Literature / The Bearkeepers Daughter

The Bearkeeper's Daughter is a historical fiction novel by author Gillian Bradshaw. It focuses on the life of John, the illegitimate son of sixth-century Byzantine empress Theodora, as he leaves his home in Bostra in search of a relationship with his mother. To John's relief, Theodora privately acknowledges him as her son and promises to elevate his status, but she cannot make their relationship public for fear of causing a scandal or upsetting her husband, the emperor Justinian. Therefore, in order to explain John's presence at court, Theodora and her sister Komito disguise him as the grandson of an estranged relative from their late father's homeland.

Initially, all is well, but Justinian quickly takes notice that John's supposed backstory makes little sense, as Theodora—whom he's very close to—never once mentioned having relatives in Bostra. Grappling with private insecurities about his neglect of his wife and the fact that he's older than her by two decades, he begins to wonder if this "cousin" is actually her paramour—a suspicion that that only grows once he starts receiving letters about how John is not who he claims to be. Meanwhile, John begins to take notice of Euphemia, the daughter of Theodora's notorious rival, tax collector John the Cappadocian. And, of course, Justinian and Theodora have no legitimate sons, so the question of succession hangs in the air... and Theodora knows exactly who she wants to wear the purple next.

Although John is the main character, the story is largely about Theodora (the titular bearkeeper's daughter). Set in the late 540s, the novel takes place at the tail end of Theodora's life and long after the most pivotal events of her reign occurred, leaving John to learn about his mother from her stories, as well as secondary accounts of both her kindness and cruelty. He hears in bits and pieces about her traumatic childhood, ascent to power, and actions as empress, and eventually realizes that her delight in her own status and her seemingly limitless ambition for him stem, in large part, from her experiences with powerlessness and poverty. The Bearkeeper's Daughter is the sixth or seventh book in a lengthy list of "Theodora novels" (Blue and Green: A Novel of Old Constantinople by Henry Pottinger, Theodora by Samuel Edwards, Theodora by Jack Oleck, Theodora and the Emperor by Harold Lamb, The Female by Paul Wellman, etc...) but it distinguishes itself from the others by telling her story in this way through the eyes of her illegitimate son (who may or may not have actually existed in real life.)

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The Bearkeeper's Daughter contains examples of:

