Eleven years
ago, I interviewed Elizabeth Chadwick and Sharon Kay Penman, as part
of a series of interviews for the online literary journal
BiblioBuffet. It’s about time I shared it with you. It’s long,
but worth it. Elizabeth Chadwick is, of course, a History Girl, and
I’d love to know what she thinks about these subjects, eleven years
on. I might ask her some day.
Gillian
A
chat with Sharon Kay Penman and Elizabeth Chadwick
It's
about time I introduced you to two of my favourite historical fiction
writers: Sharon Kay Penman and Elizabeth Chadwick and more than past
time that I asked them a few questions. They happen also to be two of
my favourite people.
I
will let them introduce themselves, as I have asked other writers in
other interviews. In this instance, however, I did threaten to invent
pasts for them. Neither of them trusted me
– and
they quite possibly have due cause. We've known each other (online)
for some years and they are far too well-acquainted with my sense of
humour. This proved just as well, since e-mail misbehaved and
computers misbehaved even more, and a whole bunch of stuff went wrong
during the interview process. Both writers were troupers, and
answered my questions come hell, high water or email failure. They
also provided me with bios, which is a great pity, because I had two
lovely invented histories I was going to present.
Born
in Bury, Lancashire in the UK, Elizabeth
Chadwick began her
story telling career aged three when she made up a tale about some
fairies on her handkerchief. Her first attempt at writing fiction
came when she was fifteen in response to falling head over heels for
a tall, dark, handsome knight on a children’s TV drama. Wanting her
story to feel as real as possible, she began researching the Middle
Ages and fell in love with the era too. She swiftly realised that
writing historical fiction was what she wanted for a career. It took
her another fifteen years to realise that dream but her first
published novel The
Wild Hunt, won a Betty
Trask Award, which was presented at Whitehall by HRH the Prince of
Wales – a somewhat different life experience from stacking
supermarket shelves, which is what Elizabeth had been doing to earn a
crust prior to publication. Her 19th novel To
Defy a King has just
been awarded the UK’s RNA Historical Fiction Prize 2011. Her 20th
novel Lady of the
English, about Empress
Matilda and Queen Adeliza of Louvain has recently been published, and
she has signed with her UK publisher Sphere to write three novels
about Eleanor of Aquitaine – which she hopes will not be a fairy
story!
Sharon
Kay Penman
was born in New York City and grew up in Atlantic City in its
pre-gambling days. She has a BA in History from the University of
Texas at Austin and, in her misspent youth, she also earned a JD
degree from Rutgers School of Law. She even practiced tax and
corporate law for several interminable years, which she considers
ample penance for sins past, present, and future. These days she is
fortunate enough to write full time. She has written eight historical
novels and four medieval mysteries, one of which was nominated for an
Edgar. She considers writing historical fiction to be the next best
thing to time travel and feels blessed to have the Angevins for
source material, for they are surely history’s most dysfunctional
family. She’d expected to close the book on the Angevins after
Devil’s
Brood,
the final volume in her trilogy about Henry II and Eleanor of
Aquitaine, but they had other ideas. So she has just finished
Lionheart,
the first of two books about the most famous of the "Devil’s
Brood," King Richard I, known to history and Hollywood as
Lionheart. She currently lives in New Jersey and naturally spends as
much time as she can in France, Wales, and England
Gillian:
This is a question I’ve wanted to ask both of you for a very long
time. Do you have favourite Medieval chronicles? Can you tell us
about them? How do you use them in your fiction?
Elizabeth
Chadwick:
Well it would have to be The
Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal
– a
family history I guess rather than a chronicle, but it does chronicle
events. There are several reasons for this.
1.
I'm interested in the Marshal anyway, so that makes it ever so
fascinating to be able to pick up a source that was so close to him,
often with eye witness reports.
2.
It's a darned good story well told. Okay, some of the tourney stuff
can get a bit wearing, but all the fascinating snippets about daily
secular life in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century England
and France are so hard to come by for a writer like me anywhere else.
Actually even the tourney stuff is interesting if you look at the
fine detail. There are puzzles I am still trying to work out
– like
how in hell's name do you grab an opponent's reins in the thick of
the fray without getting your wrist chopped off! There are all sorts
of little comments pertaining to the role and tradition of Marshal
that established historians have not picked up on yet. There are
wonderful small details
– references
to sparkling wine and ship's biscuits for example. Proverbs and
sayings. The whole gamut of secular life really. Also it brings it
home that while these are people with different mindsets and customs,
still some things never change. William being called 'Gaste Viand' in
his youth and being accused of always eating or sleeping, reminds me
so much of modern teenage boys!
3.
It's secular as mentioned above, so one gets all the joie de vivre of
daily life out in the open.
