Tidbits from Eleanor of Aquitaine

Monday, August 31st, 2009 | Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Writing Life

I am technically on vacation at the moment. Not from my day job, but from my writing. But as you other writers know, we are never actually on vacation. My brain is always running, like an engine idling quietly, waiting to rev up again. Eleanor of Aquitaine has given me time off until after Labor Day, but that illustrious lady does not take time off herself. No indeed. Over the last two weeks she has been giving me little tidbits about the next book: about the day she and Henry met, how they made their alliance, how they parted when he left Paris before she secured her divorce from Louis.

Ironically enough, so far, the great lady and I are working backwards. Her first meeting with Henry of Normandy does not happen until the end of the book, but it was the happiest moment in her early life. I suppose, before we delve into her years as Queen of France, Eleanor wanted to visit the happy times that came after, her first years with Henry of Normandy, later Henry II of England. Henry was the second great love of her life. She always looked for men who were her equals, and often in vain; she waited fifteen years between burying her father and finding Henry.

For those of you who have seen The Lion in Winter, or who have read DEVIL’S BROOD by Sharon Kay Penman, you know that, though Eleanor loved Henry, she did not get to keep him. So rarely in life do we keep the things we love, be they husbands, children, or crowns. But in my next novel, TO BE QUEEN, Eleanor does not know that yet. She sees Henry, a young lion pacing through the staid, superstitious court of her first husband, and she knows that he is the man she is destined for. Destiny is not always kind, as Eleanor discovers, as Eleanor already knows by the end of TO BE QUEEN. But no matter what her losses, Eleanor never admits defeat. One chess game ends; then, win or lose, she resets the pieces, and raises her first pawn.

So I have enjoyed taking these notes from Eleanor of Aquitaine, these bits of flotsam and jetsam that trickle in from behind the sea wall of my mind. Soon she and I will be out on that ocean once more, sailing uncharted waters, with no land in sight. Together we will bring a finished novel back to shore. I look forward to that journey: it is different every time. This Eleanor is different from the woman I met in THE QUEEN’S PAWN: she’s younger. More hopeful. She is politically saavy, but she is learning to build her career in politics, step by step, stone by stone. By the end of her life, she had worn two crowns and borne two kings. TO BE QUEEN is the story of the beginning of her journey. I am looking forward to that tale. I am the lucky one: I get to hear it first.

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