Priestess of Avalon

Priestess of Avalon is a fantasy novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley from 2001, his original English title is Priestess of Avalon ( 2000). The novel is one of several histories of the bestselling The Mists of Avalon, in the Arthurian legend is retold. The novel was completed by Diana L. Paxson, as Marion Zimmer Bradley died before.

Topic

More than in the other novels, the authors deal with the differences and similarities between ancient pagan and new Christian religion. They show their strengths and weaknesses, ultimately the responsibility of man towards what they want to believe.

Action

, Also called Julia Coelia Helena Eilan, the daughter of the High Priestess Rian and the Roman prince Coelius. Her mother died at her birth, thereby pulling up the hatred of her sister and successor to Ganeda. Since Eilan at birth by the Merlin was prophesied that they should connect two worlds one day, she grows initially in her father's household where she learns Roman way of life and education, before it is sent as a ten year old to Avalon to where their training to begin a priestess. Her father sends them earlier than planned to Avalon when it comes to a military uprising to bring them there in safety. When they arrived in Avalon she realizes that she really is not welcome there.

During the transitional ritual, making it the inner transformation is confirmed by the child into a young woman, she sees a vision ahead of the arrival of a young man with whom she will fall in love. After the rite of passage she is trained priestess, trained as a Seer is but denied her.

She soon proved to be capable and clever schoolgirl with big and far-reaching gifts. In it, the potential slumbers to High Priestess, but this calling the current High Priestess Ganeda has provided for her own daughter.

As Ganedas daughter dies and her granddaughter Dierna remains as successor, Helena is denied dealing with this and her sister Becca more often. So Ganeda does not even stop a vision Eilans in which she sees that Becca will drown in the swamp. But their vision arrives and Dierna is inconsolable.

After a few tests Helena ordained as priests.

When the man actually appears that she has a few years earlier foreseen in a vision to unite during the Beltane rites with a priestess, Helena takes secretly the place of the originally designated priestess and sleeps with the young Constantius and so pregnant by him. This disobedience is enough Ganeda to banish the girl forever from Avalon.

Helena loses the baby, but is pregnant again. Since she now has no other home more, she accompanied her husband Constantius to Rome and there brings not only her son Constantine to the world but also gets to know the strength and depth of Christianity. Deeply impressed she begins to detach from Avalon and to accept the new faith.

That Constantius in order to gain the title of Augustus, can a political marriage with the stepdaughter of the Emperor Maximian received and separates from his dearly beloved Helena, is only the beginning of further losses. Only when Constantius ' death Helena returns to his side and assists him to the last. He dies in the arms of his great love he has never forgotten.

During their stay in Britain she seeks once more to the Isle of the priestesses, but also notes that this is no longer their world. The following years she has devoted herself to the education and support of her son Constantine and the search for the secrets and fundamentals of the Christian faith that will lead them even to Jerusalem.

In the autumn of her life, she realizes what it has at birth with the prophecy to be that so long overshadowed her life.

Meanwhile, the High Priestess Ganeda died and Dierna enters its successor as High Priestess.

Her son Constantine is proclaimed emperor and takes Britain after the reign of Carausius again. Helena lives as queen mother at the court of the emperor and becomes an important and powerful person in Rome. Since Constantine strongly supported Christianity begins with him the superiority of Christians throughout the empire. His mother, a Priestess of Avalon and daughter of the High Priestess tries to successfully combine both religions and let live peacefully next to each other and thus it provides a bridge between the worlds, as you foretold at her birth.

Shortly before her death seeks Helena on the island of Avalon, there to die.

People

• Helena: Also called Eilan, the daughter of the High Priestess Rian and the Roman prince Coelius. In Helena's birth predicts the Merlin, she will stand at the turning point of time and open the door between the worlds. Therefore, they first grew up with her ​​father at the court of Britannic nobles. At the age of 10 years she is sent to Avalon to be trained there as a priestess. She is the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine.
• High Priestess Ganeda: The sister of Rian, the aunt of Helena and grandmother of Dierna.
• Julius Coelius: Prince of Camulodunum, father of Helena.
• Rian: the mother of Helena, died at birth. She was the direct predecessor of the current High Priestess Ganeda.
• Emperor Constantine: The son of Helena and Constantius, Roman Emperor 306-337.
• Constantius Chlorus: A Roman soldier. He comes from good Roman house, which is, however, fallen in Rome currently out of favor. Husband of Helen and father of Constantine. In order to get a higher title, divorces Constantius Chlorus by Helena in order to marry the stepdaughter of Emperor Maximian. Appointment as Caesar of the West and later Augustus 293-306.
• Carausius: Roman fleet admiral, who becomes her ally saved in a severe storm on whimsical way through Dierna and then. He is married with Teleri and comes in heavy fighting for a betrayal to the Romans lost their lives. He is buried at Avalon next Gaven.
• Emperor Maximian: Emperors of the Roman Empire 286 to 305
• Dierna: Helena's second cousin and granddaughter of the High Priestess Ganeda, the direct successor of Ganeda.

Composition and narrative style

This story runs partly parallel to the novel The Lady of Avalon and is the direct antecedents to the story about the High Priestess Dierna, towards the end there is an overlap. It is a first-person narrative from the perspective of Helena. The story goes back to a period in the history of the Roman Empire.

Preparation

When working out the historical details Diana L. Paxson grabbed guidance to the following sources: Plantagenet Somerset Fry, Roman Britain; Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The late Roman Empire of A.H.M. Jones; and Jan Willem Drijvers, Helena Augusta.

Expenditure

• Fischer Verlag, Paperback, ISBN 3596153042

• Literary work
• Literature ( 20th century)
• Literature ( English )
• Fantasy literature
• Work by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• Novel, epic
• Literature (United States)