Proposal for The Land Beyond the Sea

Before a publisher agrees to a contract on a new book, an author must present a proposal for the book’s theme and content. Sharon’s publisher first heard about The Land Beyond the Sea (its original working title was “The Kingdom Beyond the Sea) in July, 2012. The following is her proposal for what would end up being her final novel.


JULY 29, 2012

It has been a while since we last talked about what I wanted to do after I completed Richard Lionheart’s story and ran out of Angevins to write about.  As I explained back then, I have been interested for several years in writing about the Kingdom of Jerusalem, also known as Outremer, which poetically translates as The Land Beyond the Sea, my working title.   Its history is a writer’s dream, with high drama, tragedy, a clash of cultures that continues to resonate today, enough battles to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty of my readers, several genuine love stories for the romantics, and a cast of characters so colorful and compelling that no novelist would dare to invent them out of whole cloth.

            All of my books are ensemble productions, of course, but there are always a few characters who get more time on center stage.   In The Land Beyond the Sea, that will be Balian d’Ibelin, one of the most powerful lords of Outremer, who appears in Lionheart and was the hero of Ridley Scott’s epic film, Kingdom of Heaven.   The novel opens in 1177, the year in which Balian wed Maria Comnena, Queen of Jerusalem, the widow of a former king and mother of five year old Isabella, who would one day rule Jerusalem herself.    Balian’s family was already very influential, and now, as the husband of a former queen and the stepfather of a future one, he would be closely involved in all of the dramatic events that would convulse the kingdom in the sixteen year story arc (1177-1193) of The Land Beyond the Sea.   

            Outremer was a young realm, one baptized in blood, for when the men of the First Crusade captured Jerusalem from the Saracens in 1101, they showed no mercy to the Muslims and Jews living in the city; those convinced they have God on their side always find it easier to demonize the enemy.  After establishing a Christian kingdom, most of the crusaders went back to their own countries, their vows fulfilled.  But those who stayed had to adapt to an utterly alien world, a land of blazing heat and exotic customs and enemies who were also neighbors.  They soon realized they were a small island in a vast Saracen sea and accommodations were necessary if they hoped to survive.  And as they were exposed to the Saracen culture, they began to change, to become a people who were neither Europeans nor Saracens.   These native-born Christians called themselves Poulains.   Balian was proudly Poulain.     

            When the novel begins, Outremer was ruled by a cousin of the English Royal House, Baldwin IV, and the Poulains were facing the greatest threat yet to the survival of their young kingdom.   The Saracens had united under the Sultan of Egypt, Salah al-Din, better known to posterity as Saladin.   Defeating Saladin would have been a challenge for any king, but Baldwin was hopelessly handicapped from the outset.  One of history’s truly tragic figures, Baldwin was intelligent, educated, charismatic, very courageous, and dedicated to the welfare and protection of his people.  He was also doomed, for he was afflicted with one of the worst medieval scourges—leprosy.  He fought his disease as fiercely as he fought the Saracens, though, and when he learned that Saladin was planning to invade Outremer, he won a remarkable victory over a much larger Saracen army at Montisgard in 1177; Saladin himself barely escaped capture.

            Balian took part in that battle, too, for he was loyal to his young king.  But that young king was dying and all knew it.  Baldwin would survive for another eight years and during those years, his kingdom was in turmoil, for Saladin’s star was on the ascendancy and the Poulains were divided over the succession.   When Baldwin died at age twenty-four in 1185, the crown passed to a child, his sister Sybilla’s sickly eight year old son by her first marriage.  Balian was a man of honor and although he had grave reservations about Sybilla’s second husband, he supported her son’s claim.  But the little boy died in less than a year and Outremer was once more in chaos, riven by political intrigue and conspiracies. 

            The two rivals for the crown were Baldwin’s sisters, Sybillla and Isabella, Balian’s stepdaughter.  Sybilla was the elder, but she was wed to a man few wanted to see as king, a French adventurer named Guy de Lusignan.  Guy seems to have had charm—Sybilla certainly thought so—but not much common sense.  And so before they agreed to crown Sybilla, the lords of the kingdom demanded that she divorce Guy first.  She agreed, but after her coronation, she declared that she had the right as queen to choose her own consort and she chose Guy.   I cannot help admiring her spirit; it is just a pity that she had such poor taste in men, for Guy’s errors in judgment would result in the kingdom’s greatest disaster. 

