Why I love writing about the Angevins

One reason why I so loved writing about the Angevins is that they had such improbable, dramatic lives, and writers are addicted to high drama. Just think of Henry and Eleanor’s marriage. Or those rumors that Henry had seduced his son’s betrothed. Or Eleanor’s rebellion. Or Joanna’s imprisonment, John’s treachery, Geoffrey’s tournament death. As for Coeur de Lion, his entire life was summed up by that great Johnny Cash song, “Partly truth and partly fiction.” What writer would have dared to invent the events of May 6, 1191 out of whole cloth? Not me! After Richard’s fleet was scattered in a storm, Joanna and Berengaria’s ship eventually ran aground off the coast of Cyprus, and they were soon in peril, not from the sea, but from the self-proclaimed emperor of the island, Isaac Comnenus, who saw them as valuable hostages.
Lionheart, page 218
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Their fifth morning at Cyprus dawned in a sunrise of breathtaking beauty, pale gold along the horizon, and a rich, deep red above as clouds drifted into the sun’s flaming path; for a timeless moment, it looked as if the earth itself were afire. Then as if by magical sleight of hand, the vivid colors disappeared and the sky took on the same brilliant blue as the foam-crested waves below, the clouds now gliding along like fleecy white swans in a celestial sea. Enticing scents wafted out into the bay, the fragrances of flowers and oranges and sandalwood, the sweet balm of land, almost irresistible to people trapped in seagoing gaols, ships they’d come to hate for the fetid smells and lack of privacy and constant rolling and pitching, even at anchor. This Sunday gave promise of being a day of surpassing loveliness and Joanna hated it, caught up in a sense of foreboding so strong that she could almost taste it. Something terrible was going to happen today.
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She was right. Isaac’s attempts to entice them ashore having failed, he issued an ultimatum, that if they did not agree to accept his “hospitality,” he would have them taken off the ship by force. Joanna managed to buy them a little more time, promising to come ashore on the morrow. One of the chroniclers who accompanied Richard on crusade describes Joanna and Berengaria as gazing out to sea, despairing, when two sails were spotted to the west. Not yet daring to hope, the ship’s passengers crowded to the gunwale to watch the approaching two ships.
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Page 221
It happened with such suddenness that men were not sure at first if they could trust their senses. There was nothing to the west but sea and sky and those two ships tacking against the wind. And then the horizon was filled with sails, stretching as far as the eye could see. A moment of stunned disbelief gave way almost at once to pandemonium, and for the rest of their lives, there would be men who vowed they’d never experienced an emotion as overwhelming as the joy of deliverance on a May Sunday off the coast of Cyprus.
The sharp-eyed sailors spotted it first. “The Sea-Cleaver! The king’s galley!” But Richard’s women needed to see it for themselves, scarcely breathing until it came into focus, looking like a Norse long-ship, its hull as red as the sunset, its sails catching the wind, and streaming from its masthead the banner emblazoned with the royal lion of England.
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So many of the scenes I’ve written over the years cried out for an Author’s Note, an assurance to my readers that I had not gone hopelessly Hollywood on them, that what I’d described actually happened. The fog at Barnet. The mistake by the Earl of Oxford in attacking John Neville’s men. The Earl of Somerset taking such bloody vengeance upon Wenlock, the man he thought betrayed them to York. A savage storm breaking over the field at Evesham at the moment of Simon de Montfort’s death. The eclipse of the sun as Anne Neville died. The capture of Ellen de Montfort by pirates in the pay of the English king. But few scenes needed an Author’s Note mention as much as Richard’s eleventh hour rescue of his sister and betrothed on May 6th, 1191.