"Your Sins Will Be Wiped Out" is one of the tie-in short stories I wrote to expand the perspective of the universe and story beyond just Eli's 1st personal narrative. I wanted to establish a different perspective and showcase the situation of the people in this fictional universe. We've been following Eli throughout the story, but Robert Dudley has not been heard or sounded in a long time. While historically, such things were common, narratively, it is not compelling to leave a major romantic character in a plot black hole. 

Amy Robsart has very few historical notes about her and she died with no children, so I may be character assassinating her by making her a sadist and rapist in my story, but it's creative liberty. As to why she does in this short story, medieval torture is infamous, especially during this era when you have religious wars and rival Catholic/Protestant believers trying to outdo one another in "forced" conversions. I took the ideas and just applied it as a medieval version of a gay conversion camp, memorization of Biblical verses, followed by some forms of torture or positive reinforcement with Amy as the lead. She's a bit unstable and egotistical.

I created an original character, Timothy Percy, a fictitious gay scion of the powerful Percy family of northern England. In reality, they still currently hold their noble titles in Northumberland. I took various snippets of medieval personalities and mindsets to craft this tragic character, whose greatest crime wasn't that he was just gay, but he was a bottom.   There are some concepts about superior and inferior positions in gay sex, which has translated into modern times as well. Fucking a guy may be frowned upon, but could be considered an act of virility and excusable if your position was superior to the person you penetrated. Additionally, I implied the concept of family lines and superior vs. inferior lines, which can be treated as rights to titles and lands.

Robert Dudley, who has been longing to be back with Eli, has a very interesting backstory here. My faithful readers know Robert's dreams and knowledge to pleasure Robsart was not random imagination. I think what Robert did implicitly was Scheherazade-style (Scheherazade was the main female character in the Arabian story One Thousand and One Nights, who told the non-stop story to the king to prevent her execution) sexual games to protect himself. Pleasure isn't love or connection, there are many ways to reach the orgasm without ever connecting with the other person, but such distinctions are modern concepts. For Amy Robsart, Robert was an enticing toy that could help create pain for itself for her pleasure. It's a tragic situation for him, because he demonstrated the ability to rationalize and create self-harm to survive a sadist, the sadist spares him to continue this vicious cycle of self-harm regiment. When Eli does come half a year later, Robert will have a shattered mental state.

Notes:

1. Two lines from Shakespeare:

"Fault in our stars"- Julius Caesar's line to Brutus about human folly to perceive dangers

"Sleep of Death"- Hamlet's soliloquy regarding his resolve to accept death if it should come. I used this line, because the next words are "what dreams may come", which connect with the dreams mentioned in this story.

2. Several biblical verses were used in this story, dealing with sin, chastity, familiar anti-gay lines, and repentance. The title is from the Book Acts, which I quoted at the end. 

Interesting point, Timothy was tied to the cross first and then nailed his palm, rather than nailed to keep his body in place. The laws of physics would still apply, you can't hold up the body weight of a human body with nails on the palm. This was done under Christian beliefs that Jesus was nailed through the palm, not the wrist, but Robsart family knew they needed to use a rope to keep the body on the cross as the Crucifixion they believed in would not work, an example of false ritual and another dark aspect of Christianity.