Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 131

December 7th

On December 7th, 1154, Henry and Eleanor sailed for England in a savage storm to be crowned as the second King Henry and the first Queen Eleanor. This was only one of many times when Henry insisted upon defying nature and the advice of his sailors to sail in a violent gale and I’ve never understand this lunacy. It was not as if he did not have examples at hand of the dangers; during his reign, one of his ships sank with the loss of at least three hundred lives. And while the White Ship’s sinking was blamed on a drunken crew and not the weather, it still showed that crossing the Channel was never to be taken lightly. Henry apparently passed on the lunacy gene to Richard, for in May of 1194, he was desperate to return to his continental domains and launch his war upon Philippe to recover his stolen lands in Normandy. The weather was atrocious, so bad that none of his fleet captains would sail. So of course Henry’s son set out in his own galley. He soon had to take shelter in a cove on the Isle of Wight and then next day was forced to return, somewhat shamefacedly, to his fleet at Portsmouth. The weather continued to be appalling and this time he waited for it to pass, not sailing for Barfleur for another ten days. I like to think this return to sanity was the result of his angry mother putting her foot down. There are many things our colorful Angevins did that I would not, but sailing in a maelstrom certainly tops the list.
Also on this date in 1295, Gilbert de Clare, the Earl of Gloucester, died. I did not like him, for good reasons, as those of you who read Shadow will remember, so I do not want to start the day talking about him. He died. Enough said. His widow, Joan of Acre, the daughter of Edward and Eleanora who was born on crusade, did not grieve long, soon wedding a squire. This set Edward into such a rage that he imprisoned the unlucky bridegroom and pitched a royal temper tantrum that was immortalized in a clerk’s entry describing the repair to the crown, damaged “when it pleased the king to throw it into the fire.” Joan was able to coax her angry father into forgiving her, freeing Ralph, and grudgingly accepting their marriage. I suspect she was a young woman who was good at getting her own way.
This is also the 71st anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. A visit to the monument in Honolulu is a very moving experience.

The most beautiful Christmas song ever

One of my readers posted this link on Facebook and I did not want you guys on Goodreads to miss it. It is the most beautiful rendition of Silent Night that I've ever heard, in Welsh. Not to be missed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHOJSP...

A tragic king and a jaw-dropping mistake

On December 6th, 1421, the future King Henry VI was born. His was a sad life, stalked by tragedy and mental illness, ending in murder. There is not much else to say. R.I.P, Henry.
I really enjoyed the responses to my Christmas song post yesterday. It is nice to know that I am not alone in my obsession! I forgot to mention the worst offense of all, though. I don’t even know the title of this song, but it commits an unpardonable sin. It turns Christmas into a verb! So the singer warbles on about “Christmasing with you” and I can only shudder every time it invades my space.
The world lost a gifted music-maker yesterday with the death of the jazz great, Dave Brubeck. And below is an unbelievable story from France in which an 18th century chateau was bull-dozed by mistake! Now I am about to plunge into the next chapter, but once Richard humiliates Philippe yet again, I will re-surface. These defeats he is inflicting upon the French king will not end the war, but Richard is enjoying them enormously. Philippe, not so much.
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/20...

Favorite Christmas songs?

I confess that I am a Christmas music addict; I can never get enough. I am one of those annoying people who are delighted when store malls start playing it in mid-November. Since there is not much history to discuss today, I thought it might be interesting to talk about Christmas songs. My own favorite is “What Child is This,” naturally because it is set to the music of “Greensleeves.” I love “The Little Drummer Boy,” which was my father’s favorite, and classics like “Silent Night” and “O Holy Night” and “Come, All Ye Faithful.” I also love the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Christmas Sarajevo.” I think one of the most beautiful and saddest Christmas songs is “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” for I interpret it as longing for what is gone and cannot be recovered. I like cheery Christmas songs like “Dominick the Christmas Donkey” or “Silver Bells” or “Mele Kalikimaka.” But I don’t like cutesy or joke Christmas songs. I have always loathed “I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus.” I don’t like “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth,” either, and Madonna’s “Santa, Baby” is like chalk on a blackboard. I can tolerate the Chipmunk song as long as they don’t play it too often. Since consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, though, I admit that I think “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is sort of funny. So….who is in my camp and who wants to wear ear muffs during the entire month of December? What are your favorite Christmas songs and the songs you love to hate?