• Affair? Blame the Bastard: Diodoros wasn't actually having an affair with Theodora throughout most of his marriage, but only because Theodora left him; it's implied that he absolutely would have continued seeing her if she agreed to it. Therefore, Diodoros's wife views John—Diodoros and Theodora's bastard son—as an embarrassment and a threat to her legitimate children.
• Affectionate Nickname: Justinian has a host of them for Theodora. "My love," "my dear," "my gift," and, most melodramatically, "my life and soul." Theodora also calls him by his birth name, Petrus, which nobody else is allowed to do.
• Age-Gap Romance:
  • Justinian is about twenty years older than Theodora. They’re generally happy together, but he’s privately insecure that she’ll become dissatisfied with him and seek out the affection of someone younger and “hot-blooded.”
  • Antonina is much older than Belisarius, and it's implied that the age gap is one of many reasons why their relationship is so messy.
• Ambiguous Situation: The exact nature of John the Cappadocian's crimes remains unclear throughout the book. According to Narses, he really is guilty of corruption, fraud, and conspiracy to commit treason, but his arrest and interrogation was botched, and his exile has more to do with Theodora's hatred of him than any crime he actually committed. He's also accused of murdering a bishop, and his guilt or innocence regarding this is also up in the air; Euphemia insists that her father would never do such a thing, but Narses and several other characters seem to think it's plausible.
• Arranged Marriage: Theodora thinks of herself as a "matchmaker," but not necessarily in a romantic sense; she's paired up most of her friends with wealthy and powerful husbands who will help advance their statuses, and she's determined to set John up with someone who will be similarly beneficial to his career (although she also says that she'd be fine with him bringing home a low-class "slut" as long as she can hold her own—she just doesn't want him to end up with a "simpering, virtuous" middle-class bore.)
• Bastard Angst: Downplayed. John was educated alongside his half-brothers, something which enabled him to excel in his position in Justinian's court, and Diodoros did love him, even admitting on his deathbed that John was always his favorite. However, John's half-siblings wanted little to do with him, and his stepmother openly disliked him. After Diodoros died of the plague, whatever tolerance his wife had for John died with him, which is why John left home to find Theodora in the first place.
  John: A bastard lives by other people's tolerance. I knew I could have been left to die at birth, or sold or abandoned when you left me. There were plenty who said that's what should have been done. [...] But I was... no, not hated, even my father's wife doesn't really hate me. Disapproved of. A whore's son shouldn't be treated like the legitimate children of a respectable woman. And dependent, because I had no rights in the house. You don't have rights if you're only alive because of someone's charity. [...] And when my father died, all the tolerance he had given me was gone. My half-brothers would have respected his wishes enough to find me some kind of work, but their mother wanted me out of the house.
• Big Fancy House: Justinian and Theodora’s many palaces certainly qualify as such. According to the shipmaster at the beginning, Theodora has four or five houses, each the size of a cathedral, and Justinian has several more for himself.
• Blatant Lies: Komito and Theodora invent a whole new branch of their family in order to disguise John as their cousin. When Justinian expresses mild surprise that his wife never told him that she had relatives in Berytus, Komito makes up another story about how Theodora cut contact with them because they refused her a loan, brazenly lying to Justinian's face as they eat dinner.
• Blood from the Mouth: Theodora starts spitting up blood near the end of the book, and dies of cancer shortly afterwards.
• Chariot Race: Appears every so often as a minor plot point.
  • Theodora’s father was a bear trainer for the Greens, her stepfather worked for the Blues, and her daughter’s father was a charioteer for an unspecified deme.
  • The Nika riots, which happened a few years before the book’s beginning, are mentioned every so often, and Blue and Green factionists are an ever-present political force in Constantinople.
  • John had a hobby of racing horses in his homeland. Once he comes to Constantinople, Theodora gifts him a purebred horse to ride.
• Color-Coded Patrician: The Imperial couple wear purple (Justinian’s famous mural actually proves the page image), and “the purple” is often used as shorthand for royalty.
• Cool Big Sis: Theodora’s older sister Komito, who happily goes along with the Family Relationship Switcheroo to keep John secret and helps Theodora flesh out some of the details.
• Cool Crown: Theodora and Justinian’s Imperial diadems, of course.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Theodora hides John from Justinian not because she’s afraid of her husband’s wrath—they’re Happily Married, and it’s clear that he’d never hurt her or her family—but because she’s afraid that Justinian will deal with the news by giving John a ton of money and some low-level title as a consolation prize, then shipping him off somewhere to live in luxurious irrelevance, putting an end to any political ambitions he might have. Theodora instead wants to put John in the running for the purple should Justinian die, in large part because she vehemently dislikes Justinian’s cousin Germanus, his actual chosen successor. The entire plot centers on Theodora granting John more and more power and opportunities while trying to keep his true relationship to her hidden from an increasingly suspicious Justinian. John, though, doesn’t have the trauma that gave Theodora her desire to accrue as much power as possible, and he winds up refusing the crown despite her attempts to convince him otherwise, rendering her efforts to increase his status mostly pointless. After the truth comes out, John lives with Theodora until her death, then Justinian gives him a well-paid but distant position in the far recesses of the empire, which he happily accepts—which is exactly what would have happened if Theodora just told Justinian the whole story in the first place. (And, for bonus points, Theodora didn't have to worry about Germanus, either; he died of an illness before he could inherit anything, and the crown went to Justinian's nephew by his sister Vigilantia.)
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Gender-inverted. Theodora abandoned the infant John with Diodoros because she was a poor prostitute who would’ve been relegated to an impoverished, miserable existence if she stayed with him. She figured that Diodoros would at least be able to give John food, a roof over his head, and an education, while she probably wouldn’t be able to provide that much. She had no way of knowing that she’d advance in status quite significantly within the next few years.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Theodora’s childhood involved the death of her father and sister, repeated rape by the pedophiles her stepfather sold her to, teenage pregnancy, and a string of physically, mentally, and sexually abusive relationships that she couldn’t leave for fear of poverty. She’s obsessed with her status as empress because she sees power as the only alternative to horrific abuse, and she cannot comprehend why John—whose childhood wasn’t exactly good, but was far less unstable and abusive than hers—isn’t interested in the purple.
• Death by Childbirth: John’s older half-sister, Erato—Theodora’s illegitimate daughter—died this way. She was fourteen at the time, and it’s implied that Theodora blames herself for marrying her off so young.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Theodora's daughter Erato died in childbirth at the age of 14, which is treated as sad, but not especially tragic or uncommon. It's also implied that Erato was married off young to save Justinian the embarrassment of having his wife's bastard daughter living in the palace, and nobody sees this as problematic at all.
  • Nepotism and cronyism are rampant, and these practices aren't viewed as corruption; John's friends flippantly mention their fathers buying positions in the government for them.
  • John describes his stepmother as being openly resentful of him, insulting him on a regular basis and insisting he not be educated alongside her legitimate sons. In a modern setting, she'd probably be seen as a Wicked Stepmother, but in-universe, John views her somewhat sympathetically, believing that her motivations for disliking him were understandable. John also realizes that he could easily have been sold into slavery or abandoned as an infant, so he's grateful that his father kept him and provided for him at all.
• Destructive Romance: Antonina and Belisarius's relationship is occasionally loving, and mostly destructive. Belisarius finds himself captivated by his wife's beauty and intelligence, but bitterly resentful of her very public affairs, and the two are often on opposite sides of arguments and intrigue.

