Montezuma was not a drunk and other assumptions

How this actually helped in my research

A big part of my research for my upcoming historical fiction novel Calusa Gold has been reading about King Montezuma II, ruler of the Aztec empire. Many reports portray him as a weak leader and place much of the blame on him for the Aztec defeat at the hands of the Spaniards led by Hernan Cortes in the 16th century.

My book includes a fictional meeting between Montezuma and a group of Calusa Indian warriors from southwest Florida who travel to the Aztec capital to try to persuade Montezuma to join with the Calusa tribe to drive the Spaniards from their common waters.

After reading several negative descriptions of Montezuma, I decided to add details to my story to make him appear weak and worried about the approaching Conquistadors. and Cortes. I then made an assumption that Montezuma may have resorted to drinking alcohol to deal with his stress. I know the Aztecs had a sacred alcoholic drink called pulque, made from the sap of agave plants, so I started to add scenes of Montezuma drinking a lot of it.

After a few days, I started to think that I was possibly making too much of an assumption and not relying on research and did more reading. I found that the Aztecs generally looked down on intoxication from alcohol, so I did some searches on Montezuma’s weaknesses. This led me to an article titled, "How the Aztecs Appraised Montezuma" by Sara E. Cohen in The History Teacher journal. This changed my approach to writing about Montezuma.

First, while the article has many details about problems Montezuma was having, alcohol was not one of them, so I removed those scenes from my story. The article did say that Montezuma was “very afraid” of the Spaniards and that he “trembled.” It also hinted that he may have fainted due to his anxiety.