I
would add that it needs taking with a pinch of salt and reading with
other sources because it can rather over-egg its hero and gloss over
some of the rougher edges, but were I a scholar, I would spend hours
investigating it. It's a real garden entrance into the world
next door.
I
use it in fiction by picking up on the detail snippets to include
them. I pick up on the nuances of character and emotional responses
to situations. I pick on the colourful incidents and put my own mark
on them for a modern audience. I also use it to inform more research
which perhaps goes into the writing further down the line, or may
even get used in another novel.
Other
chronicles I like. Well I would say Gerald of Wales, but he is such a
liar and a poisoned little git, that while I enjoy the colour and
whimsy he brings to his writing, I really have to say caveat emptor,
especially when it comes to people. But he does tell an entertaining
story. He needs backing up from other sources in my opinion but when
he's being not too bitter, he has a sharp, observant eye. Sometimes
when he is being bitter you can pick up the background to the
negativity and it can lead to other avenues. So he's one I enjoy but
with extreme caution.
I
also like Richard FitzNigel's Dialogus
de Scaccario.
That's written in quite a witty, avuncular style that often seems a
lot more modern than the mid twelfth century. I am not sure I
understand all the points of the exchequer, especially the bits
about blanche farms, but he does his best to explain. I love the way
the piece opens with a bit of scene setting. He is “sitting at
a turret window overlooking the Thames.” Again, it's
painting a picture isn't it, so I guess that's what I like. It's also
probably the reason I really like FitzStephen's Description
of Norman London
and all the detail about Smithfield Horsefair and the cookshops, etc.
I wish that one had been twice as long. Other chronicles I tend to
find a bit dry and read them because I have to read them. There are
the occasional interesting pieces
– always
to do with detail and they always make me want to go away and find
out more. I must admit I would far rather rummage about in pipe rolls
and household accounts than I would in the lives of the saints and
which bishop had gone to Rome and what he did there. That's the part
of chroniclerism that bores me, personally.
Sharon
Kay Penman:
I’d have to say
that my current favorites are those chronicles that I used to
research and write Lionheart.
Roger de Hoveden and William of Newburgh are two of the most highly
regarded historians of the twelfth century. Roger was with Richard I
from the time the king sailed from Marseille in July, 1190 until
August, 1191, when Richard sent him from the Holy Land with urgent
messages about the departing French king. William of Newburgh never
left English soil, but he had an invaluable source in Philip of
Poitou, Richard’s own clerk, who’d been at his side during the
crusade and his subsequent captivity in Germany. But I also had
access to five chronicles written by men who’d witnessed many of
the events they were writing about—two Christian crusaders and
three contemporaries of the Sultan of Egypt, Salah al-Din, more
familiar to us as Saladin.
The
Estoire de la Guerre
Sainte, the History of
the Holy War, translated by Marianne Ailes, was written by one
Ambroise, who may have been a jongleur rather than a cleric, the
usual “suspects” where medieval chronicles are concerned; as
Elizabeth points out, secular sources are rather rare in the Middle
Ages. Ailes is dubious of the jongleur theory, but all we know for
sure is his name and that he was a Norman. The Itinerarium
Peregrinarum et Gesta Regis Ricardi,
The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, was translated by Helen
Nickolson; the author is believed to be Richard de Templo, prior of
the Augustinian House of the Holy Trinity in London. What is certain
is that both writers accompanied Richard on his crusade to recapture
Jerusalem from Saladin.
Of
the chronicles written from a Muslim perspective, Imad al-Din was
Saladin’s secretary and chancellor, Ibn al-Athir was a Kurd like
Saladin and served for a time in the sultan’s army, and Baha al-Din
was a member of the sultan’s inner circle. I found his book, The
Rare and Excellent History of Saladin,
translated by D. S. Richards, to be absolutely fascinating.
Being
able to draw upon these chronicles was a unique writing experience
for me. I’d never had such a wealth of eye-witness accounts. Baha
al-Din watches as Richard storms ashore on the beach at Jaffa,
vividly describing his red galley, red tunic, red hair, and red
banner. Ambroise tells us about the French king’s lost falcon at
the siege of Acre; Philippe offers a large reward for its return, and
is very disappointed to learn it was given, instead, to Saladin. The
Itinerarium
author tells us of the death of the French Marshal, Aubrey Clement,
who is killed when a ladder breaks under the weight of the soldiers
following him up onto the city walls of Acre, and he then relates how
Richard avenges the marshal’s death. Not fully recovered from the
mystery malady, Arnaldia, that nearly took his life, Richard has
himself carried out to the siege on a silken quilt, and when he sees
a Saracen wearing Aubrey Clement’s armor, he shoots the man in the
chest with a crossbow. Ibn al-Athir tells us about the Saracen slave
girl who delights Richard with her singing when the English king pays
a visit to Saladin’s brother, al-Adil. When Richard’s galleys
encounter a large Saracen ship attempting to run the blockade at
Acre, the subsequent sea battle is related in astonishing detail. We
experience the intense heat, we hear the incessant thudding of the
Saracen war drums, we feel the fear of the crusaders on the march to
Jaffa, and then the misery of Saladin’s men when they face a defeat
that “wounded Muslim hearts.” We learn about Saladin’s colic
attacks, Richard’s despair when he finds out that his brother John
is conniving with the French king to usurp his kingdom, the
unexpected friendships that Richard forms with some of Saladin’s
emirs. Both sides give us the names of Mamluks and knights struck
down in battle, thus conferring a bit of immortality upon men who’d
otherwise have been long forgotten.