            Sadly for the Poulains, Guy saw Balian as an adversary because he was wed to Isabella’s mother, Maria, and turned for advice to one of history’s great villains—Reynald de Chatillon.  Reynald was a French knight of obscure origins who—like Guy himself—was able to make an advantageous marriage to a great heiress.  With her wealth to draw upon, he became a force to be reckoned with and soon revealed those qualities that would win him such notoriety—his fearlessness, his cruelty, and his utter lack of prudence.  His boldness led to his capture by the Saracens and he was held prisoner for seventeen years, finally freed in 1177, emerging fluent in Arabic and with a burning hatred of his Muslim foes.    

            It was Reynald’s rash, reckless advice that led Guy into the trap Saladin set for him at Hattin in July, 1187.  The Christian army was destroyed and Guy and Reynald were taken prisoner.  Guy was lucky, for Saladin assured him that “Kings do not kill kings.”  Reynald would be beheaded by none other than Saladin himself and many would see his death as his just punishment for the grief he’d brought upon their kingdom.  Town after town fell to the victorious Saracens after their triumph at Hattin, until Jerusalem itself was threatened.

            Balian was one of the few lords who’d been able to fight their way free at Hattin and he asked for and got a safe conduct from Saladin to fetch his wife, Maria, and their children from Jerusalem, now under siege by the Saracens.  But the desperate citizens pleaded with Balian to take command and he could not bring himself to abandon them.  Instead, he sent word to Saladin, explaining why he felt honor-bound to stay and asking to be released from his vow to remain only 24 hours in the city.  Saladin and Balian had long enjoyed a relationship of mutual respect, and Saladin not only agreed, he provided his own men to escort Balian’s family to safety.  Saladin was still set, though, upon taking Jerusalem by storm, seeing it as a blood debt, retribution for the massacre of Jerusalem’s Muslims when it was captured by crusaders in 1101.  This would be Balian’s finest hour, for he convinced Saladin to accept a peaceful surrender by offering to ransom the townspeople and by threatening to destroy all of the Muslim holy places in the city if they had nothing left to lose. 

            It was the fall of Jerusalem in October, 1187 that triggered the Third Crusade, the subject of my last novel, Lionheart.   All that was left of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was the city of Tyre and a few scattered castles.   Having been freed by Saladin, a desperate Guy de Lusignan lay siege to the city of Acre, and this became the focal point of resistance to Saladin.  Sybilla joined Guy at the siege, staying loyal to her man till her last mortal breath, dying of the plague that swept the crusader camp.  Her two small daughters died with her and Guy was suddenly in a very exposed position.  He insisted he was still a consecrated king, but others saw him as the man responsible for the catastrophe at Hattin.  At this point, another adventurer, one far more capable and cunning than Guy, now swaggered onto center stage.

 Conrad de Montferrat was an Italian marquis, but he lusted after crowns.  When Sybilla died, her younger half-sister, Isabella, was the rightful queen.   Unfortunately, her circum-stances were eerily similar to Sybilla’s, for she, too, was wed to a man considered unworthy to rule.  Humphrey de Toron had been burdened with a poet’s soul in a warrior’s world, and what we might see today as virtues—his kindness, sense of honor, and pacific nature—were seen by his contemporaries as fatal flaws.  Conrad, ever the opportunist, took advantage of Humphrey’s unpopularity and sought to take Isabella away from her husband, with the connivance of her mother, Maria, her stepfather, Balian, and virtually all of the lords and bishops of Outremer, for they knew only a strong king could save their kingdom.

Isabella is a very interesting woman; she was eleven when she was married to Humphrey and she was just eighteen in 1190 when Conrad staged his coup.  She was said to be very beautiful and she would later prove to be both courageous and quick-witted.  She did not want to be parted from Humphrey, but eventually she was forced to yield and as soon as her marriage was annulled, she was hastily wed to Conrad, who at once claimed the crown. 

Some of these events are mentioned in Lionheart, of course, and some of these people appear in it as well, but Lionheart was Richard I’s story and whatever did not affect him directly was not dramatized.   In The Land Beyond the Sea, I will be doing the back-story for Lionheart, introducing the characters who were always off-stage, like Balian’s “dangerous and devious Greek wife,” as Richard described Maria in Lionheart.  The one complaint that some of my readers had with Lionheart was that they did not get to meet Saladin, for he and Richard never met.  Obviously, he will be a major player in The Land Beyond the Sea, as will his shrewd, pragmatic brother, al-Malik al-Adil. 