’’Antonina could manage to find out—his brilliant, beautiful, sensuous, cunning, deceitful, faithless Antonina...’’

• Ditzy Genius: Euphemia is a downplayed example. She's excellent with numbers, and she's perfectly capable of understanding her exiled father's old financial documents, which she ends up using to partially restore her lost wealth. At the same time, she's somewhat socially awkward and unaware, and several characters point out that her Meaningful Name (meaning "well-spoken") is hilariously ironic. Sometimes she displays a total lack of common sense, such as when she insults Theodora in earshot of Theodora's loyal supporters, or makes rude demands of Narses, who has no reason to help her anyway. And when a group of Blue arsonists sets her house on fire near the end of the story, she seems to forget that fire spreads:

  Justinian: That stinking mob is burning an Imperial notary alive in his house and assaulting the daughter of a praetorian prefect in the street—can't you think of anything better to do than obstruct those who are trying to prevent such horrors? Lord of all, my own sister lives near the Taurus market! My sister's palace—

  Euphemia [bitter]: They weren't attacking your most noble sister's house, Thrice August. They know that it is well guarded.

  Justinian [angry]: What use are guards against a fire?

• Ermine Cape Effect: Downplayed—Theodora doesn’t wear Imperial regalia constantly, but she certainly wears it as often as she can. She loves showing off her status and wealth, something which John attributes to her impoverished childhood.

’’…it was the poor girl’s delight in becoming fabulously rich, the insulted and abused prostitute's glee at being the fount of all poor and honor: she reveled in the contrast, as well as the thing itself.’’

