Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 132

My Richard III Tour

I am happy to announce that Academic Travel has set up a website for next year’s Ricardian tour and they are accepting reservations. Space is limited, so if you are interested in going, do contact them soon. Here is the link to the website. http://skp0913.com/ The tour will cover ten days in all, eight days for the tour itself and two for travel, from September 7th until the 16th, and we will be visiting all of the places most closely connected with Richard: York, Middleham, Bosworth Field, Leicester, Ludlow Castle, Tewkesbury abbey and the battlefield, Windsor Castle, and ending our stay in London, where we will be visiting the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and Crosby Hall, which was Richard’s townhouse. We will have local guides at each stop and we will be meeting historians and archaeologists, including Philippa Langley, who was one of those most closely involved in the Leicester Dig that resulted in the discovery of Richard’s remains—yes, I am that sure the DNA will confirm it! You can find all the details of the tour at the afore-mentioned website. We had a wonderful time during our Eleanor tour last year and I fully expect lightning to strike twice. Richard deserves no less.
And on this day in history, some interesting deaths to report. On November 29th, 1314, Philippe The Fair, King of France died; Philippe was a nasty piece of work, with the blood of the Templars and countless French Jews on his hands. And in 1330, Queen Isabella’s lover, Roger Mortimer was executed for treason. Lastly, in 1530, Cardinal Wolsey died on his way to London to answer a charge of treason. He could have expected no mercy from his master, Henry VIII, for Henry was particularly vengeful to those who’d fallen from his royal favor, so Wolsey’s death surely saved him more suffering.

A Welsh prince and an English queen

On November 28th, 1170, the brilliant Welsh leader, Owain Gwynedd, also called Owain Fawr, Owain the Great, died at age 70. His most capable and gifted son, the poet-prince Hywel ab Owain, expected to succeed him, but sadly he was ambushed and killed by his treacherous half-brothers Davydd and Rhodri. I got even with Davydd by making him the villain of the piece in my mystery, Dragon’s Lair, but the death of Hywel was a great blow to the Welsh. Fortunately Owain’s grandson Llywelyn ab Iorwerth would soon be blazing like a comet across the skies of Wales and in 1194, the 21 year old Llywelyn defeated Davydd and sent him off into English exile.

On November 28th, 1290, Edward I’s queen, Eleanora of Castile, died at age 49. Her grieving husband set up the beautiful Eleanor crosses in her memory. That romantic gesture and the legend that she’d sucked the poison from Edward’s wound when he was attacked by an Assassin with a poisoned dagger have made Eleanora popular with the general public, but she was not so popular in her own time, having earned herself a reputation for avarice. We do know that she was dearly loved by the honorable Othon, though, and maybe Ken will consider posting something on Othon’s behalf about the lady he discreetly worshipped from a distance?

Lastly, Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York’s daughter Margaret was born on this date in 1489; she would later marry the King of Scotland, but her life was not a particularly happy one, and worse was to come. The screen writers of The Tudors erased her from the Tudor family tree; or so I’ve been told by friends who watched that fantasy series.

The pope and the empress

On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban called for a crusade to rescue Jerusalem from the infidels, which led to the First Crusade and the deaths of thousands of people—not only all who died during this initial foray to the Holy Land, but all who died in subsequent crusades. There is disagreement about how many crusades there were; some say seven, others nine. The first was the most successful in military terms, for they managed to capture Jerusalem; it was also the bloodiest, resulting in the brutal massacres of noncombatants in the captured cities. The second was a fiasco, probably better known for what did or did not happen between Eleanor and her uncle in Antioch. The third is the most famous because of the two larger than life commanders who captured the public imagination, in their time and in succeeding centuries—Saladin and the Lionheart. The fourth ended with a shameful assault upon the city of Constantinople, so they never even got to the Holy Land. The fifth has been largely forgotten, from 1217-122. The sixth involved the Emperor Frederick II, who was excommunicated at the time and who pragmatically struck a deal with the Saracens that enabled him to assume control of the Holy City instead of fighting for it; Henry III’s brother, Richard of Cornwall, also took part in this one. The seventh was another failure, resulting in the capture of the French king, Louis IX, son of Blanche in yesterday’s Facebook Note, later canonized by the Catholic Church. Twenty-some years later, Louis gave it another shot; this ill-advised venture ended in his death in Tunisia. Some historians count Edward I’s unsuccessful campaign against the brutal Sultan Baibars in 1271-1272; my readers will remember this one for the unsuccessful attempt upon Edward’s life by one of the storied Assassins.
In-between the organized blood-letting, there were minor skirmishings and the infamous Children’s Crusade of 1212, in which children of France and Germany were said to have spontaneously vowed to liberate the Holy Land. As you’d expect, that did not end well. In recent years, some historians have cast doubts upon the story, and it is hard not to hope they are right. Dante placed the belligerent troubadour Bertran de Born in one of his circles of Hell for stirring up strife between Henry and his sons. I’m sure it never occurred to Dante, but I’d have put Pope Urban in one of those circles, too. Here is the link to a funny website envisioning historical events through the prism of Facebook. Both Richard and the Saracens “unfriend” the Pope, but of course he perseveres; sadly, medieval popes always did. http://coolmaterial.com/roundup/if-hi...
And on November 27th, 1198, one of the more interesting and admirable women of the MA died in Palermo at the age of forty-four, Constance de Hauteville, aunt to Joanna’s husband, King William, and unhappy wife to Richard’s nemesis, the emperor Heinrich. We all know about Eleanor’s rebellion against Henry. Few know that Constance courageously took part in a rebellion against Heinrich for the most honorable of reasons—to spare her beloved Sicily any more suffering under Heinrich’s iron rule. I have written a short story—yes, me---about Constance, which is to appear in the George RR Martin anthology, Dangerous Women, but unfortunately it has been delayed and I have no idea when the anthology will see the light of day.

