Sir Roberts and Leonidas

It seems like a lifetime ago, but in my first career as a scholar of medieval literature, I specialized in a fairly obscure topic: depictions of warriors' death scenes in medieval English heroic literature and how authors used those scenes for social or political commentary. (There's still an Amazon listing for the book I wrote on this topic, but holy crap it's expensive!) When I was planning the recent character deaths in the Druid Cycle, I thought back to my research into medieval literary death scenes and included some key themes (a man's undying reputation, the need for words to be supported by deeds, etc.) in the narrative of the Ekhis battle. Perhaps the greatest influence on this battle, however, was the film 300, which I watched again a couple of weeks ago to get psyched up for Snyder's Man of Steel. Although the deaths unfold very differently, I had the Spartan king Leonidas in the back of my mind when I was writing the final moments of Sir Roberts.