Freya Marske and Celia Lake have both written novels about magical societies existing in secret, parallel to the non-magical world, set in Edwardian England. I asked them to chat with me, and each other, about their choices regarding magic systems, Edwardian England, and other aspects of their novels…
SI: The Last Binding trilogy, and some of the Albion books, are set in versions of Edwardian England. What is it about that time and that place that attracted you?
Freya: I have a few answers to this, ranging from frivolous to serious. The shortest explanation is that I had been itching to write a self-contained murder mystery on a trans-Atlantic voyage contemporaneous with the Titanic (though with no icebergs); I love the Agatha-Christie-esque vibes of trapping beautiful people in a beautiful setting and then letting all hell break loose. So that became book 2, A Restless Truth.
And of course the aesthetics of the era are wonderful; once I'd decided on the start of the twentieth century as the setting, and also decided that Robin (one of the book 1 narrators) had an eye for art and design, I quickly got entranced by all the Arts & Crafts Movement beauty that was possible. William Morris wallpaper! VERY sexy.
On a more serious note, the short but dynamic Edwardian Era - where the British Empire was beginning to crumble at the edges, as were some of the rigid class barriers of the society as the monied middle class really began to emerge - turned out to be thematically perfect for a trilogy about questioning power and the status quo. Book 3 even has a scene in Westminster so I could let my working-class journalist character Alan have a lot of loud feelings about the People's Budget and the fight for a proper welfare state.
Celia: First, I have to agree with the delight of a book on an ocean liner. What’s not to love about a combination of a fascinating location, forced proximity, and a locked room mystery environment? Especially when it comes with a bit of glamour and a dense mix of personalities and needs?
I’ve written things now from the 1850s through the 1940s, and I find the interplay between different periods fascinating. And for me, I think the Edwardian era is like that ocean liner desire writ large.
There are a lot of social structures in play, but people are experiencing them in an ever wider range of ways. You can see the glimmers of something worrisome on the horizon and shifts in who has power. But it’s also about how people have power and what having power even means. I love the period for the questions about agency and opportunity, and what people aim for.
And then, yes there are so many wonderful pieces of art coming out of the period, engagement with the arts and with music and theatre. I am also a fan of the William Morris aesthetic choices.
Freya, I loved that scene at Westminster, and how what Alan finds is not what he expected in some places (and entirely what he expected in others). I’ve found that one thing I like about the Edwardian period is that reader expectations feel different from Victorian books (or between the wars, especially for Golden Age of Mystery readers). Have you found that? (Because it certainly looks like you enjoy it as well).
Freya: I haven't found that at all, but I think that's because to the average fantasy reader, there isn't a reason for there to be a great deal of distinction between the Victorian and Edwardian periods. And I've even seen more than one review of the series describe it at Regency, because I think in some people's minds 'Regency' is a catchall word for this kind of mannered historical setting, and not a slim little slice of time - about as slim as the Edwardian! - which has gained outsized literary influence as a setting for historical romance, thanks to giants like Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer.
I can sort of see their point; there's no magical dividing line in technological progress and societal shift that happens just because the monarch changes! But I enjoyed playing with it BECAUSE it's such an arbitrary liminal time between the long & varied Victorian era and the very clear dividing line that is World War One. (I had to promise some readers that despite the strong historical likelihood of their involvement, given genders and ages and such, none of my characters would die in the war, which is due to kick off in only five years' time!)
Celia: Oh, that makes sense, definitely. And there’s so much out there (in terms of historical fantasy and romantasy) that’s riffing on historical time periods but not anchored in specific history, too.
One thing I think about a lot is the flavour of the period. People in Albion (the magical community) don’t know much about who happens to be king or queen. The land magic got separated from the crown in 1484, and so there isn’t the same sense of embodiment of the national presence in a single person. But at the same time, that role - figurehead or not - does definitely guide a number of aspects, both political and social. Playing with what that means, the consequences for those choices, definitely gets interesting to me.
I also hear you on the promising about the Great War - having it sitting there looming (and what parts the characters can see coming, and what parts they can’t) is something I also think about a lot, when it comes to the Edwardian period.
