Sharon Kay Penman

       New evidence of the existence of Robin Hood?   It may be.  Dr Julian Luxford, an expert in medieval manuscript studies at the University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland, has revealed that he found an intriguing mention of the legendary outlaw scribbled in the margins of the Polychronicon, a history written by Ralph Higden (c. 1280-1363).  The comment, written in Latin by a monk about 1460, said, “Around this time, according to popular opinion, a certain outlaw named Robin Hood, with his accomplices, infested Sherwood and other law-abiding areas of England with continuous robberies.”  Dr. Luxford believes that this might be the earliest written chronicle reference to Robin Hood, and he points out its “uniquely negative assessment” of the outlaw; not a word, you notice, about stealing from the rich to give to the poor!     

      People have been arguing for years about whether there was a real Robin Hood, a series of Robin Hoods, or if he was merely a myth.   I can say for a reasonable certainty that if Robin did exist, he wasn’t battling “Evil Prince John” while waiting for “Good King Richard” to return from the crusades. I’ve always been partial to the theory that Robin Hood and his band of merry men were followers of Simon de Montfort, outlawed after Simon’s defeat and death at the battle of Evesham in 1265, and so I was pleased to see that Dr Luxford agrees with me, saying that “The new find places Robin Hood in Edward’s reign, thus supporting the belief that his legend is of 13^th century origin.”   

           I began this blog with the item about Robin Hood because I thought we needed a bit of good news; we all agree that if there wasn’t a Robin Hood, there ought to have been one, right?   The world is not a cheerful place these days, and we have to take our cheer wherever we can find it.    Like many people, I felt very sad about the tragic death this week of Natasha Richardson.  While writing Devil’s Brood, I did a lot of research about subdural and epidural hemorrhages, for that was the injury causing Geoffrey’s death.  I remember thinking that we were so lucky, living in an age when such injuries could be successfully treated, whereas it was an automatic death sentence for Geoffrey.  But we can have too much faith in modern medicine.    

        I have some book news now.  St Martin’s Press has brought out new editions of Sunne in Splendour, Here Be Dragons, and Falls the Shadow.  They will be publishing The Reckoning on April 14^th.   St Martin’s has selected all these books for their reading clubs, and provides questions and a reading guide at their website.   It occurred to me that this could be a good opportunity to have another book giveaway; I really enjoyed the last one.   So….here are the rules.  If you would like to suggest any questions for The Reckoning reading groups, post them on my next blog.  I will then pass them on to St Martin’s, and if they like them, they’ll add them to their website reading guide for The Reckoning.   Anyone who submits a question will be entered in a drawing, and the winner will get a signed hardback edition of The Reckoning (the paperback is not available yet) and signed paperback copies of Here Be Dragons and Falls the Shadow. 

        Ballantine Books will be putting out new editions of When Christ and His Saints Slept and Time and Chance at the same time that they publish the paperback edition of Devil’s Brood; the official publication date for all three is July 28^th.  And Penguin UK will be publishing their paperback edition of Devil’s Brood in August; as soon as I get the exact date, I’ll let you know.     I think it will be fun to have book giveaways for them, too, so stay tuned. 

       Okay, now to reader mail.  Thank you all for continuing to share your reading lists.  My only concern is that I’ll need nine lives like a cat in order to follow your recommendations; as the bumper sticker goes, “So many books, so little time.”   Judith, thank you for sharing your song with us.  I love the idea that a young American in the 21^st century was inspired to write a song about a woman dead more than eight centuries.  I think we need to feel that connection to our past, and it saddens me that so many people seem indifferent or even hostile to history.  I truly believe that we need to know what happened yesterday before we can decide what to do tomorrow.   And it is fun to imagine Joanna’s reaction (or Eleanor’s or Henry’s) if only they knew we were still fascinated by their lives so long after their deaths.  

       An interesting question, too, Judith, about Anne Boleyn.  I tend to agree with you and Kristen, think Henry would eventually have divorced Katherine of Aragon even if Anne had died prematurely.  I think by then he’d convinced himself that he “must” have a male heir.   And I could not agree more with Carrie’s poetic observation—that the cracks in history are wonderful places for the imagination to flourish.   I just wish people found the Plantagenets as fascinating as they do the Tudors—it would certainly help the sales of my books!

       Suzanne, Geoffrey, the Archbishop of York, did not refer to himself as Plantagenet.  As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the first one to make use of that surname was the Duke of York, father of Edward IV and Richard III, in the 15^th century.   Historians will refer to them by that name for convenience; I did that myself in one or two of my books, the earlier ones.  Another example is the use of the surname Capet for the French dynasty that came before the Valois kings.  I refer to Louis Capet often in my trilogy, even though he would not have called himself that; it took a while for it to be adopted by the kings of his dynasty.  I realize I am being inconsistent, referring to Louis Capet but insisting upon calling Henry by the name he called himself—Fitz Empress.  But Louis was a secondary player; had he been the main character, I probably wouldn’t have used Capet.