The
immediacy of these eye-witness accounts is utterly riveting; they are
also uncommonly well-written. The only problem is that they’ve
spoiled me for future books, for I’ll never have such a
treasure-trove of research riches to plunder again! In a final word
about chronicles, I agree with Elizabeth. Some of them can indeed be
dry and dull; a few ought to come with warning labels that they are
coma-inducing. But chronicles still remain my favorite research
source. At once familiar and foreign, they offer us a tantalizing
glimpse into a bygone world. I still remember being taken aback by a
chronicler’s comments about the young daughter of Henry III and
Eleanor of Provence. She was deaf and mute and, after relating her
parents’ intense grief when she died at age three, the chronicler
then dismisses her as “pretty but useless,” a grim commentary
upon medieval attitudes toward disabilities. An indication of
prevailing beliefs about the binding nature of plight troths is the
snarky comment by Ralph de Devizes; he observes that when Richard I
sailed from Sicily for the Holy Land with his betrothed, Berengaria
“was probably still a virgin,” clearly expecting Richard to have
jumped the gun. Thanks to a chronicler, we know that when Richard’s
release from German captivity appeared imminent, the French king sent
his partner in crime, Richard’s brother John, a terse warning:
“Look to yourself; the Devil is loosed.” Again, thanks to a
chronicler, we have Richard’s sardonic response when told about
John’s plotting: “My brother is not the man to conquer a country
if there is anyone to offer the slightest resistance.” You just
know John never forgave him for that! Chroniclers give us the actual
words spoken in anger by Henry II and Thomas Becket and Henry’s sad
statement after the death of his rebellious elder son: “My son cost
me greatly, but I would that he’d lived to cost me more.” And it
seems fitting to end with the words spoken by Simon de Montfort as he
realized that he and his men had been trapped at Evesham by the army
of the future Edward I, for it is surely one of history’s more
memorable epitaphs: “We must commend our souls to God, for our
bodies are theirs.”
Gillian:
How
do you use these chronicles in your work? I’m thinking of specific
processes and techniques you might use to turn what the chronicles
give you into stories that come alive. For instance, some writers sit
down and do schedules of dates and structures of lives and make
themselves a technical apparatus so they can keep control of
everything. Some read the primary sources and dream vaguely of the
Middle Ages and then let their imaginations go wild. Some do an
active translation, stepping into the past using the research as a
firm foundation. What do you do? How do you turn history into story?
Elizabeth:
I read the
source as part of my general research reading and I don’t take
notes, but the full gist will sink into my awareness. Brighter
nuggets of information will stand out and I will use these later. I
suppose an analogy is like sorting through treasure. All the ordinary
gold and silver coins go into a nice big chest, where I can get them
out if I need them, but they’re mainly there in the background. The
brighter nuggets, the best bits, I will take away with me to craft
into an object to show people. Some of these may end up in a chest
too for later use. It’s always good to have a surplus and no
research is ever wasted.
The
background treasure consists of things I don’t immediately need to
know for the story, but which inform me about the life and times and
thought processes of the people involved in it. I do evaluate what
goes into the background chest though. If I’m not certain of the
chronicler or the source, then it will go in a separate area in that
chest and be measured against what I know and what else I can find
out. A lot of the information from Gerald of Wales goes in the
divider pocket, for example, but he also supplies material to the
main treasure chest and also to the nugget items. It’s just a
matter of testing his statements against what I know from other
chronicles and sources. Even the dodgy statements have their own
worth. Why were they made? What were the thought processes behind
them? (e.g. Gerald moaning that Henry II was illiterate. That’s not
to be taken at face value, but comes from a time when Gerald was
thoroughly annoyed by Henry refusing to patronise his work). What
does it mean for my writing? How can I use it? Should I use it?
When
I was writing my story about John Marshal, I was faced with the
infamous anvils and hammers scene where John says of his hostage son
that he does not care if the opposition hangs little William because
he still had “les enclumes et
les marteals dunt forgereit de plus beals.” – “the anvils and
hammers to forge even finer ones.”