• Eunuchs Are Evil: Averted. Narses, a eunuch, is John’s mentor and Theodora’s confidante. Several other, less prominent eunuchs are mentioned as well, and none are portrayed as evil.
• Exact Words: Diodoros always told John that the latter was the son of a whore—specifically, a bearkeeper’s daughter who became an actress and a prostitute. That part is true. Diodoros just never mentioned that that whore married the emperor’s nephew and was eventually elevated to the purple herself.
• Family Relationship Switcheroo: John is Theodora’s son by a former lover, and she and Komito disguise him as the son of an estranged cousin in order to explain his presence in the court without causing a scandal.
• Fancy Dinner: John is invited to one near the beginning of the book, to his shock and horror. The dinner goes well enough for him, but it also proves informative in a depressing kind of way; he meets Belisarius, one of his heroes, only to discover that the general he once idolized is now an aging man whose Glory Days are long over, and the plague has upset the balance of power and left several once-mighty figures disgraced. The dinner ends with Belisarius, Antonina, and Komito all arguing, and even Theodora realizes upon its conclusion that her empire is past its prime.
• Forbidden Love:
  • John falls for Euphemia, daughter of Theodora’s enemy John the Cappadocian. They end up marrying after her death.
  • It’s relevant to the backstory that the previous emperor and empress, Justin and Euphemia, disapproved of Justinian’s relationship with Theodora—as did the law, as a man of senatorial class marrying an actress was illegal. In order to be wed, they waited for Euphemia to pass away, then bullied Justin into changing the law.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • In real life, Justinian was succeeded by his nephew Justin II, the son of his sister Vigilantia. Therefore, it's a given that Theodora's ambitions for John will never come to fruition.
  • It's implied that at least some of Theodora's desire for John to succeed Justinian stems from her personal dislike of Germanus, Justinian's cousin and likely heir. She needn't have worried; Germanus died suddenly of a fever while out on campaign in 550, just two years after the book ended, and Justinian outlived him by a solid decade and a half.
  • Throughout the book, Theodora occasionally complains of vague symptoms like fatigue and "trouble with [her] stomach," but insists that she's fine. The novel is set in the mid-540s, and Theodora died in 548 of what historians think was cancer, so it's obvious from the start where these seemingly-mild symptoms are leading. Sure enough, her symptoms escalate dramatically, and she passes away near the end of the story.
• Formerly Fat: Euphemia, at least according to those who knew her as a child. In the present day, She's All Grown Up and very good-looking.
• Generation Xerox: John and Euphemia directly parallel Justinian and Theodora. John is a young man from humble circumstances who's eventually catapulted to a position of immense power because of his familial relationships, with Theodora promoting him the way Justin promoted Justinian back in the day. Euphemia is an Impoverished Patrician from a disgraced family, and her romance with John is forbidden because Theodora disapproves of their relationship. Several characters, including Narses, point out the similarities, and Narses is a Shipper on Deck for John and Euphemia specifically because they remind him of Justinian and Theodora.
• Glory Days: Justinian and Theodora are both acutely aware that theirs (as well as those of Rome as an empire) are long behind them. At the time of the book's beginning, Eastern Rome has been weakened by several catastrophes, including The Plague and a handful of other natural disasters, and Belsiarius's campaigns in Italy haven't accomplished much other than destroying what's left of the West just to conquer territory they won't be able to keep. As a result, Justinian's dream of building a united empire under a united church is getting more and more impossible by the day. Meanwhile, Theodora is ill and is beginning to realize that she is never going to get better. At one point, she compares herself, and Rome, to the wilted flowers John gifted her—beautiful things, now long past their prime and dying.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Downplayed; Theodora can be domineering and extremely proud, and she has a mean streak, but she isn’t exactly a vengeful tyrant, and much of the gossip surrounding her has no basis in reality. She's also shown to be kind to her family, charitable towards victims of sex abuse, and Happily Married to her husband.
• Happily Married: Justinian and Theodora clearly adore each other. When Justinian realizes that John’s story doesn’t add up, he becomes suspicious about Theodora’s intentions, but he trusts her too much to accuse her of having an affair; instead, he blames himself for being paranoid and insecure until he starts receiving letters that force him to address the issue more directly. Even then, he’s more concerned that John lied to and exploited Theodora than anything else. At the end of the book, Justinian is devastated by Theodora's death, remarking to John that he always hoped she'd outlive him. He then makes John a count and gives him command of troops in Arabia, and orders him to leave Constantinople as soon as possible because he looks too much like Theodora.
