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