Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 144
August 1, 2012
Jaffa, Mirebeau, and Kenilworth
On August 1, 1192, King Richard Lionheart came to the rescue of the city of Jaffa, under siege by the forces of Saladin. He scored a very unlikely victory, regaining control of the city, and three days later won an even more improbable victory when he managed to hold off a much larger Saracen army in a surprise dawn attack. An eminent military historian, men not usually given to hyperbole, described the battles of Jaffa as when Richard “rode into immortality.” It was also at Jaffa that he burnished the Lionheart legend even brighter by riding out alone to challenge the Saracen army once it was obvious that he’d won the day. This sounds so “Hollywood” that I would not have believed it had it not come from two of the Saracen chroniclers, one of whom was a participant in the battle and was mortified that none had dared to accept Richard’s challenge.
And on August 1, 1202, Richard’s brother John scored his greatest military victory. His mother Eleanor was trapped at Mirebeau Castle, under siege by her own grandson, Arthur of Brittany. She got word to John and he raced to the rescue, arriving in time to save his mother and take his enemies by surprise, capturing them all, including Arthur. John was no coward, despite the nasty nickname his foes bestowed upon him—John Soft-sword. Richard was a difficult act to follow, after all. If he did not have his brother’s military genius, few did. But John’s reign saw one major defeat after another, with only one golden military moment—his triumph at Mirebeau. Sadly, he tarnished it afterward by the merciless way he dealt with his enemies. His nephew Arthur was sent to an Angevin dungeon, never to be seen alive again; John’s contemporaries were sure that he had Arthur killed, as are historians. It is not as well known that he also exacted an awful vengeance upon some of the knights and lords taken prisoner with Arthur, starving them to death, including a major character in Lionheart. John was intelligent, capable, and had the potential to be a good king—had he not been so crippled by insecurities that made it impossible for him to trust others and which, in turn, made it im-possible for them to trust him. For whatever reasons, he seems to have been the most damaged of the Devil’s Brood.
And on August 1, 1265, Simon de Montfort’s son and namesake (my Bran in Falls the Shadow to avoid the madness of having to deal with two Simons) was attacked by his cousin Edward as his men took their ease at Kenilworth Castle, swimming in the lake and enjoying the company of the prostitutes that flocked to medieval armies. Edward had been warned of Bran’s carelessness by a spy (a female one!) and staged a rare night march to take Bran by surprise. He then raced back to Evesham to spring his trap against Bran’s father Simon. Bran eventually gathered his scattered forces and set out in pursuit, arriving at the battlefield in time to see his father’s head on a pike—which no novelist would have dared to invent had it not actually happened. Bran was struck a fatal blow at Evesham, too, for he was unable to live with the guilt that consumed him, blaming himself for the deaths of his father and brother, and his life after Evesham was a slow, sad spiral down into the dark.
Also on August 1st, the French king, Louis VI, died in 1137. Known as Louis le Gros (the Fat) Lousi died just days after his son and heir, the future Louis VII, had wed the young heiress, Eleanor of Aquitaine, at Bordeaux.
And on August 1, 1415, King Henry V was blessed by fortune when a plot against him unraveled at the eleventh hour. Sometimes called the Southampton Conspiracy, it was led by his cousin, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, with the intent of assassinating Henry and replacing him on the throne with Richard’s brother-in-law, Edmund, Earl of March. Edmund, a frail reed, lost his nerve, though, and revealed the plot to Henry. The Earl of Cambridge paid the ultimate penalty—beheading. He was the father of Richard, the future Duke of York, and thus the grandfather of “my” Yorkist kings Edward IV and Richard III.
July 31, 2012
Gore Vidal
The Physician
Teh Alhambra Decree
On July 31st, 1492, Queen Isabella of Castile and her husband Ferdinand of Aragon implemented the Alhambra Decree, also known as the Edict of Expulsion, ordering all the Jews in Spain to convert to Catholicism or go into exile. If they did neither, the penalty was death. Historians cannot agree how many people were forced to leave their homes; the estimates range from 130,000 to 800,000. About half of the exiles took refuge in Portugal, where I hope they were able to rebuild their shattered lives. Anti-Semitism was truly the ugly underside of medieval life. C.W. Gortner has a new novel out, The Queen’s Vow, about Isabella. I have not been able to read it yet, thanks to my killer deadline for A King’s Ransom, but I will be very curious to see how he portrays the controversial Isabella, who is a minor character in his intriguing novel about Isabella and Ferdinand’s daughter, The Last Queen, which is the story of Juana la Loca, sister of Katherine of Aragon. It was not always easy to be a highborn pawn in the MA, and Juana’s story is a sad one.
