Christy English

The Leap into the Void

Wednesday, September 21st, 2011 | Eleanor of Aquitaine, First Drafts, The Writing Life | 2 Comments

The blank page that lies before us every time we sit down to write is the void. Unformed and unknown, it is a brave new world where we hope to find our characters, our plots, and our ideas waiting for us. Of course, when we write historical fiction, we’ve got a map. The facts as we know them give us an outline for the world we are going to build. But questions remains even then: what facts about our protagonist do we include in this book? What do we leave out? No life has the shape of a narrative arc. Even biographical fiction, like the work I do with Eleanor of Aquitaine, must be shaped and shifted to build an entertaining story.

This search for the things we will need to fill the void is even more profound for a work of pure fiction. When we are building a world literally out of nothing but our own imaginations, we rely on our characters, a plot we’ve developed before we begin,  perhaps an outline, and inspiration. All of these tools, along with our skills as writers and our hope that we will be able to tell a story that others will want to read are our companions as we sit down to begin. The blank page is before us. We are voyagers in the Void. Scary sometimes, often intimidating, the Void is where we writers live. We return from there with our stories in hand, hoping that they will be as meaningful to someone else as they are to us. I for one would not want to live anywhere else.

Tags: Biographical Fiction, Eleanor of Aquitaine, First Drafts, Historical Fiction, The Writing Life

Shakespeare in Love: Eleanor Gives Me Time Off

Monday, August 29th, 2011 | Eleanor of Aquitaine, Regency Romance, Shakespeare in Love, The Taming | 5 Comments

I am used to asking Eleanor of Aquitaine for a day off. Sometimes even a weekend if I’m traveling. And my lady and muse is always very generous and allows me the time I need, because she knows that when I come back to the chair, I will work even harder for her. But lately, Eleanor has granted me a few months off to work on a new project.

I have signed a three book deal to write a romance series for Sourcebooks Casablanca called Shakespeare in Love. I’ll be re-telling Shakespearean comedies and setting them in Regency England. The first novel in this series comes out in the fall of 2012 and is called The Taming, a re-telling of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. Needless to say, bodice ripping will ensue and each book will have a happy ending. After the machinations of the Plantagenets, where betrayal runs rampant, a happy ending is a wonderful thing.

Of course, I have not stopped writing about Eleanor. I’ll continue to work on our latest project as the winter months roll in. But for now, Eleanor has given me a bit of a vacation from the intrigues of her world, and from the politics with which she lives and breathes. I know that when I come back to her after my time in Regency England, I will savor those politics and those intrigues, as well as Eleanor’s amazing presence. I’ve loved Shakespeare all my life, and I love Eleanor with a grand passion. So in the next year, I will savor both.

Tags: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Regency Romance, Shakespeare in Love, The Taming, The Taming of the Shrew

Why I Love Eleanor

Friday, August 26th, 2011 | Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II, Louis VII | 6 Comments

Archive Week on my blog is ending, and of course, once again, I write about Eleanor of Aquitaine. This post originally ran on April 29, 2011. Vive la Reine!

I love to write about Eleanor of Aquitaine because she always surprises me. Even though she is an historical figure and the events of her life are set in stone, the character of Eleanor as she comes to life in my novels always shows me something new. On the pages of history books her life was dynamic enough: Duchess of Aquitaine at the age of fifteen, Eleanor finished brokering her own marriage to Louis VII of France.

King Louis VII of France

Eleanor’s First Husband

Years later, Eleanor rode at her husband’s side on Crusade, and on her way home, sick of being married to Louis, she began working to annul her marriage. Only months after she earned her freedom, Eleanor married her second husband, Henry of Normandy who became King of England only two years later…and that is just the first half of her life. So you see what I mean when I say Eleanor of Aquitaine was a dynamic woman.

Henry II, King of England

Eleanor’s Second Husband

Nothing stopped Eleanor from achieving her goals. For decades, she wanted the County of Toulouse back under the control of her family. After sending both husbands’ out to reclaim it through warfare (and after both men failed), she simply arranged her daughter’s marriage to the Count of Toulouse, effectively putting her family in line to inherit that county, and thus to take control of it once more. Eleanor would wait for years for what she wanted. Tenacious and single minded, she was an amazing politician.

Much to both her husbands’ annoyance: Louis would have been perfectly happy if Eleanor had settled down to raise her princesses quietly, if she had left the political machinations of the day to him. And her second husband, King Henry II of England, married her for her brains and beauty as well as her land, but even he came to regret her brilliance as the years wore on. For after ten years of partnership, Eleanor began to want more power of her own. And in 1173, she reached out for that power, setting her sons against their father so that she might gain indirect control of the duchies of Brittany and Normandy, in addition to the duchy of Aquitaine.