When
I read this as part of my earlier research into William Marshal, it
was immediately a bright nugget. I began to wonder what kind of man
would say such a thing about his own child – who went on to be such
a great man. This led me to further reading and expansion of my
sources. I read secondary books and articles, and I hunted down other
scanty but wide-ranging primary sources to find out more about John
Marshal. I found out where his house had been in twelfth century
Winchester and what he did with it. I found out what his duties were
at the Exchequer and what his role was at court and how he made his
money. I found out what land he owned and then I followed up what the
land was used for and what he did with it (e.g. giving some of it to
the Templars). I found out that “anvils and hammers” were symbols
belonging to the royal marshal as well as being euphemisms for the
regenerative organs. I discovered that tales of fathers emasculating
themselves to try and save their sons were a motif in the literature
of the time. So how much of the anvils and hammers incident was true
and how much was it a case of the writer having a bit of literary
fun? And if it was true (or the main thrust) then the Marshal family
must have been happy for it to appear in the Histoire
de Guillaume le Mareschal
because it was a paean to family ancestors, and John’s action must
have been viewed as a very ballsy act (if you’ll excuse the pun),
rather than the act of a callous indifferent father. I also use, as
Gillian knows, psychic sources, and I personally consider them to
have as much veracity as the primary resources. To me they ARE
primary resources but accessed in a different, unconventional way.
The John Marshal I discovered by such means was a complete
revelation, but never at any time did he buck the primary resource
history. He was totally a man of his time. I learned a lot when
writing that novel. (A
Place Beyond Courage).
To
get back to the point in hand, I take the primary sources garnered by
the usual means and by sorting and blending them with the Akashic
Records – as my consultant calls the psychic ones – I then begin
to form a story. Using the gem analogy, I craft a setting using my
imagination, that I hope has integrity and that is a fitting platform
to display the jewel at the centre.
So
basically, I take my resources, sort them into usefulness, take them
to my work table and use my story telling skills to put them in a
setting.
Sharon:
I
have never used the chronicles for inspiration or as sources for
story lines. One of the advantages of writing about people who really
lived and events that actually happened is that I always get to start
out with a road map; I never find myself staring at a blank computer
screen, wondering “What now?” The drawback is that often the road
map takes me places I’d rather not go! So I am definitely one of
those writers who makes “schedules of dates and structures of
lives,” using chapters as an outline.
For
as much as I love to read the chronicles, they are not always
reliable. The chroniclers often repeated stories that they’d heard,
yet those stories sometimes turn out to be no more than rumors. Baha
al-Din, a member of Saladin’s inner circle, reported that the
French king, Philippe Capet, died on his way home after abandoning
the crusade. But Philippe made it safely back to France, although it
is interesting to think how history would have been changed if Baha
al-Din had been right. A chronicler claimed that after the Welsh
prince, Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, defeated his uncle Davydd and took
power in Gwynedd, he had Davydd put to death. In actuality, Davydd
went into English exile. So it is better to approach the chronicles
with a healthy dose of skepticism.
We
also need to bear in mind that they often had “agendas” of their
own. A good example is the twelfth century churchman, Giraldus
Cambrensus. Embittered by his failure to gain the bishopric of St
David’s, Giraldus wielded his quill pen like a sword, doing
whatever he could to put the Angevins in the worst possible light, to
such an extent that the German historian Hans Eberhard Mayer once
described Giraldus’s writing as “always delightful to read but
often hard to believe.” Most chroniclers did not have such a sharp
axe to grind as Giraldus did, but they were rarely neutral. They were
Yorkists or Lancastrians, supported King Stephen or the Empress
Maude, reflected the animosity between the English and Welsh, the
English and French. And of course, as Elizabeth pointed out earlier,
secular writers were rare indeed. The great majority of chroniclers
were monks. So for them, God’s Hand was ever-present, and they
interpreted events through the prism of the Church’s teachings.
Some of them believed that Henry II’s wretched death at Chinon
Castle was his punishment for his role in Thomas Becket’s murder
and for his failure to fulfill his vow to go on crusade. And when
Richard Lionheart was captured and held hostage by the Duke of
Austria and the Holy Roman Emperor, a few chroniclers saw that as
divine retribution for his sin of fighting against his father.
And
yet the chronicles remain my favorite research sources. Some of them
provide invaluable information. Roger de Hoveden includes royal
letters and treaties. The murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury
Cathedral is one of the best-documented events of the Middle Ages,
thanks to the men who reported what they had seen or heard. And if I
may borrow Elizabeth’s very apt analogy, the chronicles can be
mined for nuggets of pure gold. There is a still-popular myth that
the fashion of riding side-saddle was introduced into England by
Richard II’s queen, Anne of Bohemia. But a chronicler hostile to
the Empress Maude gleefully described how she had to flee the siege
of Winchester riding astride like a man. If women always rode
astride, he would not have seen that as worth mentioning, or as
shameful. I knew that the term “Last Rites” was coined in the
twentieth century; it was not until I was researching Lionheart
that I learned twelfth century men called it the “Sacrament of the
Faithful.” And I can thank a chronicler for letting me know the
Mediterranean was also known as the Greek Sea.
