The Nature of Alexander was published by Allen Lane in 1975, Renault’s single work of non-fiction and her attempt to state directly what her novels embodied imaginatively: her understanding of Alexander’s character, motivations, and historical significance.
The book is not a conventional biography (Renault acknowledges the existing scholarly biographies and does not attempt to compete with their completeness) but a character study — an argument about who Alexander was, what drove him, and why he behaved as he did. Renault’s central claim is that Alexander cannot be understood through modern psychological categories: he believed himself divine (descended from Heracles and Achilles, son of Zeus-Ammon after the oracle at Siwa), and this belief was not megalomania but a genuine religious conviction that shaped every decision.
Renault argues that modern historians’ tendency to “explain” Alexander in terms they find comfortable (ambition, alcoholism, paranoia, homosexuality) misses the fundamental fact: he operated within a worldview where kings were mediators between human and divine, where conquest was a religious duty, and where the boundaries between mortal and immortal were permeable.
The book draws on the same ancient sources Renault used for her novels (Arrian, Plutarch, Curtius Rufus, Diodorus) and on modern archaeology, but it reads them with a novelist’s eye for character — for the telling detail, the revealing anecdote, the moment when personality becomes visible through action.
Collecting The Nature of Alexander
First edition (Allen Lane, London, 1975): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $15–$40
- US first (Pantheon, 1975): $10–$25