SI: In both the Albion books and the Last Binding trilogy, a magical society exists parallel to the non-magical one - and most non-magical people never learn about magic. What made you opt for this sort of worldbuilding, rather than an entirely magical one?
Celia: For me, it came down to being really interested in the interplay. Between 2007 and 2015, before I started writing my books, I was part of a long-running alternate universe Harry Potter fan project. It gave me approximately all the thoughts and opinions about how I thought a hidden society ought to work. (And obviously, I made a bunch of quite different choices in my own writing.)
In particular, I think a lot about the constraints that puts on people. There are constraints on demographics (how large can a society grow without people noticing?), on actions (what things are legal, socially permitted, how does that work), and on how much I can nudge history without changing it. Where are all those people living? How do they get educated? How many of them live mostly or entirely in the magical community, and how many live mostly in non-magical settings?
I had the idea of how the diverging magical society happened quite early on, but I’ve fleshed out more of the details since. The way that happened in Albion has a number of other considerations. Those have let me play with religion (a decentralisation of Christianity and options for other paths), gender (pregnancy has some implications for particular kinds of magic, but overall Albion’s society is more gender egalitarian), and relationship choices (while homosexuality is illegal in Britain throughout my writing period, it’s never prosecuted in Albion. Though there might be social consequences).
Having a bit of elbow room in those places lets me tell more of the stories I’m interested in. But they’re also very much anchored into the events of the time (though that’s more obvious in some books than in others!)
Freya: I agree, I found working out those constraints to be a fascinating part of the worldbuilding. Given that I wanted to play with the social world of the Edwardians, I decided not to shift too much, except to note that most magicians aren't very religious: that was all the excuse I needed for the societal homophobia to be balanced out by a lack of internalised homophobia, which I wasn't very interested in exploring as a barrier to the romances. But my magicians are definitely still full of class prejudice - with the added bonus of magical power as an intra-class division - and sexist ideas about what women should and shouldn't do.
On a more practical level, the idea of a secret world of magic to which our primary point-of-view character is introduced is a classic for a reason: it allows for the reader to be gently taken by the hand and led along with helpful exposition! Or plunged straight in without warning, as in Robin's case; I needed to make sure Robin was curious but not too analytical, so he would happily digest the magical world in bite-sized chunks. It then made it easier to have Edwin's point of view exist alongside it. I could show the magical world also through the eyes of someone who'd grown up in it, without having to pause all the time for him to artificially think about things purely for the reader's sake.
Celia: Having the right point of view helps so much there. I also find those distinctions really interesting. What does the character notice or care about, what’s completely invisible to them because it’s the water they’ve been swimming in all their lives? And what differences does magic make easier? (Albion, for example, has much better sanitation earlier. But what does that do to when the polio epidemics are or who they affect most?)
Sometimes it’s led me to fascinating views from unexpected places. I’ve got a book (in 1927) where one of the main characters is magical but grew up in a mostly non-magical community. She attends an Easter service in the magical city, and I had to think through what that looked like. What parts would magic make easier, what parts they would do without magic because that’s how you do it traditionally, and so on. And that led into a whole question of “does anyone in the Church of England hierarchy know about the magical bits?” (Fortunately for me, my author Discord has a number of self-identified church nerds on it, who had great ideas.)
Freya: Oh, you're braver than me: I took one look at the Church of England and its central role in society at the time and decided on a single sentence that simply explained most magicians weren't very religious. And then when I hit book 3 and had a character coming from a family of Italian Catholics, I got to play a little bit more with hinting at what can happen when that strong religious culture intersects with the presence of magic in an individual. (Magic-suppressing rosary beads, is the answer.)
SI: In your collective works, your approach to magic is in part constrained by the fact that it exists in parallel with a non-magical society. As well, you both envision a magical world where people vary in the strength of their magic, and have different types of (or a different focus for) magic. What were some of the factors you took into account when you were setting up your magical structures?