And
where would historical novelists be without those chroniclers kind
enough to offer physical descriptions of the people we write about?
They told us that both Henry III and his son Edward I had a drooping
eyelid, that Edward had a lisp, but his speech was persuasive,
nonetheless. We know that Richard Lionheart was “tall, of elegant
build, the color of his hair between red and gold,” that his father
Henry was just above average height, with grey eyes and a ruddy
complexion. I was delighted to come upon Burchard of Ursperg’s
description of Richard’s nemesis, the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich
VI: “His face was pleasant, but very thin, and he was only
moderately tall with a slight and frail physique.” And I was
charmed by this vivid image of the Queen of Jerusalem, Isabella: “One
of the daughters of heaven, her face shining white, appearing like
the morning in the night of her very black hair.” All of the
chroniclers seem to have found Isabella very beautiful, but this
poetic praise is rather remarkable, for it comes from Imad al-Din
al-Isfahani, Saladin’s scribe! I just wish one of the chroniclers
had thought to mention the hair and eye color of the celebrated
beauty, Eleanor of Aquitaine.
So
while I would never attempt to build a factual foundation for a novel
upon the bones of medieval chroniclers, I cannot imagine writing a
novel without them, either. They breathe life into the process, and
are just as important as the Pipe Rolls, the Patent Rolls, those few
extant royal letters, etc. And as I said in my earlier answer, their
intriguing mix of the familiar and the foreign is often irresistible;
I will be reading pages that could come right out of any one of
today’s newspapers—complaints about bad roads, high prices,
corrupt sheriffs—and then suddenly mention will be made of a dragon
or green children found in Kent. At such times, I can only marvel
that I actually get paid to have so much fun!
Gillian:
Readers often have a clear idea of their favourite people from the
past. Some of them have clear views of their least favourite (sorry,
Sharon, Simon de Montfort is in this category for me). Quite
obviously, you can’t take this kind of thing into account when you
write. So what do you take into account? How do you develop your
sense of who a person was and how they lived and what choices they
made?
Elizabeth:
Your comment on reader
reaction.
I
disagree. You have to take reader notions into the room with you when
deciding what to write. For example, if I wrote a pro Henry V11 anti
Richard III novel, I’d be pushing my luck and would probably begin
receiving hate mail! So in the interests of career and
self-preservation, I wouldn’t go into the ring and tear down
cherished idols, especially when powerful novels have been written
about them. There’s room for wiggle with lesser people perceived as
heroes or villains by the general public. John Marshal for example.
Readers who think they know about him, believe him to be a crap
father and a madman – but when you look at the history, that
viewpoint bears challenging. Since no one else had told that story
and since he’s a kind of tributary in history rather than a marquee
figure, there was scope for me to make people think again about their
attitudes without getting too defensive. It’s also probably easier
to make a hero of a villain than a villain of a hero. Imagine casting
William Marshal as the bad guy. It wouldn’t work, would it?
Anyway,
once I’ve chosen who to write about, how do I develop who they are?
1.
I trawl the primary and sources and academic secondaries for
descriptions, hints and overviews. It’s driving me mad with Eleanor
of Aquitaine because the sources themselves are contradictory and
scantier than they might be, and the secondaries are very unreliable.
I digress. I get an overview sense of who they are by their actions,
by their attitudes towards others, and the attitudes of others
towards them, and by details of their daily life should any crop up.
I also study the people surrounding them and find out about
friendships (or hatreds),and what their affinities were. I study the
general culture of the time. If you’re going to study a fish in the
sea, you need to know its habitat and familiarities.
2.
Hugely important for me now – I then take what I’ve researched
above to the Akashic Records which will then throw up motive,
thought, feeling and every facet of personality from every angle and
inform me about the person’s mindset when they were involved in a
particular happening. I will put together what I have learned
conventionally with what I have learned from the non conventional
resource and see how the pieces gell, and then craft onwards from
there. So recently, for example, while researching Eleanor of
Aquitaine, I was looking at the personality of Abbot Suger of St.
Denis in relationship to the famous ‘Eleanor’ vase that Louis VII
gave him at the consecration of St. Denis. It had originally been a
wedding present from Eleanor to Louis. Some historians have wildly
speculated that Eleanor would have been furious that Louis had given
the gift away. Others have said that it was a peace offering and
given in the hopes that the couple might conceive a child. Others
have said that they can’t understand why such a drab object would
be so important. Reading around the subject, I discover that such
rock crystal vases are highly valuable and that despite suppositions,
there is no evidence anywhere that Eleanor threw a hissy fit about
her vase being given to Suger. In the Akashic Records, I got the
below about Suger’s relationship to the vase and his attitude to
beauty. From a recent session when I asked Alison, who delves into
the past for me, to look at Suger’s reaction when he first sees the
Eleanor vase.
