Caroline asked Sharon Kay Penman:

I've been diving headfirst into genealogy recently and have discovered I am the great (many greats) granddaughter of Llewellyn the Great through his daughter Gwladys, and quite separately also of King John through Henry III - and now I am revisiting your wonderful books with quite a different perspective. Have you ever traced your own ancestry and are there any historical figures you discovered?

Sharon Kay Penman Congratulations, Caroline! What an amazing family tree you have. I would give a lot (a lot!) to be able to claim Llywelyn Fawr as one of my ancestors. I have never researched my family tree, but we are mainly Irish, English, Welsh, and Scots. Penman is a Celtic name and I found its equivalent in several Celtic languages. You probably know, then, that historians have changed their opinions about Llywelyn's children. When I researched Dragons so many years ago, it was believed that Joanna and Llywelyn were the parents only of Elen and Davydd. Now it is thought that a few more of Llywelyn's daughters may have been Joanna's, too, and Gwladys is one of them. If they are right, and I suspect they are, it seems a shame that i cannot time travel back to rewrite some of the scenes in Dragons! But this is what I love about history--how fluid it is and so surprising. It puts me in mind of an incoming wave; we never know what will be revealed on the sand as the wave retreats.

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