Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 110

Dragons

A little dragon humor on a summer Sunday afternoon. This comes compliments of my writer pal, Priscilla Royal, who also has to share her home with a Deadline Dragon. She insists that hers is a baby one, though, and she has to keep rescuing it from her cats. She is being a good sport, but dragons never make ideal roommates, no matter the size.
http://rhymeswithorange.com/comics/au...

Alfred the Great?

This is interesting. I admit much of what I know about Alfred comes from Uthred, the hero of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon series, and Uthred is not exactly an Alfred fan. But the guy had to be rather impressive to get a “The Great” tacked onto his name, the only English king to be so honored. Of course we know that Llywelyn ab Iorwerth was deservedly known as Llywelyn Fawr—the Great. He’d have made a wonderful King of England, although he’d probably have seen that as a demotion of sorts, plus exile!
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/quest-...
PS My friend Kasia reminded me that Eleanor of Brittany died on this date in 1241. I am embarrassed that I forgot this, for it must often have seemed to Eleanor as if she’d been forgotten by the world. I will try to write more about her once the Deadline Dragon takes a hike.

The Tudor Conspiracy

It looks as if I’ll be dragon-beset until the end of the month, whether I like it or not. But just because I can’t take time for pleasure reading, that does not mean you guys can’t. So I wanted to alert you all that C.W. Gortner has a new Tudor mystery out, The Tudor Conspiracy, the second in his series about our favorite Tudor, Elizabeth. This is great fun, so much so that I had to hide my Kindle; I’d downloaded it, thinking I could treat myself on the plane ride to England, then made the mistake of opening it. Bad move. Mary is now on the throne, Elizabeth is in a very precarious position, and before I knew it, I had read up to Chapter Six. That was when I had to hide the Kindle since I am so weak about resisting temptation.
http://www.amazon.com/Tudor-Conspirac...

Elizabeth Peters, R.I.P.

Very sad news—Elizabeth Peters has died. Like so many, I loved her books, especially her Amelia Peabody series. She was a very gifted writer and had a delightfully wicked sense of humor. (See the Murders of Richard III) What little I know about Egyptology I gleaned from her books. I think she’d have been a wonderful friend and there is a little less laughter, a little less light in the world tonight.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...

Just a thought

On August 7, 1485, Henry Tudor landed at Milford Haven in Wales. Think how history would have been changed if he’d slipped on the gangplank, fell into the harbor, and drowned. Obviously, no Bosworth Field. No Tudor dynasty. No break with the Catholic Church. No Dissolution of the monasteries. No Stuart dynasty? A very different England had the Plantangenets continued to reign. On the downside, no Sunne in Splendour. But on the plus side, we’d have been spared so many of those “epics” about the Tudors. So if I could time travel back to that August day, would I have seized my chance and pushed him off the gangplank? Would you?

Our need to balance the tragic with the uplifting

Sometimes the news seems even more heartbreaking than usual—a young bride murdered on her honeymoon on that Venice Beach boardwalk, those two little boys killed by a python in Canada, the pregnant woman killed by a falling tree, the usual bombings and random shootings. Because of modern technology, we end up grieving for people around the globe, people we do not know and usually cannot help; all we can do is feel their pain. It can be overwhelming at times; turn on the television or the computer and suddenly you are right there at the scene of a horrific accident or killing, often as it actually unfolds. Little wonder that we need coping mechanisms. So today I am providing two. Read about what the Cleveland Browns did for this little boy with cancer and then watch these videos. I can virtually guarantee they will make you all feel better—however briefly.
http://www.care2.com/causes/3-adorabl...

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/...

Game of Thrones baby advice

The Deadline Dragon is still hanging around the house, making a total pest of himself. But I dodged him long enough to post this Advice for the New Royal Baby, Game of Thrones style. Be sure to click onto the link at the end of #10.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/23/showbiz...