Death of Two Queens

November 26th, 1252 was the date of death at age 64 of Blanche of Castile, daughter of Alfonso and Leonora, and therefore granddaughter of our Henry and Eleanor. After Richard’s death, Eleanor traveled to Castile to bring back one of her granddaughters to marry the son of the French king Philippe. She chose Blanche, then Blanca, over her elder sister, Urraca, supposedly because the latter’s name was too “foreign.” But that was definitely an excuse, a means of saving the elder girl’s pride, for it was common for a young bride to change a foreign name to one more familiar to her new subjects. Eleanor’s other granddaughter Richenza became known as Matilda after she was raised at Henry’s court. In my books, however, I kept her as Richenza, for I already had too many Matildas; what I wouldn’t have given to rename a few of the Henrys and Williams! Blanche became Queen of France and after her husband’s death, she acted as regent for her son, the future St Louis. She was clearly a woman of ability and courage and ambition, but she’s never been a favorite of mine. She was also the Mother-in-law from Hell, making life difficult for Louis and his young queen Marguerite, who was one of the four famous sisters of Provence, all of whom wed kings. But she deserves credit for all she did to secure her son’s throne. And in all honesty, Eleanor was not a warm and loving mother-in-law, either.
November 26th, 1504 was the death date for the controversial Isabella, Queen of Castile, whose reputation has been tarnished by her association with the Inquisition. She is also linked with Christopher Columbus, and she was the mother of Katherine of Aragon and Juana la Loca, neither of whom had very happy lives. C.W. Gortner has written about Isabella in The Queen’s Vow. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet because of my Ransom deadline. But I did read Christopher’s novels about Juana la Loca and another controversial queen, Catherine de Medici, and enjoyed them both very much. So The Queen’s Vow is on my TBR pile, which is looking alarmingly like the Leaning Tower of Pisa these days.

