When a gypsy tells the King of Olbios that his daughter will be killed by an animal, he builds an impenetrable fortress in the middle of the sea to save her. She can't escape her fate and a viper hidden in a basket of figs takes her life in the end.
From Burnt Amber:
“Sounds similar to the story of the maiden’s tower in Istanbul…” I said. I was skeptical of fairy tales, but then lots of stories had some truth in them, only distorted beyond belief.
Well, that is me- telling. I know, I'm supposed to show, not tell. But this is a good tell because it's the whole concept of my story. Sibel's story.
I struggled with her true story for a while, before I decided to take what I needed and leave the rest. Sybille de Lusignan is where I began...the stories of medieval lands called the Outremer(other sea) and the genealogy of the Kingdom of Cilicia to be exact. I didn't want to write a historically accurate book so I used the settings and some of the facts and a good measure of djinn to create a parallel universe. And I wish the real Sibel would have been as lucky. Her Haydon was actually the bad guy.