The battles of Jaffa and Evesham

Today is the date of two very significant medieval battles, with two very different outcomes. On August 4th, 1192, the second battle of Jaffa was fought. Four days earlier, Richard I had forced his way onto the beach at Jaffa, carrying a sword in one hand, a crossbow in the other. He and his men managed to get inside the city and recaptured it from the Saracens, his unlikely success due in part to the fact that the Saracens were occupied in looting the town. The walls had been seriously damaged in the assault, though, so Richard and his men encamped outside the city. When Saladin learned of this, he saw a golden opportunity, for if he could kill or capture the English king, his war would be won. But a Genoese archer had risen early to answer nature’s call and saw the glint of the rising sun on the shields of the approaching Saracen army; sometimes history can be affected by something so simple as a full bladder. Richard quickly mobilized an inspired defense, having his spearmen anchor the shafts of their weapons into the ground, with crossbowmen standing behind them, sheltered by their shields, all with their weapons spanned so that once a man shot, he’d be passed another crossbow, allowing the fire to be continuous.
* * *
Lionheart, page 546
Their shields and spears firmly rooted in the dry Outremer dirt, their backs protected by the sand cliffs leading down to the sea, the men turned toward their king, astride a restive black stallion. With all eyes upon him, Richard tore his own gaze from the dust clouds being kicked up to the east; time was running out. Raising his hand for quiet, he began to speak. “I know you are fearful. But we are not defeated. If we hold fast, we can prevail over our foes. Yet to do that, every man must do his part. If even one of you gives in to your fears and tries to flee, you doom us all. Rather than let that happen, I will personally kill anyone who seeks to run.”
He paused to let his warning sink in. “We are all going to die, but in God’s time, not Sasladin’s. For most people, their deaths have no meaning. If we die this day, we die for the Lord Christ and the Holy Sepulchre. Can there be a greater glory than that?” Again, he paused, his gaze moving intently from man to man. “When we took the cross, we pledged our lives. In return, we were promised remission of our earthly transgressions. It does not matter how dark your sins are—and I’d wager some of them are very dark indeed.” As he’d hoped, that bit of gallows humor elicited some tight smiles. “So our salvation is assured. But our defeat is not. If we hold firm, they will not be able to penetrate our defenses. You are brave men and I am proud to fight alongside you. I know you can do this. You need only have faith—in God, in your own courage, and in me.”
* * *
Despite being greatly outnumbered, Richard’s men did hold firm and time and time again the Saracen charges failed, the men veering off at the last moment rather than impaling their horses on that barbed wall of spears. After six hours, they were understandably exhausted and discouraged and it was then that Richard took the offensive, he and his small band of knights charging into the thick of the enemy army. Against all odds, they prevailed. It was his twin victories at Jaffa that did so much to burnish the legend of the Lionheart.
The second battle took place on August 4, 1265, when Simon de Montfort and his men were trapped at Evesham by Prince Edward, who’d ambushed Simon’s son Bran just four days earlier. I did a post about that on August 1st.
* * *
Falls the Shadow, page 516-517
They crowded into the churchyard just east of the bell tower, pressing in so they might hear Simon speak. A hush slowly fell as he reined in his stallion before them, looked out upon their upturned, ashen faces.
“Scriptures say that man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. That you know right well. You know, too, that death comes to us all, to the king in his palace and the crofter in his hut. All a man can do is hope to face it with courage and a measure of grace. Most of us shall die this day, for we meet a foe twice our numbers, and there will be no quarter given. But we do not die in vain, that I can promise you.”
Simon paused, drawing a steadying breath as lightning seared the sky above their heads. “You’ve every right to ask why it must be. I would that I had an answer for you. But the Ways of the Almighty are not for mortal men to fathom. The Holy Land is soaked with the blood of true believers, those who died for Christ before the walls of Jerusalem. Because they died, does that mean their faith was false? So, too, is our cause just, and it will triumph. The men of England will cherish their liberties all the more, knowing that we died for them.”
* * *
And die they did, even the squires. One chronicler would write, “Such was the murder of Evesham, for battle it was none.” As I said, two very different battles, but sharing two common threads. Their thinking was very medieval, and the events proved yet again that reality can trump fiction, at least when writing of the Plantagenets. I would never have dared to invent the scene in which Richard rode his stallion alone along the Saracen lines, offering a challenge to single combat that none of Saladin’s warriors would accept, and had the story been reported by crusader chroniclers, I’d still have dismissed it as too unlikely to be true. But it came from two Saracen chroniclers. As for Evesham, what writer would have dared to have a savage storm break out at the height of the battle? Or to have Simon’s son Bran reach Evesham too late to save his father or brothers, but just in time to see Simon’s head on a pike?
I’ve been told by readers over the years that they found Simon de Montfort’s death at Evesham profoundly moving. I found the greatest challenge was not in writing of the battle, but of the aftermath—writing about the pain and shock and fear of his wife and daughter and surviving sons when they learned what had occurred on that hot August afternoon in 1265. Whenever men die in combat, hearts are broken and widows and orphans left to grieve. That aspect of war is tragically timeless.