On a happier note, one of my British Facebook friends, Paula Lofting, has a novel out, The Sons of the Wolf, set in 1054 England, during the reign of the Saxon king Edward. I haven’t been able to read it yet, being in thrall to the looming deadline for A King’s Ransom, but I did read a sample chapter on my Kindle and it definitely held my interest, so it is now on that towering skyscraper pile of books TBR. Here is the Url to Amazon so anyone interested can check it out. It is available on Amazon.co.uk, too, of course. http://www.amazon.com/Sons-Wolf-Paula...
July 30, 2012
My favorite non-medieval king
Also, one of my Facebook friends from the UK has just had a novel published about 11th century England called Sons of the Wolf; I haven’t had a chance to read it, thanks to my killer deadline for A King’s Ransom, but it sounds interesting, so I am sharing the news with my fellow book lovers. http://www.amazon.com/Sons-Wolf-Paula... One of my all-time favorite bumper stickers says simply, “So many books, so little time.”
Okay, below is my Birthday Card to the Merry Monarch; I think that’s what they called Charles?
“I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend, even if it was not a bank holiday after all in the UK. I had to work, but it was worth it, for I got to save the city of Rouen from the French army. Okay, I had a little help from the Earl of Leicester.
On May 29, 1453, the city of Constantinople fell to the Turks, thus ending the Byzantine Empire, which had originally been the eastern portion of the Roman Empire. In Lionheart, I called it the empire of the Greeks, for the term Byzantine did not come into vogue until much later.
And on May 29, 1630, the future King Charles II was born. Charles was to receive what may be one of history’s best birthday gifts, for after having to flee and spend years in exile, he returned to claim the throne and was crowned on May 29, 1660, his 30th birthday. I realize Charles does not fit into our medieval time span, but I always had a soft spot for him. He was not cruel or spiteful and he had a wonderful sense of humor; I’ll forgive a man much if he can make me laugh. I think I fell under Charles’s spell when I was very young, first when I read Forever Amber (hiding it under the covers so my mother wouldn’t find out) and later when I came across a sardonic poem by John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, which went as follows:
“Here lies our sovereign lord the king
Whose word no man relies on.
He never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.”
Can’t you imagine the reaction of Henry VIII had Thomas Wyatt dared to pen a poem like that about him? Charles, bless him, merely riposted: “That is true, for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers.”
How could you not like that man? The snarky Earl of Rochester led what may politely be called a turbulent life, dying at thirty-three of what was likely syphilis and alcoholism, although his story would be deemed worthy of a film starring Johnny Depp, The Libertine. But Charles was not left out in the cold by Hollywood; he stars in The Last King, in which he is played by Rupert Sewell. And for an excellent novel about Charles and his favorite mistress, the actress Nell Gwyn, I recommend Priya Parmar’s Exit the Actress. “
July 29, 2012
Goodreads and Me
It occurred to me that I can also interact with readers on Goodreads by sharing some of my Facebook posts. I do a lot of “Today in history” entries that my Facebook readers seem to like. So I thought I’d start off by sharing my Facebook post for today, July 29th.
You know how in those horror films you want to scream out to the teenagers, “For God’s sake, do not go down into the basement!” Well, something happened on July 29th, 1565 that elicits the same response. On this date, Mary Stuart married Lord Darnley. I am not even a fan of Mary’s and yet I want so much to stop her! I always thought this disastrous marriage was the handiwork of the fiendishly clever Elizabeth; I really believe she deliberately sent the handsome but vacuous Darnley to Mary’s court after first insulting Mary by offering her Robert Dudley as a husband, knowing Mary would take the bait. Her plan succeeded beyond her wildest expectations, for less than two years later, Darnley had been murdered and Mary was in free fall, taking her first steps along the road that would eventually lead to Fotheringhay Castle.
On a more cheerful note, July 28, 1166 was the birthdate of one of my favorite characters in Lionheart, Richard’s nephew Henri, Count of Champagne. I very much hope that Henri will get much more time on center stage in my next book.
July 26, 2012
E-Books!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Sunne-in-...