Freya: For me, the magical structure arose entirely from what I wanted for my characters. Especially Edwin, in book 1: I knew he would be very under-powered and have an inferiority complex about it, but have developed compensatory qualities like precision and persistence that would be attractive to Robin. From there, I simply invented details as I went along, and kept everything that seemed to serve either character, story or theme. By the time I hit book 3, some of my own initial assumptions about what underlay magic had changed dramatically!
Celia: One of the things I started with as an underlying principle was both having a range of magical strength and competence, and in having lots of different methods of doing magic being options within the community as a whole. So, for example, there are learned shapeshifters, there are selkies (and other kinds of shifting anchored to an object), we’ve seen references to people who are cursed with lycanthropy, and so on.
The same way, I really wanted the many ways that humans have looked at doing magic to have potential lines of practice in Albion. Some of them are more common, some are more rigid, some are more experimental. Some take a particular knack or inclination. A few of them are extremely rare in Albion, to the point that they’d never be something you’d think someone could do without seeing it.
In intersection to that is the question of strength - and competence - with magic. A number of my characters tend to be on the more effective side (because they’re more likely to end up near the Plot or dealing with it). But I really love writing different ways to approach a problem, or what happens when people combine skills in particular ways.
I definitely agree on ‘I’ve had to rethink some underlying assumptions’ a few times.
Freya: Occasionally during the writing process I did think rather longingly about fantasy series with more variety of magical techniques (let alone magical creatures!), but I did also enjoy being creative within the strict constraints I had set for myself. I think I made up for it by indulging my love of semi-sentient magical houses and estates. And I did manage to sneak some fairies in sidelong…
Celia: There’s definitely something about writing within a more constrained form. One of the things I really liked in the Last Binding was looking at what forms of magic had social support, and what didn’t. I’ve found playing with that fascinating, and what the implications are.
For example, my editor and I have an ongoing commentary that alchemy in Albion is pretty obviously the high status magical employment for people who are autistic or otherwise want a lot of structure or clear rules in their magical work. (There’s a lot of good potential there, it offers steady employment in a bunch of ways, there are clear reasons for why things are done as they are). But on the other hand, what does that mean when you need people to be innovative with their alchemy? Where’s that going to come from? Figuring out the implications both of the different kinds of magic and how society deals with them is going to continue to keep me busy for years.
SI: Another significant aspect of the Albion books and the Last Binding trilogy is that each book has both a mystery and a romance at its heart. Did you always know your stories needed to have all three aspects? What is it about magic + mystery + romance that appealed to you as a writer?
Celia: First, I absolutely adore both Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, and writing in the 20s and 30s, obviously those started close to my writing heart. Mostly, the mystery part came in because while I love a lot of romances with a classic third act breakdown, I really don’t like writing that structure. Being able to play a mystery against a romance - and especially having the romance growing out of people working together to solve a problem - just makes me happy. A lot of my fun these days is doing that with different problems and personalities or contexts.
Freya: Absolutely: a mystery is just an exciting shared project for your characters to do together while you're forcing them to fall in love. It gives them an excuse to show off their competencies! And to be in mortal peril, which is great for adrenalin-fuelled kissing!
I always knew I wanted to write fantasy and romance strongly intertwined, but 'fantasy' is a genre promise that contains absolutely no dictums about plot. Plot isn't my strong suit; putting in the structure and the story-engine impetus of a mystery was what allowed my books to go.
They're still not particularly complex mysteries; I'm no Christie or Sayers (both of whom I also adore). But they don't need to be, because the romance plot needs enough room to stretch as well.
Celia: I’m laughing about the ‘not particularly complex mysteries’ because yes, I am also there. (my plot skills continue to improve, but simple is better for me, and I feel like I’m much better at character and setting overall). I feel like for me, romance determines the heart of the genre (pun intended), and it got a lot easier for me to write something novel length (after many years of trying other stuff periodically) when I was aiming at ‘these two people are together at the end’.
And then the mystery gives them something to do, and I can pull the tension into the growing romance from the plot, rather than misunderstandings. But I also feel like what mystery they’re solving is something that often anchors into a particular time period for me, and makes the history more solid. Or at least solidly present.