The first and third Richards--help needed

Compared to yesterday, August 3rd was a quiet day, historically speaking. Richard I landed in England in 1189 to claim the crown; he’d been able to take his time because Mama Eleanor was over there, declaring an amnesty for prisoners and doing all she could to pave the way for his coronation. When I have Richard joke in Devil’s Brood that on the seventh day, she rested, he was not far off; she was remarkably busy in the month between Henry’s death and Richard’s arrival, making a royal progress through the countryside, holding councils, issuing edicts about such mundane matters as currency and weights measures, and taking oaths of fealty to Richard. In her spare time, she founded a hospital for the poor in Surrey! We enjoy speculating about history’s What ifs. A sad one is What if Henry had been willing to share some of his power and make use of her formidable political skills as Richard would do?
The travel agency sponsoring the Richard III Tour thinks it would be a nice idea if I did a reading from Sunne on one of the nights; the other readings will be from Ransom, of course, just as I gave the Eleanor tour members a preview of Lionheart. Usually in selecting a passage to read, writers have to be careful not to give away any important plot twists or spoil the suspense. Since I am reasonably sure that everyone on this tour will have read Sunne already, I don’t have to worry about that. But I am having trouble deciding what to read. So…..any suggestions from my wonderful readers? I’d be grateful for some feedback.

A death in the New Forest and a man worth mourning

On August 2, 1100, William Rufus was struck by an arrow during a hunting party in the New Forest and died on the spot. His body was left there in the forest, although it would eventually be retrieved for what seems to have been a modest burial. His younger brother Henry raced for Winchester to claim the royal treasure and the crown. Was it an accident? Or murder? No way to tell at this point in time. Hunting accidents were certainly common in the MA, but over the centuries, suspicions of murder did occur to people. Lacking proof, I suppose we have to give Henry the benefit of the doubt. From what we know of the man, though, he was quite capable of acting to remove an inconvenient barrier between him and the throne, even if he happened to be related to said barrier. Henry did not have a warm and cuddly side.
And on August 2, 1222, died a man who would be even more maligned than Richard III, Raimond de St Gilles, the sixth Count of Toulouse. Raimond had his flaws, but he did not deserve the horrors that descended upon him and the people of the South during the Albigensian Crusade, one of the darker chapters in the history of the medieval Church. Because it was necessary to justify this blatant power—grab, he was painted by chroniclers in the most lurid of hues, accused of being a dissolute womanizer, a man without honor or scruples, a heretic damned to eternal hellfire. But his real sin was one we’d see as a virtue today. He was that rarity in the MA, a ruler who was genuinely tolerant, unwilling to persecute his subjects because of their religious beliefs, and he would pay a high price for that tolerance.
He died an excommunicate even though he’d sought repeatedly to gain absolution. He was never a heretic, you see, never a Cathar, and stayed faithful to the Church that treated him so shamefully. When he suffered a stroke on that hot August day in 1222, he was standing outside a church in Toulouse, listening as the sympathetic priests raised their voices so he could hear the Mass. And he asked to become one of the Knights Hospitaller. Had he been a Cathar as his enemies claimed, he’d have asked for the consolamentum, the Cathar rite that was given to their dying. (On his deathbed, Charles II was received into the Catholic Church—very unpopular in 17th century England--although it is not certain if he was still lucid by then.) Instead, Raimond begged for the Last Rites of the Roman Church and was denied. The Hospitallers were more merciful. They did admit him into their Order. But he was still not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground and his coffin remained unburied in the commandery of the Hospitallers in Toulouse as his son tried desperately to secure a Christian burial for him. They used his desperation to force him into making yet more concessions, but their promises were never kept.
When Geoffrey de Mandeville, rebel and outlaw and scourge of God, died during Stephen’s reign, he, too, was an excommunicate and was denied Christian burial. But his sons petitioned the Church on his behalf, and the ban was lifted even though he’d not died in a state of grace, showed no contrition whatsoever. So this man, of whom it was said the grass withered wherever he’d walked, a man who’d spilled enough innocent blood to swim in, was buried in hallowed ground, whereas Raimond de St Gilles’ body would be eaten by rats.
Today, the Albigensian Crusade is a source of tourist revenue to the French government. Tourists flock to “Cathar Country” to see the haunting ruins of their castles, to hear the stories of a land that fell under the shadow of the Inquisition. We recoil from the statement that the papal legate is alleged to have said when the crusaders sacked the town of Beziers after they refused to surrender their Cathar neighbors (200 in a population of about 9,000). When he was asked how the soldiers could tell Cathars from Catholics, his response was; “Kill them all. God will know His own.” Some historians now doubt that he said it. I do not; in his letter to the Pope, he could hardly contain his joy at the deaths of the thousands of men, women, and children of Beziers. There are few in our time who’d sympathize with the Albigensian crusaders, so sure they were doing God’s blessed, bloody work. But who remembers Raimond de St Gilles?