Lady of the Deep
a literary fantasy for fans of Circe, Sistersong, and The Bright Sword
Celtic Gaul - 1st century BCE
Donra's world shatters when her warrior brother falls to Caesar's legions and she is sacrificed to the primordial god of the bog in a desperate plea for aid. But the black water of the Otherworld is nothing like the druids said it would be, and the gods do not intervene in the wars of men, no matter how much she pleads. Unwilling to leave her tribe to ruin and let her sacrifice be in vain, Donra sets out on a quest to resurrect her hero brother to lead the revolt against Caesar’s men.
But Donra’s grief and guilt are all-consuming as her journey forces her to confront the lifetime's worth of choices that led her down this path, especially her affair with her brother’s political rival. Every step she takes through the Otherworld tears the veil between realms, unleashing the wrath of gods she only thought she knew, and uncovering a destiny that will transcend centuries.
Dear Reader,
The inspiration for Lady of the Deep came to me when I visited a bog body exhibition during a road trip around Denmark in 2021. As I developed the bog body narrative, I was further inspired to set the story during the Gallic Wars by the Celtic-Gaulish ruins near my home. This, combined with my namesake penchant for the Arthurian, sparked this “pre-telling” of the lady of the lake’s iron age origin story.
The novel follows Donra, an imagined Gaulish woman of the Treveri tribe that once flourished in the landscape around my home in Luxembourg. Walking through the marshy lands in my own village and the surrounding area, I can easily see how these places inspired mysticism in the people here before me. There is something truly magical in these landscapes.
Both Celtic and Germanic societies had an established tradition of sacrificing weapons and, sometimes, people to wetlands and wetland deities. While strange women lying in ponds distributing swords may not be a good basis for a system of government, it does seem to happen quite a lot in pre-medieval Indo-European mythology.
Beyond Excalibur (E’calethbéi in Gaulish,) Arthurian enthusiasts will find plenty of other easter eggs to enjoy in Lady of the Deep. In addition to the Arthurian allusions, readers will find references to other Celtic literature including the Irish Ulster Cycles and the Welsh Book of Taliesin, especially Cad Goddeu. That said, I intended to create a myth based on earlier iterations of pan-Celtic folkloric traditions. Our earliest stories of Arthur, the ones before Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britaniae, came from long traditions of oral folklore and were hyper-localized, as is my version.
Donra is a woman caught in the crossroads of history, torn between personal and political allegiances in a way so many of us are in the present. While the Gallic Wars were very real and this story is rooted in the events detailed in Julius Caesar’s accounts of it, this setting did require me to take certain liberties with my heroine and her world. Gaul, as a civilization, is not very well known and, even among those who do know it, it is very misunderstood. I hope that this novel may shine a light on these forgotten centuries and people of history.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share my passion for this history and this character with you.
Best regards,
Morgana Bourggraff
