Rape

Writing a historical ficiton novel set in the 6th century. Wartime rape at the time was common. How do I adress that? All of the protagonists who the readers can sympathise with are meant to be rapists (though I've not included any rape in the novel yet).

How do I go about including rape without alienating every single reader?

It's not rape if its the 6th century

Don't.

Selection bias— the reason why we only remember good times from the past, and why fantasy genres exist.

Don't apologize.

"Rape" was less of a big deal then because of widespread child sexual abuse.

OP how sheltered are you that you think rape is a taboo subject in literature? Have you literally never read anything except YA fiction?

I hate YA fiction. In everything else I've read rape is only used for "bad people", even GRR Martin (which is ironic, since Eddard Stark's historical counterpart, the Duke of York, is attested as a rapist).

I'm not interested in selecting only the good stuff, I want to portray society as it was. It's exactly since people prefer to turn a blind eye that I posted here seeking advice.

what are some books where the protagonist is a rapist?

Lolita?

>I hate YA
>GRR Martin

Eh...

Then do it. Don't justify it as "in the time it was common" because that will seem stupid. Maybe have one or two characters who don't.
You can't worry about presenting an accurate representation of what people now would find awful and also worry about people finding it awful.
If you are including it, it is for a reason, that reason. It could just as easily be glossed over if you didn't think it was important.
People taking shits happened every day back then, but you aren't going to write about that all the time.

Remember to write about how much the women enjoy it

If your characters fully develop, and the rape sections are not over emphasized, there should not be a problem. This is if the rape (dare I say 'culture' of the time) is an essential part of the story. Otherwise there are many 'poetic' ways you can use to refer to such practices that may take sensitive readers into account.

savage

Use statistics. Today we have lots of non rapists and a few rapits. Back in that time they could have 99.9% rapists but never 100% rapists.

Also people who picture the past full of rapists are bad economists.

Yeah just take a look at the Byzantine Rapist census of 578

that's your challenge. It's totally possible to make sympathetic characters who engage in repugnant acts. Look into the motivations that led perfectly honourable men to rape during wartime.

If rape isn't consistent with your character, if they are too respectful of women or too kind in general or feel no hate for the enemy, fix your characters. Or simply don't have them rape if you want them to be the way they are. Wartime rape being common tells us nothing about the percentage of perpetrators. Raping Germans and whoever they encountered on the way to Germany was common in the Soviet army but what do you think would be the statistics for the individual soldier? Did 90% of them rape, 50%, 10%, 5%?

Also adding to that you really should look into the justifications made by rapist in war situations. Dehumanizing of the enemy, literal objectification of women as booty, hate, anger, frenzy, bloodlust. That's how you would include it and could still be true to the character. Don't just have them rape a woman out of nowhere and scribble some hasty lines about why they thought it was okay unless you're going for shock value. You need to embed it in a bigger cultural and situational picture which you will really only achieve by reading up on it. Try to read personal war reports, read what psychologists write about it.

I won't have on or characters who don't, EVERY MAN was a rapist.

Thank you everyone for the advice.

No one really wrote about it, since no one gave a fuck. We only get casual mentions of it, like in Shakespeare, or history books where they say "and then they raped everyone".

Women were objectified as spoils of war, which is why it was ok to rape them if their town/village was taken.

see, this is the type of stuff I would love to know the source of, but I can't ask for it because the only answers will be either platitudes or insults about how I'm actually not asking but instead implying that you don't have a source.

So I'm just straight up saying you don't have a collection of sources that would justify your statement and hoping that I can reverse psychology an actual answer out of you.