• Heroic Bastard: John is illegitimate and was treated quite badly by his stepmother and half-brothers, but he’s a perfectly nice person himself.
• Historical Character's Fictional Relative: A strange case: John may not have been real, but he wasn’t invented for the book, either. He was mentioned in The Secret History, an invective in which Procopius attacks both Justinian and Theodora, painting the latter as a cruel and sexually debauched whore.
• Historical In-Joke: Theodora mentions offhandedly that she dislikes Belisarius’s secretary, finding him to be cowardly and annoying. Belisarius’s secretary at the time was Procopius, who would go on to write the infamous Secret History.
• Historical Domain Character: Justinian, Theodora, Komito, Belisarius, Antonina, and Narses, as well as Theodora’s daughter (although her actual name is unknown.) John himself may have existed, too, though it isn’t likely—Procopius wrote that Theodora had an illegitimate son, but Procopius wrote a lot of slander about Theodora and virtually everyone else named above, and there’s no real evidence that this particular claim of his was true (especially because none of his contemporaries backed it up.)
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Theodora was a prostitute throughout much of her adolescence. As Empress, she's Happily Married to her husband, and she devotes much of her time to punishing men who sexually abuse children.
• House Fire: Euphemia's house is partially destroyed after a handful of rioting chariot-racing hooligans set her neighborhood on fire. Several of her slaves and neighbors are killed.
• Impoverished Patrician: Euphemia became this after the downfall of her father, John the Cappadocian. Downplayed, as she still lives in a nice house with multiple slaves. At the end of the book, she marries John, who has recently been made a count, making her wealthy again.
• I Was Quite a Looker: The gossip about Belisarius regards him as handsome and dashing, but by the time John actually meets him, he's an aging old soldier who's lost most of his once-enviable looks (as well as the respect he once commanded at court, thanks to Theodora demoting him during The Plague).
• Meaningful Gift: Theodora lavishes John with all sorts of presents, but his favorite is his horse, Maleka.
• Meaningful Rename: Justinian was born Petrus Sabbatius, but became Justinian and later Justinian Augustus in adulthood. Theodora still calls him Peter in private, but nobody else is allowed to use his birth name.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Invoked with Euphemia, whose name means "well-spoken." Unfortunately, Euphemia is not well-spoken at all, and she has a tendency to put her foot in her mouth when she's speaking to important officials. After her first meeting with Narses ends in disaster, John's friends joke that she should be called Blasphemia instead.
  • Theodora means "gift of God." Justinian certainly regards her as a precious gift from God, although her enemies would probably disagree.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Justinian realizes that Komito and Theodora’s story about their estranged relatives is suspicious, but he has no idea that John is Theodora’s son; he assumes instead that Theodora is trying to cover up an affair. It’s downplayed, as he trusts her enough not to suspect her too much until outside forces show up to encourage his paranoia.
• The Mistress: Theodora was this to several clients in the past. Diodoros wanted her to be his mistress; she loved him and he swore that he would marry her, but he found her backstory embarrassing and was too ashamed to go through with it, so he got engaged to another, more respectable woman, intending to keep Theodora as a side piece. She refused this arrangement and left, but was forced to leave John behind.
• Mother Makes You King:
  • Theodora intends to make John Justinian's successor, although it doesn't work because John has no interest in the purple. Justinian does ultimately make him a count at the end of the book, implicitly because of his affection for Theodora.
  • There's mention of Pasara, Germanus's wife, scheming to make her son Justin the next emperor.
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: It isn’t said outright, but when they first meet, John is astonished by how young Theodora looks. They’re so close in age that Justinian doesn’t remotely suspect John of being Theodora’s son—instead, he worries that Theodora is having an affair.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in the name of historical accuracy.
  • John (the protagonist) shares his name with John the Cappadocian, his mother's rival.
  • Euphemia (the protagonist's love interest) shares a name with the former empress Euphemia (Justin I's wife.)
  • Theodora is a common enough name that John's family never once suspected that John's mother, a prostitute named Theodora, was the same person as the prostitute-turned-empress Theodora.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Euphemia, often. She has a tendency to insult Theodora even when she's surrounded by Theodora's very loyal staff members, and in one instance, she angrily snaps about Theodora while she's literally living in the palace after a devastating House Fire destroyed her neighborhood.

