A few years ago the Richard III Society asked me to write an article about the role of novelists in shaping history. I have no illusions about the novelist’s ability to influence public opinion. How could we ever compete with Hollywood? But I do think the topic raises some interesting questions. What is the responsibility of the historical novelist? How much licence can we take in our depiction of people who actually lived and events that truly happened? What do we owe our readers – and the long-dead men and women we write about? (If any of you are interested in my views upon this subject, you can read the article at www.r3.0rg/penman/)
I have always tried to build a strong factual foundation for my novels, relying upon my Author’s Note to tell my readers if I’ve taken any liberties with historical fact and thus keep my conscience clear. This approach has worked well for my six historicals. But the mystery format is different, and I’ve been having some difficulty reconciling my two personas. In writing the mysteries, I’ve given my imagination much greater free rein than in my historicals, and while this freedom was great fun, it was initially somewhat unsettling.
The essential elements of Dragon’s Lair are historically accurate. Richard was indeed taken prisoner on his way home from the Holy Land. His mother moved heaven and earth to raise the monumental ransom demanded for his freedom. Brother John did everything in his power to thwart Richard’s release, including armed rebellion, an alliance with the French king, and forging the great seal in an attempt to steal the ransom. But all of the other plot twists in the book are mine and cannot be blamed upon anyone else.
In fairness to Davydd ab Owain, I must admit that he did not mastermind a scheme to highjack the ransom. Having said that, I do not think I owe Davydd’s ghost any apologies. Those of you who’ve read my novel Time and Chance will understand why I had no qualms about depicting Davydd in such an unflattering light. I don’t mean to be cryptic about this: it will all become very clear if you read Time and Chance!
Emma of Anjou presented the greatest challenges. We know very little about her. She was King Henry’s half-sister, said to be beautiful. She was believed to have wed a French lord, Guy de Laval, borne him a son, and subsequently wed Davydd ab Owain, by whom she had two children, perhaps more. She was dead by 1214, a footnote in Welsh history.
I am not sure why I felt misgivings about my treatment of Emma. Even in my historical novels, I’ve had to ‘fill in the blanks’ and rely upon conjecture more often than I would like, for medieval chroniclers could be utterly indifferent to the needs of modern novelists. But I still had this vague dissatisfaction, this nagging concern that I’d not done right by Emma.
One of the reasons why I find history so fascinating is that it is not static. It is always in a state of flux, and we never know what unexpected artifacts might be turned up as the tides go in and out. I recently made an eleventh-hour discovery that much of what we think we know about Emma might not be true. While browsing in the Medieval Genealogy Internet archives, I came upon a spirited discussion about ‘my’ Emma. To my surprise, I found that Emma’s marriage to Guy de Laval – accepted by historians for generations – is open to challenge. Citing a thirteenth-century charter to Evron Abby, the argument was made that Emma de Laval and Emma of Anjou were two different women. Is this claim valid? I honestly don’t know, but it is certainly deserving of further study.
Learning that half of Emma’s past might be based upon a case of mistaken identity could have been a writer’s worst nightmare. Instead, it was liberating. I was reminded that the Emma in Dragon’s Lair is my creation, and my only obligation is to make her interesting, as ‘real’ as any fictional woman can ever be. And it will not be historians who judge this Emma: it will be my readers. I no longer worried that I was being unfair to the actual Emma and came to terms with my Emma by promising her a role in my next mystery.
Now on to the more mundane aspects of the Author’s Note. I always mention for the benefit of new readers that the bishopric of Chester is fictional. Although the title was used in the Middle Ages, it was an unofficial usage, as the diocese was under the control of the Bishop of Coventry, John’s crafty ally, Hugh de Nonant. I used Welsh spellings throughout, although Llewelyn is a slightly anglicized version of his name: the pure Welsh is Llywelyn. There is no v in the modern Welsh alphabet, but it was used in the Middle Ages so I chose the phonetic spelling of Davydd. Ap and ab have the same meaning – son of; the first is used before a name beginning with a consonant, the second before a vowel. While daggers were in use in 1193, they had not yet become standard equipment for medieval knights. The area around Halkyn Mountain in North Wales was an important mining centre for the Romans, and the horizontal adjoining shaft is called an adit. The most horrifying fact that I unearthed in my mining research was that Roman slaves were sometimes kept underground until they died, never allowed to go up to see the sun or breathe pure, untainted air. And while chapels were not built on every Cistercian grange in medieval Wales, they were known to have existed on some, so I felt comfortable adding a chapel to the grange at Mostyn. The theory that the brilliant poet Marie de France was the Abbess of Shaftesbury, Emma’s half-sister, is widely believed but not conclusively proven. I hope it is so, for there is something very appealing about the image of this gifted woman penning her worldly verses in the quiet of the cloister. Lastly, Llewelyn ab Iorwerth is not a figment of my imagination. He was indeed challenging Davydd for supremacy in Gwynedd in 1193. He would become the most successful of all the Welsh princes and history has accorded him the deserving accolade of Llewelyn the Great. He would also become King John’s son-in-law. For those readers who will want to know more about this remarkable man, he is the central character in my novel Here Be Dragons.
S.K.P., April 2003