The Moving Finger Writes

On December 4th, 1214, the King of Scotland, later known as William the Lion, died. William came to grief when he joined the Great Rebellion against Henry in 1173, and paid a high price for it when he was captured at the siege of Alnwick Castle, for Henry held him prisoner for over a year and compelled him to swear fealty to the English Crown before being released; to add insult to injury, Henry also forced him to pay for the cost of garrisoning Scottish castles by Henry’s men. William got along much better with Richard, for Richard allowed him to buy back the castles he’d had to surrender to Henry and Richard was also willing to recognize the independence of Scotland. That would infuriate the Victorian historians, who were very empire-minded. But for Richard, this was bread cast on the waters, as William then proved to be a loyal ally when Richard was captured on his way home from the Holy Land, refusing to join in John’s conspiracy. At one time, William was going to marry Richard’s niece, Richenza, but the Pope refused to give them a dispensation for the marriage, claiming they were too closely related. Years later, William had despaired of having a son and he considered wedding his daughter to Richard’s nephew and Richenza’s brother, Otto, with the idea that Otto and his daughter would rule Scotland after his death. What happened to the consanguinity problem? Different Pope. But William’s barons balked, not liking the idea that the crown would pass through a female. And then William’s wife got pregnant again and he abandoned the Otto alliance, hopeful that his wife might give him a son, after all, as she eventually did.
Going further back in time, on December 4th, 1123, died a man who would be called a Renaissance Man had he not been born five centuries too soon. Omar Khayyam was a Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, polymath, author, and astronomer. In the West, he is best known for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, loosely translated by Edward Fitz Gerald in the 19th century. The first verse is perhaps the most famous:
“The Moving Finger writes
And, having writ,
Moves on, nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”

The stork pays a royal visit

I am still partial to the Plantagenets, but Will and Kate seem like a nice young couple, so I am happy for them. http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/03/world/e...

Ghost's Story

Nothing historical to report today. So I decided to go with an uplifting story appropriate to the holidays. This website has some very heartening stories of soldiers and the pets they saved during their tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bond between humans and animals seems to be strengthened during wartime, for men (and now women) under fire need a semblance of normalcy, something to remind them of their homes and former lives. For many, this takes the form of dogs and cats, and so it is not surprising that they are willing to ignore regulations and defy the odds to rescue their furry friends. It is a little easier now thanks to organizations like this one. When I read From Baghdad with Love, about a Marine struggling to get the dog he loved out of Iraq to the US, he was on his own and prevailed due only to his own stubbornness, the kindness of others, and sheer luck. He subsequently wrote a second book about his life with his rescued dog once they were back in the States. After discovering that the dog suffered from PTSD, it led him to the realization that he did, too; because he’d been a career soldier, he’d dismissed his symptoms, rationalizing that he’d done too many tours of duty to be affected that way.
Pen Farthing, a British soldier moved to rescue dogs used for fighting in Afghanistan, formed his own rescue society upon his return to England, as you can read about here. These stories of soldiers desperate to save the pets that made life tolerable in a hellish war zone shows yet again that when we help animals in need, we are helping people, too. Can anyone doubt how much a loved dog or cat means to a family who has lost everything they had in Hurricane Sandy? Sadly, critics of such rescue operations never seem to understand that. Anyway, here is the link to some stories that do have happy endings. http://www.sacfund.org/Pages/GhostsSt...

An amusing medieval story

December 2nd was another slow news day in the medieval world. But yesterday my Polish friend Kasia had an interesting post on my blog, and so I am “borrowing” it today. She says that prior to the battle of Bremule in 1119 (which would be won decisively by Henry),
“Louis VI of France offered to fight Henry I in person. In the twelfth century warfare the idea of a heroic single combat was a common one. Individuals were ready to take up the challenge and responsibility in order to avoid greater losses and settle the dispute even before the fighting in serious began. Louis was ready to take up such responsibility and proposed to fight between the two armies, but Henry refused. If he had agreed they were to fight “separated by a swift stream and a rickety plank bridge” (Tournament, p. 5), the thought that their armies found highly amusing, for both kings were rather stout men, and who knows what would have happened if they fought on the bridge:-)” The cite is to David Crouch’s excellent book.
Coincidentally, I just finished a scene in Ransom in which the French suggested that they settle their differences with the English by having five champions fight for each side. Richard said he’d be delighted to do that, on one condition—that he and Philippe be two of the champions. The French then dropped that idea like the proverbial hot potato.
Last week, I mentioned that Lionheart will be available in paperback in the UK and Down Under at the end of December. Today my American paperback publisher would like me to remind everyone that their edition of Lionheart will be published on January 3rd and is available for pre-order. Here is the link to the Amazon mother ship. http://www.amazon.com/Lionheart-Novel...
Lastly, I hope my friends and readers out on the West Coast stay safe and dry until that monster storm passes by.