“I
can see him looking at the vase, and I can see it as a vase, without
all the embellishment. I can see the light shining through it. It's
fantastic. Suger's eyebrows go up. It's kind of amazement and a very
smooth feeling inside. Suger isn't a very smooth person, he's always
got lots of deals going on inside. This calms it all down and smooths
it all out. I suppose it supersedes all that, it overlays all that.
It's the beauty of it, it clears everything else out. He has this
aesthetic ambition and I think this is what it is. It calms
everything down in him. He gets a sense of being at peace; he's not
at peace generally, that's not his nature, but being able to be
overwhelmed by something beautiful and magnificent allows him that
time of peace where he doesn't have to think.”
The
above to me, is a real insight into the man and what drove him. It
accords totally with my researches, and gives me a powerful platform
from which to build the character when writing.
Before
I used number 2 in my earlier works, I just had to rely on number 1
and decades of background research and hope for an understanding of
the medieval mindset.
Sharon:
It is true that many
of our readers do have strong feelings about the characters Elizabeth
and I write about. I imagine my favorable depiction of Richard III
came as a surprise to many. I still remember a letter I received from
a reader in which she said she was 300 pages into the book before it
all came together for her and she startled her sleeping husband by
suddenly crying out, “Oh, my God, this is the Richard III!” And I
do not doubt that readers will be surprised by the Richard they’ll
find in Lionheart,
for I was surprised myself to discover such a disconnect between the
man and the myth. Some of them may be loath to surrender their
preconceived notions, always a risk when we write of a controversial
figure like Richard. But that is an occupational hazard.
So
I have never attempted to “soften” or change a characterization
in order to make that person more appealing or sympathetic to
readers. That would be a lost cause even if I were not so
obsessive-compulsive about historical accuracy! Readers have minds of
their own and it is impossible to predict whom they will take to
their hearts and whom they will cast out into darkness. I’ve had
readers write to tell me that they cheered the Empress Maude on in
her doomed struggle for the English crown, and others who thought she
was too proud, too cold. Some—perhaps most—of my readers damned
Davydd ap Gruffydd for bringing about the Apocalypse that destroyed
Welsh independence, but there were also those who found him to be
devilishly charming. King John in my novel Here
Be Dragons betrayed
his dying father, betrayed the brother who was also a crusader king,
had his nephew killed, hanged a number of Welsh hostages, some of
them children, and starved to death the wife and son of a baron who’d
lost royal favor. Hardly a whitewash of John, then. Yet I’ve had
readers offer up a spirited defense of John, and when I asked them
why they were willing to give him the benefit of so many doubts, they
“blamed” me, saying that I’d made John very human and therefore
very sympathetic in Here
Be Dragons. So it
would take a Ouija board to predict how readers are going to react to
a particular character.
I
do feel, though, that readers need at least one character to root
for. In my novel, When
Christ and His Saints Slept,
I was not sure that readers would be able to embrace wholeheartedly
either the Empress Maude or her rival, King Stephen, for while they
both had many admirable qualities, they were often their own worst
enemies. So I deviated from prior practice and for the first time I
created a purely fictional character to fill that void, at least
until Maude’s son, the future Henry II, grew up and took center
stage. Since King Henry I was known to have had at least twenty
illegitimate children, I figured one more couldn’t hurt and gave
him Ranulf fitz Roy, who turned out to be a roaring success with my
readers, so much so that several told me they were disappointed to
read my Author’s Note and discover that he’d not actually lived.
How,
then, do I bring a long-dead king or queen or bishop to fictional
life? The advantage of writing about people in power is that their
lives were better documented; we can turn to sources like the Pipe
Rolls, Patent Rolls, Calendar of Inquisitions, the chronicles, even a
few rare extant letters. It is relatively easy where kings are
concerned, for the chroniclers tell us about their personalities as
well as their actions; we know about Henry II’s fiery temper,
John’s suspicious nature, Henry III’s indecisiveness, and Edward
IV’s love of the ladies. It is more of a challenge when we are
given only the bare outlines of a life, for then we must draw
conclusions from what they did and that is hardly an exact science.
