Nika Riots - in Fiction

In Fiction

• Count Belisarius (1938) by Robert Graves follows the career of the general Belisarius and recounts the build-up of tension and the riots in some detail.
• Theodora and the Emperor (1952) by Harold Lamb is a historical fiction novel that follows the events of the Nika riots closely, using timelines and characters based on historical documents.
• Much of the plot in the fantasy novel The Clocks of Iraz (1971) by L. Sprague de Camp turns on mass rioting by rival sporting factions, loosely modeled on the Nika riots.
• In 1974, the ITV science fiction television series The Tomorrow People ran a serial entitled The Blue and the Green, citing the role of the D'henagali, an alien energy-based species that fed on human emotions, as the cause of the Blue and Green factions, and the Nika riots, as similar factions re-emerge in the United Kingdom in the early seventies.
• The novel The Mercenary (1977) by Jerry Pournelle is inspired by the riots, recreating the events in the setting of a future colonial world.
• The Black Company (1984) by Glen Cook opens in a city with many characteristics of Constantinople, including a political faction known as the Blues. The opening ends with the city consumed in devastating riots, very similar to the Nika riots.
• A novel by David Drake, Counting the Cost (1987; from his Hammer's Slammers series), is a fairly straightforward retelling of the riots.
• In the Heart of Darkness (1998), the second book of the alternate history Belisarius series by Eric Flint and David Drake, gives a significantly different outcome of the Nika riots because of the influence of Malwa as the financiers of the revolt and the introduction of a grenadier company led by Belisarius' wife, Antonina.
• The Sarantine Mosaic (1998, 2000) by Guy Gavriel Kay is a fantasy novel based on the 6th century Mediterranean world; the two-novel series closely parallels the historical events of the Nika riots.
• Eight for Eternity (2010) by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer is the eighth in a series of novels about sixth century Constantinople. It uses both fictional and real persons, centered around John "The Eunuch", Lord Chamberlain to Justinian I. In a mix of fact and fiction it covers the two weeks of the Nika riots.
• Basillissa (1940) is a novel by John Masefield on the early life of Theodora. The Nika riots are pivotal in the plot but are moved forward to before Justinian becomes emperor, portrays him as a Blue and makes no mention of any slaughter. It has negligible historical validity