The White Ship

For me, one of the most significant events of the MA occurred on November 25th, 1120, when the White Ship sank just outside the harbor at Barfleur after its drunken crew steered it onto a rock. It was estimated that 300 passengers were drowned, the only survivor being a butcher’s apprentice from Rouen. Most of the passengers were highborn and included the only legitimate son and heir of King Henry I. The consequences of this tragedy would be enormous, for Henry’s attempt to sire a son with his second wife failed and he then attempted to name his daughter Maude as his heiress. The result would be a civil war that caused great suffering to the English for almost two decades. As we know, Maude’s son ended the civil war and was crowned in 1154, the first king of the dynasty that would later be known as the Plantagenets. A sobering thought (no pun intended) to think that if the White Ship crew hadn’t been hitting the wine casks, there would likely never have been a Plantagenet dynasty. (That sound you just heard is my gasp of horror) At the risk of sounding sadistic, I enjoyed writing about the sinking of the White Ship; writers are addicted to high drama. Here are the closing paragraphs of my account in When Christ and His Saints Slept.
* * *
During the night, fog swept in from the west,, patches of ghostly grey lying low along the horizon. Sometimes he slept. Or did he? His thoughts were rambling, confused. He would not always remember where he was or why he was suffering so. Why was the Almighty taking so long to bring him home?
When he heard the voices, muffled and distorted in the fog, he felt a weary wonderment that his ordeal was over, that God’s good angels were coming for him at last. But they came not in winged chariots, as the priests had taught. Instead, they glided out of the fog in a small fishing craft, its hull painted yellow and black, its single sail as bright as blood.
Berold tried to yell; it emerged as a hoarse croak. But they’d already seen him, were dipping their oars into the sea. And then they were alongside and one of the men had nimbly scrambled out onto the mast, was cutting him loose, and Berold realized that for him, salvation had come in the unlikely guise of three Breton fishermen. He had been spared to bear witness, to tell the world that the White Ship had gone down off Barfleur Point, with the loss of the English king’s son and all aboard, save only a butcher’s lad from Rouen.
* * *
There were a few other events worth mentioning on this date. In 1177, the young Leper King Baldwin of Jerusalem defeated Saladin at the battle of Montgisard. And in 1487, Henry Tudor finally got around to crowning his queen, Elizabeth of York, my “Bess” in Sunne in Splendour. But for me, everything else pales in comparison to the loss of the White Ship, for had it not happened, I’d still be doing penance for my sins, otherwise known as practicing law, instead of getting to write about the Yorkists, Welsh princes, and my Angevins. and also getting to interact with my wonderful readers on Facebook, my blog, and Goodreads. I am sure it would be no consolation to those tragic souls who went down on the White Ship, but they did not die in vain!

INTERVIEW WITH PRISCILLA ROYAL

I am very pleased to welcome Priscilla Royal to my blog for

a discussion of her newest novel, The Sanctity of Hate.  In the interest of full disclosure, I want to

reveal that Priscilla is a friend of mine. 

She is also a very talented writer. 

She has an impressive understanding of the medieval world; while reading

one of her novels, you never doubt that her characters are men and women of the

thirteenth century.  No Plantagenets in

Pasadena in any of Priscilla’s books! 

Her people are wonderfully three-dimensional, too, with all of the

virtues and flaws of people everywhere.  

Stir this mix with a suspenseful plot line and the result is always a

book almost impossible to put down—at least for those of us who are fascinated

in history, who understand that our past was someone else’s present. (Thank

you, David McCullough, for that)    So….here is Priscilla Royal. 

 

Tell us about your

newest book.

 

The Sanctity of Hate

will be out soon, early December, in trade paper, hardcover, audio, and

e-reader formats. Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas are back at Tyndal Priory

after the events in A Killing Season.

It is the summer of 1276 and quite bucolic, until the body of an unpopular man

is found floating in the priory mill pond. No one mourns this death, and the

villagers do not want one of their own found guilty. Coincidentally, a Jewish

family is stranded at the inn, refugees under the relocation provisions of

Edward I’s Statute of Jewry signed in late 1275. The wife is about to give

birth and is in obvious distress. Concluding that the rumored crime details

conform to the usual anti-Semitic myths, the villagers decide that a member of

this family is the most likely killer. Prioress Eleanor, Brother Thomas, and

Crowner Ralf are not so easily convinced but must act swiftly to find the true

murderer before the family is simply condemned by popular choice.

 

Anti-Semitism was

prevalent at the time. How did you deal with this?

 

Not easily! But I wanted to recreate the complexity of the

moment while respecting the era. To do that, I kept one thing in mind which my

research did support. The farther we are from an historical incident, the more

we tend to simplify it. We forget or lose documentation of so many opinions and

nuances of the time. Some things are never even recorded. As a more current

example, I’ve heard some insist that the internment of Americans with Japanese

ancestry during WW II was necessary, unavoidable, and everyone agreed with it.

Fortunately, we still have documentation proving otherwise. But in five hundred

years, how will we see this event? Will we lose the evidence that many

protested the injustice, or will we forget the unthinking panic that created

the law? No matter what, we will simplify the circumstances and see that event

as more one-sided than it was. Medieval anti-Semitism is similar. Relations

between Christians and Jews were not simple Yes, there was an overriding

prevalence of anti-Semitism, but there were also Christians who tried to

protect Jewish families against mobs, respected their education and skills, and

befriended them. Nor was conversion all one way. There may not be a lot of recorded

instances, but Christians did convert to Judaism, often because of

intermarriage. The most interesting convert was a priest, not of Jewish

ancestry, who was then persuaded to recant, went back to Judaism, and was

finally burned at the stake when he utterly rejected Christianity. 

 

How did your primary

characters respond to Jacob ben Asher and his family?