Sometimes
I’ve had to reconcile behavior that seemed utterly contradictory,
as in the case of the son and namesake of Simon de Montfort—your
favorite, Gillian! Bran, nicknamed by me so I could avoid having to
write “Simon said to Simon,” is best known for two dramatic
episodes, one in which he saved a life and the other in which he took
a life. Because of his carelessness, he reached the battle of Evesham
after it was already over; the victory had gone to his cousin, the
future Edward I, and Bran arrived in time to see his father’s head
on a pike. Stunned and grief-stricken, he and his men retreated to
Kenilworth Castle, where the garrison reacted to the news with horror
and fear. Henry III’s brother was being held hostage at Kenilworth,
the perfect scapegoat, and the anguished men turned upon him. He was
mobbed and would have been beaten to death right there in the
castle’s bailey if not for Bran. He was in a state of shock, dazed
and disbelieving, and yet he came to Richard of Cornwall’s rescue,
stopped the others from killing an innocent man. Under the
circumstances, he deserves great credit for that. Yet five years
later, he joined his brother Guy in one of the most infamous crimes
of the Middle Ages; they burst into an Italian church during High
Mass and murdered Richard of Cornwall’s son as vengeance for the
dead of Evesham, the mutilation of their father’s body, the exile
of their mother and sister, murdered a man who had not even been at
Evesham. It is true that Guy was the instigator and Bran seems to
have been swept along in his wake. But he did take part in a killing
as brutal as it was illogical, a killing that would doom him. How to
explain it? Since I couldn’t lay the blame upon an evil twin, I had
to make my readers understand what had driven Bran to such madness. I
concluded that this was a man devastated by guilt, a man who blamed
himself for his father’s death, a man whose life since Evesham had
been a slow wine-soaked spiral down into the dark¸ and that was how
I explained that vast and tragic chasm separating his heroic action
at Kenilworth from that bloody day at Viterbo.
Gillian:
Finally,
tell us about five books you think we should read, and tell us why.
They can be your favourite books of all time, or ones that have
special meaning, or simply books that ought to inescapable for
entirely other reasons.
Elizabeth:
Ugh, you don’t ask
for much, do you – school essay time! I hate doing this.
Okay.
These are all novels that I have re-read and that have stayed with me
and made me think long after I’ve put them down. They’re also
very readable – in my opinion, which won’t be everyone’s!
Hanta
Yo
by Ruth Beebee Hill.
Because it’s so different to my life experience. Because whether
accurate or not, I don’t know, but it completely absorbed me in the
life of the Lakotah Sioux and it made me think about my own attitudes
to life, the world and everything.
Wyrd
Sisters
by Terry Pratchett.
Because everyone should read a good Terry Pratchett book. They are
not all good, but the ones that are wonderful will break your heart
with joy, wonder and grief. It takes a lot to make me laugh out loud,
but Wyrd Sisters does so as it reinvents the Cinderella story and has
great fun with various other fairy stories, myths and legends
(including vampires and zombies) along the way. Even if you are not
into Pratchett, you have to read this book for the character of
Greebo, who is quite possibly the greatest alpha male EVER written.
His main scene could teach romantic novelists everywhere a thing or
two about how in a few lines to encapsulate the ultimate in virile
masculinity. Beyond that, with my connections with other worldly
things, I can tell you that Pratchett walks the walk. He knows. Oh
boy does he know...
The
Lord of the Rings by
J. R. R. Tolkien.
Because fantasy doesn’t come more epic than this and it has been
the starting point for so many fantasy authors writing now. Even if
they say it stinks, they still had to have it in their psyche and
decide to do something different. At times you feel as if you’ve
been to Mount Doom and back ninety times yourself, but it’s a novel
with layers and it makes you keep on thinking long after you’ve put
it down.
The
Shining
by Stephen King.
Because I love
a well-told ghost/horror story and I am not easily scared. But King’s
The Shining
made me afraid to turn the pages at times. The build up, the
atmosphere is so tense, you’d jump if someone came into the room
behind you. I believe that King, if he wasn’t a genre author, would
by now be considered a classic. I’d give him the Booker prize.
The
Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver
– because it will surprise you. Who wants to read about
missionaries in the Belgian Congo in the 1960’s? I so thought I
didn’t, but a friend told me to read this one, and I was blown away
by the beauty of the prose and the depth of perception. It’s joined
my best novels hall of fame.
Sharon:
This
was actually the most challenging question, Gillian, for how could we
ever pare the list down to just five books? Elizabeth, kudos to you
for showing such self-discipline; I am going to cheat a bit by going
with six. Yours was a fascinating list, by the way; I’d read three
of your five, and am definitely going to read Wyrd
Sisters,
probably on my new Kindle which has become my favorite toy! Here are
my choices, not necessarily in any particular order:
1.
To
Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee; a brilliant book that shines a light into the darkest
corners of the human soul while showing us the best of human nature,
too. I read somewhere that Harper Lee modeled the character of
Atticus Finch upon her own father, and if so, she was blessed. This
is an unusual book in that it gave rise to an equally brilliant film
with Gregory Peck.
2.