July 22, 2012
Missing blogs
July 16, 2012
ANOTHER BOOK GIVEAWAY
I recently received some very good news from my British
publisher, Macmillan. They have
expedited their schedule for my British e-books and we now have a tentative
date of July 26th for the release of The Sunne in Splendour, Here Be
Dragons, Falls the Shadow, and The Reckoning.
To say I’m over the moon about this is a typical British
understatement. And yes, I do expect
that When Christ and His Saints Slept and Time and Chance will be available as
e-books, too, before the year’s end.
Since Macmillan has already published Lionheart in the e-book format and
Penguin released Devil’s Brood as an e-book several years ago, that will mean
that all of my historical sagas will finally be available as e-books to my
readers in the UK and Down Under. I am
afraid Justin de Quincy and company are still wandering in the wilderness, but
I hope I’ll eventually be able to send out a search party for him. And now that The Queen’s Man was released as
an e-book in the US this past spring, at least all four mysteries are now
available on this side of the Atlantic.
I got to
see Macmillan’s jacket for the paperback edition of Lionheart, which will be
published in early January. I really
like it, and will try to get Melusine to let me add the photo to this
blog. Ballantine has come up with a
striking jacket for the American paperback edition of Lionheart, too, which
will be out on December 26th of this year; I wish I could include it
here, but it was among all the e-mails
that Melusine dispatched to computer limbo last month. The curious can see it, though, on
Amazon.com, as it is already available for pre-orders. I am very happy with all four of the book
jackets for Lionheart and I haven’t always been able to say that in the
past. So to celebrate, I am giving
away a signed copy of one of my books.
Anyone who posts a comment on this blog will be in the drawing, and the
winner can choose between a hardback copy of Lionheart, Devil’s Brood, Time and
Chance, or The Reckoning. If you already
have copies of these books, you can always give it away to a friend,
right? I think giving copies of my
books as gifts would be a wonderful custom to establish and ought to be
encouraged whenever possible.
I continue
to spend all of my waking hours (at least it feels that way) working on A
King’s Ransom. To reassure you that I am exercising due
diligence to meet the deadline, I am going to conclude with a few passages from
A King’s Ransom. The first one occurs
in Chapter Two, when Richard and his men are caught in a savage winter storm on
their way home from the Holy Land.
* *
*
The ship
shuddered, like an animal in its death throes.
Its prow was pointing skyward, so steep was the wave, and the men
desperately braced themselves, knowing the worst was to come. The galley was engulfed, white water breaking
over both sides, flooding the deck. And
then it was going down, plunging into the trough, and there was nothing in
their world but seething, surging water.
Richard heard terrified cries of “Jesu!” and “Holy Mother!” Beside him, Arne was whimpering in
German. The bow was completely submerged
and Richard was sure that the Sea-Wolf was doomed, heading for the bottom of
the Adriatic Sea.
“Lord God,
I entreat Thee to save us, Thy servants!”
Richard’s voice rose above the roar of the storm, for he was used to
shouting commands on the battlefield.
“Let us reach a safe harbor and I pledge one hundred thousand ducats to
build for Thee a church wherever we come ashore! Do not let men who’ve taken the cross die at
sea and be denied Christian burial!”
* *
*
His prayer
would be answered and for centuries to come, the city-state of Ragusa, today’s
Dubrovnik, would hold the memory of the English king called Lionheart in high
esteem, as the vast amount he pledged was used to rebuild their cathedral.
The second
passage occurs in Chapter Eight. Eleanor
has been living every mother’s worst nightmare for weeks, not knowing her
missing son’s fate. On this rainy
January night in 1193, she learns from his cousin Andre de Chauvigny that
Richard is still alive but a prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor. She takes the news hard, of course.
* *
*
His mouth
contorting, Andre said bitterly, “That craven swine on the French throne means
to put in his own bid for Richard, and if he does…”
There was
no need to finish the sentence, for Eleanor understood the consequences fully
as well as he did. She was sitting up
straight now, no longer slumped back in the chair as if her bones could not
bear her weight, and he saw that color was slowly returning to her cheeks; that
sickly white pallor was gone. As he
watched, it seemed to him that she was willing her body to recover, finding
strength from some inner source that defied her advancing years, and he felt a
surge of relief. It had shaken him to
see her looking so fragile, so vulnerable, so old. She was on her feet now, beginning to pace as
she absorbed the impact of the emperor’s letter, and when she turned to face
Andre, he saw that her hazel eyes had taken on a greenish, cat-like glitter,
reflecting nothing at that moment but a fierce, unforgiving rage.
