Thoughts on The Sunne in Splendour

Today's Facebook Note, which began as a comment in yesterday's Goodreads Note.

I did not have anything to post today, another one of those blank dates on the medieval calendar. But yesterday I’d posted something about Sunne on my Goodreads page in response to a reader’s comment and a friend who saw it suggested I post it here, too. Since I have nothing else to write about, here it is, slightly expanded.
I've reached the point in the Sunne galley proofs where Richard and Edward are in exile in Bruges, and it brought back some nice memories of my time in that lovely city, sometimes called the Venice of the North. I remember admiring the magnificent Gruthuuse Museum, which was the town house where Edward and Richard stayed, thinking it must have seemed ironic to them that they were living in such luxury with no money to pay their rapidly mounting debts. I originally had a scene in Sunne in which Richard and his friend Rob Percy raced each other to the top of the Belfort, and I climbed myself to the very top so I could experience it; too. I didn't run up the stairs like they did, not being 18 and not being crazy. But it was quite a climb even at my snail's pace, and the view of the red roofs and sun-silvered canals was spectacular. So of course we ended up deleting that scene before the book was published!
Writers often do daft things like this. I started to write about some of them, but then decided to save those stories for a blog sometime. It is strange to be rereading Sunne after so long, for it has been years. What struck me anew was the burden of responsibilities that Richard shouldered for his brother at such a young age. I am accustomed to my medieval men growing up fast. Henry invaded England at age fourteen, after all, and Llywelyn Fawr was the same age when he launched his rebellion to overthrow his uncle. Richard and Geoffrey gained experience in war while still in their teens. But Richard’s duties were greater and more daunting, for they involved the exercise of real power. At seventeen, he was Lord High Constable of England, Chief Justice of North Wales, Chief Steward, Approver and Surveyor of all Wales, Chief Justice and Chamberlain of South Wales. Obviously he had men to advise him, but they were not empty titles.
It is hard for us to imagine entrusting such authority to a teenager. But then Edward had rescued his family’s plummeting fortunes and claimed the crown of England after winning the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil while still a month from his nineteenth birthday. So it is not surprising, I suppose, that he would also entrust his youngest brother with an even greater honor, the command of the vanguard when they met Warwick on Barnet Heath. And as we know, Richard justified the faith Edward placed in him—just as those other precocious youngsters went on to greater fame, Henry as a great king, Geoffrey as a highly competent duke, Richard as one of the best battle commanders of the MA, and Llywelyn as the first true Prince of Wales even if he did not actually claim that title. I feel very lucky to have found such remarkable men to write about, even luckier that they so often had equally remarkable women at their sides!