 

I wanted them to show a range of reactions. Prioress Eleanor

had the hardest time. She’s a true believer and grieves that this family cannot

“see the error of their faith”. Brother Thomas, as an outsider and one who

freely argues with his deity, feels a kinship with the family although he, too,

never doubts that Christianity is the right belief system. A difficult birth

tends to bring good women together no matter what their faith. And Crowner Ralf

doesn’t care what anyone claims to believe. He just wants to hang the right

person. In deciding how each of these characters would act, I considered their

psychology, history, and the nature of their faith. It’s also important to

remember that we’ve always found justification for what we want to do or what

we think is right within the tenets of our belief system. During the debates

over slavery in this country, we used Christianity to support the conclusion

that slavery was wrong as well as the argument it was God’s will. Prioress

Eleanor and Brother Thomas find a way, within the logic provided Christians at

the time, to act with the compassion their nature demands.

 

You have said that

each of your books presents you with a different challenge. What was it in The

Sanctity of Hate?

 

Writing from a Jewish perspective. Although I did not grow

up in a church-going family, my ancestral heritage is also not Jewish. That

means I probably have blind spots and assumptions, many quite subconscious.

While I was thinking about this book, I read Mitchell J. Kaplan’s historical

novel, By Fire, By Water, which deals

with the expulsion from Spain

in 1492 of Jewish families. In one scene, he describes the refugees on the roads

to the ports that might take some to family members abroad while others had no

idea where they were going. Despite all the WW II films I’ve seen, documentary

and otherwise, and personal stories I have read of survival, near-misses, and

tragedies, I found Kaplan’s description uniquely powerful. Here were people

whose ancestors had suffered so much uprooting and violence for hundreds of

years that the knowledge of it must almost be stamped on the DNA. So I wanted

to create a family in that kind of situation, knowing that they can never

completely trust the world to be safe. And I wanted to do it with the respect

the experience deserves. Hopefully, my fictional family conveys the humor,

courage, creativity, and resilience that such survival requires.

 

What was the most

enjoyable part of writing this story?

 

The research required on Jewish history in medieval England was

fascinating. I won’t list the books because they are in the bibliography, but I

still have a stack on my bedside table that I can hardly wait to get into. The

other fun bit of research was medieval beekeeping. I have a friend who is a

local beekeeper, answered all my dumb questions, and loaned me books on the

history of honey harvesting. I learned that the medieval English bee was dark,

hairy, and larger than the black/gold one we are most familiar with. I found

that utterly charming!

 

What are you working

on next?

 

I just started putting ideas together for a medieval spy

story. There were spies at the time, but the organized system put together by

Walsingham under Elizabeth

I did not seem to exist. Of course, Brother Thomas has done his stint as a mole

for the Church, but this next story involves secular ones. As I often do, I

came late to the spy genre, but I fell in love with Le Carre’s novels about

Smiley and Alec Guinness in Tinker,

Tailor, Soldier Spy. No title yet, but I am having fun thinking about

possible characters.

 

How can readers

contact you?

 

Should anyone have questions about my books, they can reach

me through my website at www.priscillaroyal.com.

And I am one of several mystery writers blogging on The Lady Killers at

www.theladykillers.typepad.com.

 

Thank you so much, Sharon,

for inviting me to post on your blog. You have taught me so much about

research, and your beautifully written books have long been an inspiration. I

am very grateful.

 

Thank you, Priscilla, for agreeing to this interview.   It has been a pleasure, as usual.  And I forgive you for causing me to lose

precious sleep this past week.  Until I

finish A King’s Ransom, the only time I have for reading is after I’ve gone to

bed.  I am two-thirds of the way through

The Sanctity of Hate and I’ve found myself reading later and later into the

night, thinking “One more chapter, just one more.”   Of course I pay the price for that the next

morning, but The Sanctity of Hate is worth it. 