“They will
not get away with this,” she said, making that simple sentence a declaration of
war. “We shall secure my son’s freedom, no
matter what it takes. And we will
protect his kingdom until he can be restored to us, Andre.”
* *
*
And of
course she did. The ransom demanded was
a staggering sum, estimated to be the equivalent of several trillion
dollars. If not for Eleanor’s steely
determination, men might have been reluctant to defy John, who would be king if
Richard died in a German or French prison, which seemed very likely. But as I have Richard’s chancellor, Guillaume
Longchamp, thinking later as he watches the queen mother in action, “King
Richard had been blessed by the Almighty in many ways, but above all in the
woman who’d given him life.” She would
prove to be a match for all of her son’s enemies. Such a pity that Henry couldn’t have seen
what Richard did and made use of Eleanor’s formidable intelligence and
finely-honed political skills. If he’d
done so, maybe we could have written a happier ending to their turbulent
marriage.
But that is
another one of those fascinating, frustrating What Ifs that we like to
speculate about. I’ll probably keep this
blog up for a few weeks so that there will be plenty of time to enter the book
drawing. Now…back to the 12th
century and Rome, where Joanna and Berengaria have been stranded for fear of
Heinrich.
July 16, 2012
June 27, 2012
Q & A WITH C.W. GORTNER
I am delighted to offer this interview with a rising star of
historical fiction, C. W. Gortner. I am sure many of you have read his novels The
Last Queen and The Confessions of Catherine de Medici., both of which I enjoyed
very much. His latest novel is THE
QUEEN’S VOW, about the tumultuous rise to power and early reign of Isabella of
Castile. Born and raised in southern Spain, C.W. has been fascinated since
childhood by the legend, and contradictions, of this legendary queen who sent
Columbus to America. In our Q&A today, we talk about his passion for
powerful women in history, his views on writing historical fiction, and he
shares a special animal rescue story.
1) Tell us about The
Queen’s Vow. How did you get the idea?
As mentioned, I grew
up in southern Spain, in a seaside town near the city of Malaga. There was a
ruined castle that had once belonged to Isabella of Castile near my house,
where I often played. Today, it has been fully restored but in my childhood it
was a ruin— a circle of battlements and towers, open to the sky, one in which I
could let my imagination run free. In school, I learned about Isabella, about how
she conquered Granada and united Spain, and sent Columbus across the sea. But
it wasn’t until years later that I realized how little I actually knew about
Isabella’s early years, about her struggle to become queen and assert her power
in a time when women rarely ruled.
I had depicted
Isabella’s later years and death in my first novel, The Last Queen, about her daughter, Juana. In that book, we meet Isabella upon the fall of Granada:
she is the strong, somber queen, devoted to her realm and, frankly, rather
forbidding. When I decided to write about Isabella in this novel, I wanted to
explore who she was before that momentous achievement; how she became the Isabella we think we know. Her love affair with
her husband Fernando of Aragón, for example, is a historical rarity; he was
forbidden to her, and her decision to marry him sparked a civil war. As with
most legendary figures, there’s far more to Isabella than we’ve been told. She
was both extraordinary and extraordinarily fallible, a product and exception of
her era.
2) Isabella is
strongly associated with the Inquisition. Can you talk about this?
There’s a lot of
controversy surrounding Isabella’s role in the Inquisition. I knew she’d
sanctioned its revival in Spain and used it against her subjects; I was interested
in understanding why she did it, rather than trying to exonerate her. I’m not
that invested in making my characters sympathetic; I do, however, want them to
be understandable, even when we don’t agree with them. There is no excuse for
the Inquisition, but to my surprise I discovered that Isabella’s decisions
surrounding it were more complex than popular history depicts. She wasn’t
innately cruel – in fact, she detested bull fighting, for example, and forbade corridas held in her honor – and the
documentation from the era proves that she delayed implementing the Inquisition
for several years, despite the urging of councilors and her husband.
Nevertheless, that said, Isabella took her faith and any threat to it very
seriously.
It’s tough to be a
writer of historical fiction when faced with issues of religious
intolerance, cruelty to animals, any kind of persecution. I’m a very liberal
man. I can honestly say, I’m glad I was not born in the 16th century,
which is an era defined as much by its injustice as its glamour. Yet I can’t
write about a Renaissance queen, or indeed a Renaissance person, and ignore
these unsavory traits, because in their world, faith in particular was a
life-and-death issue. They sincerely believed in heresy and the damnation or
salvation of the soul based on how one worshipped. While it was challenging at
times for me to get inside Isabella’s skin and view the world as she did, I
also think that we’re not all that different today. We need only look to
fundamentalist churches that condemn gay people and women’s rights, among other
things, to understand that as much as we may change, much also, sadly, remains
the same.