      It is tricky, no doubt about it.  Right now I am having fits trying to avoid using the words “crusade” or “crusader” in dialogue, since those terms were not used in the 12^th century.   They spoke of “taking the cross” or “pilgrimage”.   There are times when I absolutely have to use “crusade” in the narrative, if only to save my sanity.  But I am making an effort not to put the word in Richard’s mouth.   And yes, you could probably find it in misused in Here Be Dragons.   But that was only my second book and I was still learning—also I was not as obsessive-compulsive then as I would later become! 

       If I am doing a Mea Culpa for Dragons, though, I have more to explain than an occasional use of “crusade” or even “Plantagenet”.  Someone reading Dragons after reading Devil’s Brood might well wonder if the same author wrote both books.   In Dragons, John certainly does not share my doubts about Richard’s sexuality and he is obviously convinced that his father had taken the unfortunate Alys as his mistress.    Richard and Henry were minor characters in Dragons, appearing only very briefly, and so I did not do the sort of extensive research about either man that I did for John; see my above comment about being obsessive-compulsive.  Moreover, Dragons was researched and written more than twenty-five years ago, and history is not static; it is a river, not a pond, and previously unknown facts and nuggets of information are constantly being revealed by that surging current.  

        I’m sure we’ll be discussing this in future blogs.   For now, I can report that Richard and his army have reached Sicily, where he is about to wreak his usual havoc.   And Remember–submit any questions for The Reckoning book club and you’re in the drawing.

March 22, 2009     

     I am sorry it has taken me so long to post another blog, but Richard has been keeping me very busy with a chapter that ended up being much longer than I’d initially intended.  It isn’t unusual for a chapter to become two, for I try to keep them about fifteen pages or so in length unless the chapter cannot possibly be divided, like Henry’s penance scene at Becket’s tomb.  But this is the first time a chapter split like an amoeba into three parts. 

       Thank you all for the interesting book recommendations.  I’m glad you reminded us of Pauline Gedge’s fine Egyptian books, Angela.  I’m also looking forward to Michelle Moran’s next book, Cleopatra’s Daughter, for while I know she was raised by Antony’s long-suffering wife, I know nothing about her subsequent history.  And I hope you tell us more about your Janna mysteries, Felicity.  I’d be interested, too, in what boundaries you set in writing books for teenagers.  When my first mystery, The Queen’s Man, was chosen as one of the best books of the year for Young Adults, I was delighted, of course.  Then I thought, “But Justin has sex!  And there are some bloody murders.”   Apparently, though, sex and violence are okay as long as the writer is not too explicit?

        Judith, I was fascinated to learn that after reading Devil’s Brood, you wrote two songs, one for Hal and one for Joanna.  Would you consider sharing them with us?  Linda, I loved your wish that if only Henry VIII had an appreciation of architecture, he may have spared all those beautiful abbeys and cathedrals.  Of course if Richard had won at Bosworth, Henry would never have been King of England in the first place.  For those who claim that one man cannot change history, I’d say “Meet Henry Tudor.”  If Henry had not been born, would England have broken with the Catholic Church?  Or for that matter, what if Anne Boleyn had never appeared at the royal court to catch Henry’s lustful eye?   This is about as close as I can come to Alternate History, Johnny.  It just goes against my natural instincts.   Moreover, if I lost readers when I started to do mysteries because they preferred that I write of real people and actual events, imagine how they’d bail on me if I ventured into Alternate History!

    Gayle, I found your comments about Eleanor quite interesting, but I do think you were rather hard on her.  Sadly, Eleanor and Henry both failed miserably as parents, Eleanor by not preventing her teenage sons from taking part in that first rebellion, Henry for mistakes beyond counting—not giving Hal lands and money of his own, refusing to give Geoffrey and Constance her full inheritance, trying to take Aquitaine from Richard, using Geoffrey and John to bring Richard to heel.   It is amazing that this brilliant man kept making the same mistakes over and over again where his sons were concerned.

      I have to conclude that Henry’s parental flaws were greater than Eleanor’s simply because their children seem to have loved her.   IF Joanna and Matilda (my Tilda) had not loved their mother, they would not have sought her out in her disgrace.  When Joanna spent the summer of 1176 with Eleanor before her departure for Sicily, Henry’s wounds were still raw, and he’d surely have preferred to keep his daughter away from the wife who’d betrayed him.  But it is very much to Henry’s credit that he put Joanna’s needs first.  And when Matilda and her husband were exiled from Germany, it would have been easy enough to avoid Eleanor and it would have been prudent, too for she and Heinrich were utterly dependent upon Henry’s good will; instead she was often with her mother, even had Eleanor with her at her lying-in.

      As for Eleanor’s sons, Richard’s affection for his mother shines clearly down through the centuries; on his deathbed, Hal pleaded with his father to forgive her; Geoffrey named his daughter after Eleanor; and even John showed Eleanor great respect.  Like Richard’s Berengaria, John’s queen was utterly overshadowed as long as Eleanor lived, and John’s one great military triumph was the remarkable rescue he launched upon learning that Eleanor was under siege at Mirebeau by her own grandson, Arthur…..I do love the Angevins, but they were surely the most dysfunctional family since the Oedipus clan.    

