Brown's Predecessors

The novel's central claims — Mary Magdalene as Jesus's wife, the Holy Grail as a bloodline, a secret society guarding the truth — came largely from Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982). Two of its authors sued Brown's publisher, Random House, for copyright infringement and lost: the court ruled that historical theories cannot be copyrighted.

Brown's gift was not originality but packaging. He wrapped ideas that had circulated for decades in alternative-history books inside a thriller so readable that millions met those theories for the first time.