a reason to hope, even as the world around them burns.
I wrote this book not only to revisit a turning point in history, but to explore what is left behind when empires fall. Some ruins are visible, carved in stone. Others are hidden in memory, in silence, in all the stories that were never told. Victory is not always what survives. Sometimes, what remains are the ashes and the memory of the throne that once stood there.
The Road to 1,440
I'm Samuel DenHartog, and at 51, at the end of November of 2023, I've embarked on a remarkable journey as a writer. My diverse background in computer programming, video game development, and film prod
...more
- Samuel DenHartog's profile
- 111 followers