            Since Conrad did not take part in Richard’s crusade and Balian supported Conrad, I won’t have to worry about repeating scenes already dealt with in Lionheart.  The rivalry between Conrad and Guy was finally resolved in 1192, when the Poulains selected Conrad and Richard pensioned Guy off with Cyprus.  But Conrad’s triumph was a brief one.  Just days after he learned he was to be king at long last, he was slain as he rode through the streets of Tyre by two men sent by the Old Man of the Sea, the chieftain of the feared Muslim sect called the Assassins.   The Poulains panicked, for Isabella was only twenty years old and pregnant, and they desperately started a search to find her a new husband before Conrad was even buried. 

            It is now time to speak of Balian’s co-star.  Henri, Count of Champagne, was of royal birth, nephew both to Richard I and the French king.  He arrived in the Holy Land in 1190, at age twenty-four, where he was to distinguish himself during the Third Crusade.  A young  man of charm and courage and wit, he was blind-sided when he hurried to Tyre after learning of Conrad’s murder and was acclaimed by the people as their next king.   He was reluctant to accept, for it would mean lifelong exile from his beloved Champagne and his own family, but he was pressured into agreeing, and then something remarkable happened—he fell in love with his new wife. 

            What of Isabella’s role in this race to the altar?  She’d already shown her mettle by refusing to surrender Tyre to the French and claiming that Conrad’s dying wish was that she yield the city only to her cousin Richard.  She showed it again by coming to Henri and assuring him she was willing to wed him.  The Saracens were scandalized by the fact that she’d marry Henri while carrying Conrad’s baby.  One of them blurted out to a Poulain, “But whose child will it be?”  He was dumbfounded when the answer was, “It will be the queen’s child.”  They were a practical lot, the Poulains.  But then, given their precarious hold on power, they had to be.

            What first interested me about the Kingdom of Jerusalem was the impact that daily interaction with the Saracens had upon the succeeding generations of Poulains.  They learned to respect Saracen medicine, to adopt the Saracen custom of ransoming prisoners, and friend-ships inevitably developed—as with Balian and Saladin.  But because their numbers were so small, they were dependent upon European crusaders, men who arrived in Outremer burning with religious zeal and hostility toward the infidels.  They were horrified to discover that the Poulains had a more nuanced, less dogmatic view of those same infidels and the native-born Christians found themselves regarded with suspicion and scorn by their own allies.   I think my readers will find this clash of cultures as intriguing as I did.

            I also think my readers will find Balian to be a very appealing character—a courageous battle commander but with an instinct for conciliation; at one point, he prevented civil war from breaking out between the political factions in Outremer.  He was comfortable being married to Maria, a strong-willed woman who did not fit the medieval stereotype of the sub-missive, docile wife.  He formed friendships with some of his Saracen adversaries, believing that their kingdom’s survival depended upon cooperation as well as military strength.  And he was enough of a pragmatist to support the ruthless Conrad of Montferrat because he knew that Conrad would be a far better king than Guy de Lusignan.  He devoted his life to the defense of his homeland and when he dies at book’s end in 1193, he dies secure in the belief that his kingdom will survive.  After all, their greatest threat, Saladin, was now dead and Outremer in the safe-keeping of his stepdaughter, Isabella, and her new husband, Henri of Champagne.  Like most of our dreams, it will prove to be ephemeral, but Balian is spared knowing that. 

            My Lionheart readers lavished praise upon those chapters set in the Holy Land and were very enthusiastic when I revealed my desire to return to Outremer for my next book.  They seem particularly keen upon meeting Saladin at last, getting to know Balian better, and spending more time with the young lovers, Henri and Isabella.   I know there are drawbacks to social networking sites like Facebook, but they do give writers the sort of reader feedback we could only dream about in the past.

            From a logistical standpoint, The Kingdom Beyond the Sea would be a shorter book than Lionheart; I hear all of us heaving a sigh of relief at that, me especially.   The chroniclers gave me such a unique map for Lionheart that I felt compelled to follow it to the end of the road.   That won’t be true for this book; the events are documented but not in such dazzling detail as they were for Lionheart.  And of course I am already very familiar with Outremer’s history, so I wouldn’t be starting from scratch.  Once A King’s Ransom is done, I ought to be able to slide seamlessly back in time and start weaving my tapestry about the tragic Leper King, three spirited, independent queens, the legendary Saladin, and Balian d’Ibelin and Henri of Champagne, two men who played such important roles in some of the most consequential events of the Middle Ages.    

As ever,

Sharon Kay Penman