3) What kind of research did you do to get inside Isabella’s
skin?
As with all my books,
the research began several years before I actually started writing. I read
as many biographies and books about the era as I could, as well as extant
documentation from the era that was available to me. I also took several trips
to Spain, including one in which I followed in Isabella’s footsteps from
Seville to Granada, site of her most famous triumph. The alcazar of Segovia,
though much transformed over the years, carries a strong echo of Isabella’s
early trials; as does the walled city of Avila and several other sites in
Castile. I read her letters and that of her contemporaries, as well as
ambassadorial accounts of her court. Isabella has left very little in her own
hand that reveals her inner thoughts— she was private, not given to public
displays of her feelings—but careful examination of what does exist, together
with the aforementioned documentation and her actions during her lifetime,
offered the framework that I used to create the flesh-and-blood woman she may
have been.
4) Now, tell us about your new cats, My Boy and Mommy. How
did they come into your life?
My Boy and Mommy are son and mother; I’d been feeding them for over 4 years in the park where I walk
with my dog, Paris. I first spotted Mommy as she streaked past me in the
undergrowth one morning; she was very feral and had just had a litter of
kittens. The kittens were fascinated by Paris, who isn’t aggressive, so I
decided to trap them. I got all of them but Boy, who eluded the trap for
months. The kittens were all adopted through the SPCA; I then turned my
attention to trapping Mommy and Boy, with the help of a lady who feeds more
than 12 feral cats in the area. By the time we ended up getting them, both
Mommy and Boy had bonded with me. At the advice of the feral cat program,
however, after they were spayed / neutered, we re-released them in the park,
with the caveat that we’d continue to care for them. But in February of this year, Boy showed up
to his daily feeding with an injured paw. He’d either been attacked by a coyote
or dog. Coyotes have been sighted in the park more of late, but people, too,
were very disrespectful about leashing their dogs in the cats’ area: they acted
as if they had the right to let the dogs chase the cats, which of course only
adds to a feral cat’s stress. That day when I arrived with the food, Boy was
limping. He sat at my feet, as if to say he needed help. It was raining, too,
and I knew that if I left him to fend for himself, a dog might get to him. I’d
rigged up shelters under the walkway where the cats ate but between dogs and
raccoons knocking the shelters over, exposure to the elements, and the cats’
bond with me, I was finding it increasingly difficult for me to leave them. I
put Boy in a carrier and took him to the vet. He needed stitches; they told me
we’d have to keep him confined for a week while he healed, so my partner and I
decided to bring him and Mommy home, to see how they’d fare. You never know
with ferals, we were warned: most can’t adjust to being pets.
It’s been almost
four months now, and so far, so good. The cats have settled in; they seem very
happy, with the run of the upstairs spare bedroom. They love belly rubs and
kisses. Paris was a little miffed that she must now share her home but she’s
adjusting, too. She’s gentle, and I’m sure it’ll work out in time.
Thank you so much for having me, Sharon. I’m a great fan of
yours and I sincerely hope your readers enjoy THE QUEEN’S VOW. I’m always
available to chat with book groups via Skype or speaker phone; to learn more
about me and my work, please visit me at: www.cwgortner.com
Thank you,
Christopher, for this fascinating and insightful interview. You very eloquently addressed a problem that
historical novelists often face; we live in an age in which many of us consider
tolerance to be a virtue, and I am so glad of that. But that was not true in the Middle Ages,
where all people of faith were convinced theirs was the only true religion. Like you, I would not have wanted to live
back then, however much I enjoy writing about the medieval world. As an opinionated woman and a lapsed
Catholic, I probably would not have fared well.
I am looking forward to reading about your
Isabella, for I am sure you do her justice while staying true to the tenor of
her times. And thank you, too, for rescuing My Boy and
Mommy; it is a story sure to resonate with my readers. I know Paris is a rescue, too, and I also
know that you began rescuing animals in need back in your boyhood in
Spain. God’s creatures would have
happier lives if only we could clone people like you! I believe your next novel is going to be
about the enigmatic Lucrezia Borgia—I hope you’ll come back to talk about her,
too.
June 27, 2012
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