Richard gave it. “Let’s war.”
This novel went through many, many changes over the years, but this prologue has remained almost entirely intact from the very beginning.
Before I wrote this novel, this story was a theatrical play that I wrote and produced, which I then chose to expand into a novel. Part of that expansion was to do a lot more historical research, and learning the truth about King Richard made this prologue an obvious choice.
I think most people instinctively think King Richard was a pretty good king. After all, he's called the Lionheart! And almost every Robin Hood story involves him coming home at the end and magically saving the day. But in reality, he was a truly awful king. He sold everything he could to fund his war, he barely spoke English, and he spent almost no time in England at all.
Starting this novel off with a chapter that reveals him to be a petty, vindictive, arrogant coward was the exact message that I wanted for the whole book, which is: don't believe the stories you've heard, good people can have flaws and bad people can have merit. And this is *not* the Robin Hood story you have come to expect.
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