        Sadly, there is no such evidence to put forward on Henry’s behalf.  And I admit this is heartbreaking to me, for there can be no doubt that he did love his sons.  Well,   I am not convinced that he loved Richard, not the way he loved Hal and John and to a lesser extent, Geoffrey.  It may be that he and Richard were too much alike not to clash, and his bitterness in the last year of his life is certainly understandable, especially since he seemed unable to realize how much he’d contributed to their final estrangement. 

        Gayle, you are quite right in singling out John’s son, Henry III, as a good father.  He was not a good king, but he loved his children dearly and so did his unpopular queen.  They had a daughter who was unable to speak or hear, and a chronicler described their great grief when she died at age three.  He then revealed the medieval bias toward physical disabilities by dismissing the little girl as “pretty but useless.”  Another well-known story deals with Henry’s son Edward’s reaction to losing a young son at the same time that Henry died.  When a tactless soul remarked that he seemed to grieve more for Henry than for his son, Edward supposedly replied that a man had only one father but could have other sons.   Unfortunately, Edward didn’t take his father as a parental role model, and proved to be a less than loving father himself.   In fact, there is an interesting pattern for 12^th and 13^th century English monarchs.  You have Henry II, a great king, a flawed father; John, an unsuccessful king but apparently an affectionate father; Henry III, a weak king but a very loving father; Edward I, a great king but a distant, demanding father; Edward II, a disastrous king, a caring father; Edward III, a highly successful king, but another disengaged father.    How significant this is, I don’t know, but it is interesting, no?  

       Sarah—Pride and Predator?  I really do hope Jane Austin haunts Elton John to his dying day!   And yes, Trisha, I liked the Firefly series, too, just as I liked Angel.  But I think Buffy was Josh Whedon’s dark classic.     And Suzanne, an interesting question.  No, I don’t reread my books.  I have to go over a book again and again and again when I am responding to editors and copy editors and proof readers until I am so thoroughly sick of the book that I want only to get it out of my life.  Sunne was the worst, for it was over a thousand pages, and by the time I’d finally turned it in for the last time, I was almost ready to start rooting for Tudor to win Bosworth—almost.  

        Lastly, I’d like to recommend some books for those of you who, like Michele, want to do some advance research on Richard’s reign or the Third Crusade.  To date, the definitive biography of Richard is John Gillingham’s Richard I; he has written several books about Richard but the primary biography is the one published in 1999 at almost four hundred pages.  Another good biography of Richard is Ralph Turner’s The Reign of Richard Lionheart, probably the most dispassionate of the many books written about this very controversial king.  Turner’s final chapter is an excellent summary called Richard in Retrospect, in which he proves that Richard’s reputation is tied directly to the values of the historians writing about him.  In other words, Richard serves as the prism through which the biographer reveals more about himself than about this medieval king.  Turner’s one weakness is that he does not deal with Richard’s exploits on the Third Crusade, the central experience of Richard’s life.  I can also recommend Richard Coeur de Lion in History and Myth, edited by Janet Nelson, and The Legends of King Richard I Coeur de Lion, by Bradford Broughton.    And for readers interested specifically in Richard’s crusade and his military career, I can recommend two books very highly.   A military historian, Geoffrey Regan has written Lionhearts, Richard I, Saladin, and the Era of the Third Crusade.   Whereas the Regan book has Richard sharing star billing with Saladin, David Miller’s Richard the Lionheart focuses more upon Richard’s exploits in the Holy Land.  There may be times when you’ll start to wonder where Richard found a phone booth out in the desert to change into his Superman costume, but he honestly did perform these amazing acts of derring-do.  After reading these books, you’ll find it easier to understand why Richard became a legend in his own lifetime and why that legend has endured over the centuries.  You might also wonder if he had a latent death wish.     

      As I’ve already indicated, I think David Crouch’s William Marshal, Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire is the best of the biographies about that celebrated knight.  There are only two English biographies of Berengaria and a 19^th century French one that has never been translated.   I cannot recommend either of these whole-heartedly, for Mairin Mitchell’s Berengaria, Enigmatic Queen of England contains numerous statements that are either factually false or dubious, as her conclusion that Berengaria spoke Basque.  A more scholarly work is Ann Trindale’s Berengaria, in Search of Richard the Lionheart’s Queen, but she is very hostile not only to Richard but to Eleanor as well, and that colors her interpretations of events.  

       There are numerous biographies of Eleanor, more than histories of Henry, which I suspect would annoy him no end.   I have already recommended Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lord and Lady, edited by Bonnie Wheeler.  I have some serious issues with one of the most recent biographies of Eleanor, will save that discussion for a later blog.  Lastly, if you would like to read “ahead” about Joanna, I highly recommend Julius Norwich’s eloquent history of Norman Sicily, Kingdom in the Sun—I love that title, wish I could appropriate it for my novel about Constance!

     Dydd Gywl Dewi Hapus, wishing you all a belated Happy St David’s Day.

March 2, 2009