December 1st in medieval history

December 1st was not a lucky day for the following people. On this date in 1135, King Henry I died, a death that would set off nineteen wretched years for the English people, a time when they said “Christ and his saints slept.” Apparently the story that he died of “a surfeit of lampreys” may just be a legend; too bad, for I rather liked that one. He did, however, die after feasting upon lampreys, which his doctors had forbidden.
Also on December 1st, 1170, Thomas Becket returned to Canterbury after a six year exile in France. He wasted no time in infuriating his king again, and the clock began ticking toward his desired martyrdom on December 29th. Can I prove he sought martyrdom? No, but as a former lawyer, I think I could make a convincing case based on the evidence—his insistence upon excommunicating the Archbishop of York and the bishops of London and Salisbury, knowing full well that he’d be flinging a torch into the hayrick of Henry’s Angevin temper; his refusal to compromise; then his refusal to flee from the four knights who would slay him, even though his monks, aware that he was in great danger, pleaded with him to do so. Instead, he confronted and taunted the knights, and so gained immortality for himself and put Henry in an impossible position. I can’t say he anticipated being made a saint, but it may have crossed his mind, knowing how shocked Christendom would be by the murder of an archbishop in his own cathedral. I doubt that he’d have been pleased that Henry managed to wriggle out of the trap and his killers were subjected only to the penance of a pilgrimage. And since there is no evidence that Becket had an appreciation for irony, he probably would not have been amused that the reason his killers escaped punishment was because he’d refused to accept Henry’s attempt to reform the law with the Constitutions of Clarendon. As I had Henry say in Time and Chance, “The ultimate absurdity of this, Ranulf, is that their crime is one the Church would deny me the right to punish. Thomas insisted unto his final breath that only the Church could judge the offenses of men in holy orders and any crimes committed against them.” Since all the Angevins had a strong sense of irony, we can safely say that Henry took some grim amusement from that.
And on December 1st, 1235, Isabella, the daughter of King John and Isabelle d’Angouleme, sister of Henry III, died in childbirth at the age of twenty-seven; the baby died, too. She’d been wed six years earlier to Frederick II, the brilliant, controversial Holy Roman Emperor, and had given him two children. Frederick was said to be fond of his beautiful young English wife, but her brother Henry was not happy that she was kept so secluded, rarely appearing in public. We do not know how Isabella felt about any of this--the match with Frederick or his harem or the luxurious, isolated life she led as his empress. Women’s voices were rarely recorded throughout most of history.

the queen and the scribe

All of the people I write about took the day off on November 30th. But there were two non-medieval deaths worth mentioning. On November 30, 1705, Catherine of Braganza, the much put-upon queen of Charles II, died. I always felt sympathy for Catherine. Deeply pious, this convent-bred bride was never at home in England, distrusted for her Catholic faith and scorned for her inability to give Charles an heir. Charles, of course, was probably the greatest womanizer ever to sit on the English throne; sorry to deny you the laurels, Edward IV. (And yes, Henry I sired over 21 illegitimate children, but I think he cared only about the sex; the women were merely the means to an end. Whereas I think Charles and Edward genuinely liked the ladies.) Catherine had to accept the presence at his court of her husband’s favorites, which had to be painful as well as humiliating, for she seems to have developed real feeling for the charming, lusty, and good-humored man she’d married. Charles became fond of her, too, not enough to “stay faithful to his marriage bed,” as they phrased it in the MA, but enough to try to protect her from the hostility of his more rabidly anti-Catholic subjects; he also intervened whenever a royal mistress was too disrespectful of his long-suffering queen. He refused to put her aside even after it became obvious she would never give him an heir, in kindly contrast to Henry Bluebeard Tudor. Of course it could be argued that in sparing Catherine’s feelings, he did his country no favors, for England would surely have been better off without the kingship of his inept, idiot brother, James. Catherine survived Charles by twenty years, remaining in England instead of returning to Portugal. She is said to have been the one who introduced tea drinking to the British public, thus inadvertently contributing to the causes of the American Revolution—remember the Boston Tea Party, people? The New York City borough of Queens is named after her, as she was the queen at the time of its founding—or so says Wikipedia.
And on November 30th, 1910, the man I consider the greatest American writer, Mark Twain, died. His last years were filled with sorrow and bitterness and I think he was probably glad to go. RIP, Mark. I think you would be pleased to know that you are just as esteemed in our time as you were in your own.