 

 

November 24,  2012

 

Thanksgiving and a heroic little dog named True

I hope all those who celebrated Thanksgiving had a lovely, peaceful holiday. Mine was very nice. My family always celebrates on Thanksgiving Eve and on Thanksgiving Day, and one of my family members who lost her house to Hurricane Sandy insisted upon hosting a dinner at a local restaurant, refusing to surrender to despair. Just being around her is an inspiration.
Again, thanks to all who posted such warm, loving comments about Tristan after learning of his death last week.. It meant a lot to me.
I will try to catch up on all the Today in History entries that I missed, though I know that Rania and a few others took up the slack for me, which was greatly appreciated. I expect to have a new blog up this weekend, an interview with Priscilla Royal, whose new mystery, The Sanctity of Hate, is coming out now. She is one of my favorite mystery writers, and this novel is particularly compelling, for it deals with the ugly underside of medieval life, Anti-Semitism.
And here is a link to a video about a remarkable young woman and her equally remarkable dog. She has had her share of grief; her baby was born with a heart defect. And last week her house burned down, so she lost everything. But she and her baby were able to escape the fast-moving fire thanks to a courageous little dachshund named True who woke her in time to escape the flames. True was a rescue, a dog that no one else wanted because he was deaf, blind, and had only three legs, and he repaid her for saving his life by saving her life and that of her baby. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11...

Thanksgiving and Tristan and Lionheart

Here is today's Facebook Note.

I want to thank everyone again for your kindness and empathy over Tristan's death. It meant a lot. I also want to wish all of my American readers a wonderful Thanksgiving. Lastly but definitely not least, my British publisher wanted me to alert my British and Australian readers that Lionheart will soon be available for sale in its paperback format, the pub date being January 3rd. Here is a link to the Amazon.com.uk page. Speaking as an utterly unbiased observer, of course, I think the Macmillan cover rocks! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lionheart-Sha...

Tristan

I know that many of you took a personal interest in Tristan, following his pilgrimage up the coast from Florida to his new home and new life in the Jersey Pine Barrens after I adopted him from Echo White German Shepherd Rescue last year, and I am very sorry that I do not have good news to report. Tristan and I lost his fight on Friday. For the past two weeks, he’d been in considerable pain from what we thought was a flare up of his arthritis. My vet was treating him with acupuncture, chiropractic, and laser therapy, with high doses of pain meds and Rimadyl. He seemed to be getting better, but then Tuesday evening he lost control of his hind legs, and an X-Ray revealed disc damage in addition to severe arthritis of the spine. My doctor friend John had already diagnosed it as a collapse of his spinal canal, an impressive feat since John lives in England. As a last ditch effort, my vet tried high doses of steroids to ease the swelling that was causing the semi-paralysis. But it did not help very much; he was reluctant to eat, losing control of his bladder, and the vet said he’d never be able to go on the walks that were his chief joy in life, even more than his favorite foods. I waited too long to make the decision with my shepherd Cody and swore I’d not do that again. But it is still very hard. This is the fourth time I’ve had to do this in the last two and a half years, which is four times too many. At least with Cody, whom I wrote about on my blog, and with Chelsea, my poodle who suffered kidney failure, I knew what was coming and there was time to steel myself to losing them. But with my sweet Shadow and Tris, I was blindsided. I knew when I adopted Tristan that I’d not have that much time with an older dog, but I really thought we’d have more than twenty months. However much it hurts now, I am still grateful that he had those twenty months, the first time that he had a real home and learned what it was like to be a loved family pet.

The King's Mistress

I am sorry I was not on-line yesterday, but my shepherd, Tristan, is very ill and it is not looking good for him. Please send him some positive vibes, as I fear we’ll both be needing them. I did do a Today in History post on Tuesday before Tristan’s crisis, so I am posting it today.
November 14, 1687 is the death date for one of my favorite historical figures, Restoration actress and long-time mistress of Charles II, Nell Gwynn. Charles was obviously very attached to Nell, for their liaison lasted from 1668 until his death in 1685. They had two sons, one of whom died young; the older boy was made a duke by Charles, who was always generous to his mistresses and illegitimate children. Nell was said to be pretty, charming, and witty. Her most quoted quip came when her carriage was stopped by a mob who thought it contained Charles’s unpopular, aristocratic French mistress, who was Catholic at a time when Catholicism was a trigger point in English society. Not at all daunted by the turmoil, Nell stuck her head out the carriage window and called out, “Good people, I am the Protestant whore!” On his deathbed, Charles famously told his brother James, “Let not poor Nelly starve.” James was not the most admirable of men, but he did honor Charles’s request, paying Nell’s debts and giving her a pension. Sadly, she survived Charles by only two years. She suffered a stroke in March of 1687 and had several others that incapacitated her before her death on November 14th of that year; her most recent biographer thinks she’d contracted syphilis. . She was only thirty-seven. Not surprisingly, she has been popular with Hollywood and writers over the years. I highly recommend Exit the Actress by Priya Parmar, a very well researched and highly enjoyable account of Nell’s life. I was glad when Priya did not take the readers to Nell’s deathbed; I would rather think of her in her prime, bedazzling audiences and the king.