SI: you have quite different approaches to what might be seen as villainous uses of magic, and how that might be an extension of a more general (and very human) quest for power. Could you discuss how you thought about the issue of criminality, power, and magic?
Freya: This was a fascinating one, because most of my series villains are people in positions of power and one of them even works in a kind of magical law enforcement; I definitely wanted to make a point about the difference between immorality and criminality, and how holding power allows you to decide who becomes criminalised, and make that decision serve your own ends. The motives of the villains are not particularly sophisticated: they are annoyed at the constraints in the system that stop them from accumulating power from others, and want to change that. No parallels to the villains of our modern society at all, of course…
Celia: So one of the things about my worldbuilding is that - in the right setting, like a magical courtroom - specific people in Albion can actually put truth magic into play. There are limitations, and of course, you’ve got to ask the right questions. But it creates a legal environment that’s more investigative than accusatorial.
On the other hand, it also creates a lot of situations where what people are doing isn’t actually anything that the Guard or Courts can act on (yet). People are allowed to create secret societies with abominable ritual design if they want. They’re allowed to be socially awful. They can grasp for power all they want, until it crosses those legal lines. Plenty of them are definitely immoral, often in ways that are really destructive to people around them.
I think there are a lot of ways to be a good person and do good in the world. I think there’s also a lot of ways to be a villain and do harm. And sometimes, people have good intentions and it turns out horribly. I have a situation where one brother takes up a disastrous line of magical research in an attempt to end the Great War in hopes of keeping his younger brother safer. Other people in that project are definitely more actively villains, Temple Carillon is more complicated.
Freya: I gave myself the most terrible headache with truth magic, because I wanted most magicians to take it as understood that it was impossible; I just like it when characters both good and villainous are allowed to tell lies, and it certainly makes for better plots and character dynamics. Truthtelling and lying are strong thematic elements to the romances between Edwin and Robin, and Violet and Maud, so removing the ability to get away with lies would erase a lot of the chewy complexity of that.
But! I also wanted to come up with a creative magical compulsion to tell the truth for a plot point in the first book. So I let some slippery little loopholes into the worldbuilding, and was still able to do a courtroom drama scene in the third book where several people are lying their faces off, and we see how the structures of justice and power can be set up to serve agendas beyond The Pure Truth.
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Freya Marske lives in Australia, where she is yet to be killed by any form of wildlife. She writes stories full of magic, blood, and as much kissing as she can get away with. Her hobbies include figure skating and discovering new art galleries, and she is on a quest to try all the gin in the world.
Her debut novel, the queer historical fantasy A MARVELLOUS LIGHT, was an international bestseller and won the Romantic Novel Award for Fantasy. It kicked off the Last Binding trilogy, which was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Series. Her most recent book, SWORDCROSSED, was published by Bramble and Tor UK in 2024, and her debut novella CINDER HOUSE is forthcoming from Tor.com and Tor UK in the fall of 2025.
Her short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction, Andromeda Spaceways, and several anthologies. She also co-hosted the Hugo Award nominated Be The Serpent podcast along with two other red-headed fantasy authors. In 2020 she was awarded the Australian National SF (Ditmar) Award for Best New Talent.
Links to buy or preorder her book can be found at her website, as can the sign-up form for her newsletter. She can also be found on Bluesky or Instagram.
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Celia Lake lives near Boston, Massachusetts. Born to British parents, she grew up loving school stories, classic British mysteries, and the Oxford comma. By day she is a research librarian. The rest of the time, she’s reading, writing, and being sat on by her cat.
Celia’s books explore the magical community of Britain between the 1850s and 1940s: what it means to live, love, build a life, and solve problems in times of war, change, and stress. She loves writing about clever, creative people who want to make the world better together. Grown Wise (out May 2nd, 2025) begins a quartet of post-World-War 2 romances about rebuilding, tending the problems of the past, and trusting that going forward will be better with the right company.
Links to her books can be found at her website, and her newsletter has all her updates (and fun historical links). Celia can also be found on Bluesky, or on her authorial Discord or Patreon.