  Euphemia's chaperone: We ought to be guests in the empress's household. It would be more proper for a young lady.

  Euphemia: Don't be ridiculous! The empress would prefer it if we were dead.

  [Narses sighs, incredulous]

• Parental Abandonment:
  • Theodora left John behind when she walked out on Diodoros, though she had a good reason for leaving.
  • Theodora's daughter's father abandoned her when she was eight months pregnant because she wasn't fun to sleep with anymore, and she never saw him again.
• The Plague: The pandemic that would later be known as the Justinian Plague took place just before the events of the book. When the story begins, John’s father Diodoros recently died of it, and Justinian himself is still recovering from it.
• Purple Is Powerful: Purple is the color of royalty, and the mantle of Emperor is often called “the purple.” Theodora wears purple almost constantly as a symbol of her status, and she even has the sails of her private barge dyed purple because she loves the color so much.
• Rags to Riches: Done twice over with Theodora and John. Theodora was a prostitute with a Dark and Troubled Past before she married Justinian and became the Empress of Rome, and John was a bastard who depended on the charity of his father until he came to Constantinople and began working under Narses. By the end of the book, John has ascended even higher than that, as Justinian makes him a count and gives him his own command on the condition that he leave Constantinople, which John is more than happy to do.
• Refusal of the Call: Theodora intends to make John emperor, or at least put him in the running for the purple, but John refuses. Theodora is too blinded by the trauma she’s experienced to comprehend why someone would have no interest in being royalty—she sees claiming as much power as possible as the best way to stave off abuse.
• Relative Error: Justinian figures out quickly that Theodora’s story about John doesn’t add up, but he assumes that she’s trying to cover up an affair, not an illegitimate son.
• Rescue Romance: John really starts to fall for Euphemia after he rescues her from an angry mob of factionists.
• Riding into the Sunset: The book essentially ends this way, with John and Euphemia riding to Arabia towards their now-very-promising futures.
• Second Love: Justinian to Theodora. She loved Diodoros first and wanted to marry him, and he promised to make her his wife if she gave up her career, but he ultimately refused to go through with it because of her low status and lack of convenient political ties. Instead, he got engaged to a wealthy women from a powerful family behind her back and offered to keep her as his side piece. Theodora walked out on him upon hearing his offer and returned to Constantinople. Then she met Justinian, and when the story begins, they've been Happily Married for over a decade.
• Sleeping Single: Justified; Theodora and Justinian often sleep in entirely separate households because they’re both incredibly busy and they have incompatible sleeping habits (he’s an early riser, and she assuredly is not.) Their relationship is still fine, but it’s implied that this arrangement contributes to Justinian’s nagging insecurity that he’s neglecting his wife (and that she’s seeking affection elsewhere.)
• Shipper on Deck: Narses supports John and Euphemia's relationship because he believes it's similar to Justinian and Theodora's relationship.
• Son of a Whore: John. He was told growing up that he was the illegitimate son of a whore his father had a fling with, which is technically true. His father just never mentioned that that “whore” became the Empress of Rome after leaving him.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: A variant: Justinian views Theodora, his own wife, as such in-universe, primarily because he's insecure about the fact that he's much older than her, the fact that he's still recovering from the plague, and the fact that he's a Workaholic who often sleeps in a whole separate palace out of necessity. Of course, Theodora isn't actually cheating on him, but he doesn't figure that out until the end.
• A Taste of the Lash: Justinian has John flogged near the end, believing him to be an interloper who lied to his wife. Theodora quickly interferes and comes clean once she hears about it, and John is mostly unharmed afterwards, but his back is too badly scarred for him to use the public baths again.
• Unexpected Virgin: Theodora is surprised to discover that her son, an attractive young man in his early twenties, is a virgin. The fact that she’d been sold for sex since she was a young child probably clouded her judgment a little, however.
• Vestigial Empire: Theodora believes that Rome, weakened by the plague and by Belisarius’s campaigns in Italy, is on the verge of becoming one.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: As a teenager, John lusted after a pretty girl named Chryseis from afar, daydreaming of the day when he’d get to speak to her. When that day finally came, he found her to be horribly boring, dull, and shallow, and realized that he liked the thought of her more than the reality.