Lonesome
Dove
by Larry McMurtry. This vivid, brutal, humorous, bloody account of
life in the American Old West was also brought to the screen
successfully in the form of a very good television mini-series, but I
always prefer the book to the film. It is a long book, and I remember
my mother asking me if they were ever going to get off the porch of
their Texas ranch and do something! I told her to hang in there, and
she admitted that once they started out on the cattle drive, it was
Fasten Your Seat Belt Time. It was very easy to explain why To
Kill a Mockingbird
topped my list. At first glance, Lonesome
Dove
seems to be a more surprising choice. But he created some truly
memorable characters, especially the Texas Ranger Gus McCrae, and
like George R.R. Martin’s amazing Ice and Fire series, McMurtry
makes the reader turn each page with trepidation, for we know that no
one is safe in McMurtry or Martin’s world!
3.
Jane
Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte. When I first read the Bronte sisters, I was
partial to Wuthering
Heights,
but as I grew older, I came to appreciate Jane
Eyre
as the better of the two books. For one thing, I cared about what
happened to Jane and Rochester. Has anyone truly been able to say
that about Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff?
4.
Catch
22
by Joseph Heller. This book seemed to embody life as we knew it in
the twentieth century and it is no less relevant in the twenty-first
century. I suspect that readers will be able to say that, too, a
hundred years from now. What person trying to escape a bureaucratic
quagmire has not muttered “Catch 22,” interspersed with some
colorful expletives deleted, of course.
5.
Mila
18
by Leon Uris. A compelling and ultimately heartbreaking account of
the rising in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. More than any
other book I’ve read, this one shows us the horrors of war as
ordinary people seek to survive in extraordinary circumstances.
6.
One
Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini. The author has managed an amazing feat, for his
second book is even better than his highly acclaimed The Kite Runner.
This story of two women enduring life under the Taliban in
Afghanistan is sure to stay with the reader long after the last page.
Cheating
again here—I am going to cite two non-fictional books that I found
absolutely riveting, Schindler’s
List
(published in the UK and Australia as Schindler’s
Ark)
by Thomas Keneally, and Reading
Lolita in Tehran
by Azar Nafisi. I will sign off by mentioning a few exemplary writers
of historical fiction since that is Elizabeth’s and my province:
Elizabeth, of course, and then Margaret George (Elizabeth
I),
Anya Seton (Katherine),
Colleen McCullough (Masters of Rome series), Robert Graves (I,
Claudius),
and Susan Kay (Legacy).
Thanks,
Gillian. This was fun.
Some
of the books mentioned in this column:
Catch
22
by Joseph Heller (Simon and Schuster, 1996) 978-0684833392
Devil’s
Brood,
by Sharon Kay Penman (Ballantine, 2009) 978-0345396730
Elizabeth
I - a novel, by
Margaret George (Viking Adult, 2011) 978-0670022533
Hanta
Yo: an American saga
by Ruth Beebee Hill (Warner Books, 1983) 978-0446321440
Here
Be Dragons, by Sharon
Kay Penman (St Martin's Griffin, 2008) 978-0312382452
I,
Claudius
Robert Graves (Vintage, 1989) 978-0679724773
Jane
Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte (Tribeca Books, 2011) 978-1936594191
Katharine,
by
Anya Seton (Houghton Mifflin, 1954) ASIN B001ISFABC
The
Kite Runner,
by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Trade, 2004) 978-1594480003
Lady
of the English,
by Elizabeth Chadwick (Sourcebooks, Landmark, 2011) 978-1402250927
Legacy
by Susan Kay (Avon, 1987) 978-0380703227
Lionheart,
by Sharon Kay Penman (Putnam Adult, 2011) 978-0399157851
Lonesome
Dove
by Larry McMurtry (Pocket, 1988) 978-0671683900
The
Lord of the Rings by
J. R. R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, 2005) 978-0618640157
Master
of Rome series, by
Colleen McCullough
Mila
18
by Leon Uris (Bantam, 1983) 978-0553241600
One
Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Trade, 2008) 978-1594483851
A
Place Beyond Courage,
by Elizabeth Chadwick (Palimpsest Book Production, 2008)
978-0751539011
The
Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver
(Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008) 978-0061577079
Reading
Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books,
by Azar Nafisi (Random House Trade Paperback, 2008) 978-0812979305
Schindler’s
List,
by Thomas Keneally (Touchstone, 1993) 978-0671880316
The
Shining
by Stephen King (Gallery, 2002) 978-0743437493
To
Defy A King, by
Elizabeth Chadwick (Sourcebook Landmark, 2011) 978-1402250897
To
Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee (Harper, 2010) 978-0061743528
When
Christ and His Saints Slept,
by Sharon Kay Penman (Ballantine Books, 1996) 978-0345396686
The
Wild Hunt, by
Elizabeth Chadwick (Ballantine Books, 1992) 978-0345377241
Wyrd
Sisters
by Terry Pratchett (Harper Torch, 2001) 978-0061020667
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