Henry locked Eleanor away in 1174 to keep his crown and to keep his sons at bay. Henry always knew that if he set Eleanor free, she would stop at nothing to take his Continental holdings from him. And she was the one person on Earth who had a fighting chance of doing it; so he kept her locked away for fifteen years, until his death.

The Great Hall of Winchester Castle

This hall is all that is left of the castle which served as Eleanor’s prison

Once Henry was dead, Eleanor ruled through her favorite son, Richard. Richard the Lionhearted rode off to Crusade to seek the Holy Grail of Jerusalem, leaving the Continental holdings inherited from his father in Eleanor’s hands. She was technically regent of England, too, while Richard was on Crusade, but she had spent more than enough time locked away in England during the last 15 years of Henry II’s reign. She left that cold, rainy land to the tender mercies of her youngest son, John, for she finally had what she wanted: control over most of what is now modern France.

King Richard the Lionhearted

Eleanor’s Favorite Son

Eleanor was unstoppable. She was brave and beautiful and so full of fire that both her critics and her admirers agreed: she was stronger than any woman they had ever seen. She is the strongest woman I have ever had the pleasure to write about, and the most dynamic. She is a woman who would be renowned in any age. Which is why, over 800 years later, we still remember her.

Eleanor of Aquitiane and the Scandal of Raymond of Antioch

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 | Eleanor of Aquitaine, Louis VII, Raymond of Antioch | 2 Comments

This post was first published on June 8, 2011. As Usual, I can never get enough of Eleanor.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was plagued by many scandals in her lifetime. During her years in the Parisian court, she was always held up as an example of a queen who was lacking: a woman who lacked a son, a woman who lacked piety, a woman who would not keep her god-given place in the world, namely beneath her husband’s boot.

Eleanor lived her life for herself, keeping her eyes on her own goals, but this strength and certainty and the need to follow her own path kept her surrounded by scandal all of her life. She never faced the wrath of the Church and her enemies more than  when  she visited her uncle,  Raymond of Poitiers, now become Raymond, Prince of Antioch. During the Second Crusade, the French army spent only ten days in her uncle’s city at the edge of the Levant, but a great scandal began there that  followed Eleanor for the rest of her life, a scandal that continued to plague her even once she had left Louis VII and his court far behind and to become Queen of the English.

The story says that Eleanor and Raymond became lovers while pious King Louis was out praying at every shrine he could find. The cuckolded husband, upon discovering Eleanor and Raymond, dragged his wife out of the castle in the dead of night, threatening to raze the city to the ground if Eleanor did not leave that place at once.

We do know that Eleanor and Louis did leave suddenly, in the dead of night, and as far as history tells us, Eleanor never saw her uncle again. We know that during the few days she spent in Antioch, she loved the place, and felt at home among the people there, a mix of Poitevens, Franks, and Greeks, a place where Christians had come together to hold the Kingdom of Antioch against the incursions of the Saracens to the north. Eleanor began to ask for an annulment for her barren marriage to Louis during this time, offering to stay behind in Antioch while the rest of the Crusaders continued on toward Jerusalem.

Louis, who adored his wife, would not leave her behind. He would not return to her bed until the Pope himself put him there, but he did not accuse her of infidelity. Of course, many of his courtiers did, just not always in his hearing.

So the question rises: Did Eleanor have an affair with her uncle Raymond?

Most modern historians and historical fiction writers answer this question with a resounding NO, and take great offense when the question is asked. They feel as if this story is just one more way in which Eleanor is maligned by her enemies, the old hatreds reaching down from the past to paint her in whorish colors even today.

And there are others, like myself, who say that we simply do not know. As much as I adore Eleanor, as much reading as I have done about her while writing about her life, I find Eleanor of Aquitaine a mystery and an enigma. I have found Eleanor a law unto herself, a woman who does not always reveal the twists and turns of the paths of her mind. For my part, I feel as if a subject so intimate as the lovers she may or may not have taken during her married life is really none of my business. Nor is it any of our business, we who love her and read about her now. Though Eleanor is a public figure, there are some things in life that always are and always will be private.

That said, as I work on a novel, I am a partner with the character who comes to work with me. And Eleanor as I understand her insisted not only on keeping Raymond in the story, but following through with their relationship to the end, telling a tale that has never been told, a story that many people find offensive and wrong, historically and morally. I live by the adage “The book is the boss,” and whenever I am working with Eleanor, that means that on creative decisions, Eleanor gets final say. The character makes the call, and I agree to live with the fall out. A small price to pay to be in the company of such a magnificent woman for not just two books now, but as we begin our third novel together. It is an honor and a privilege to tell this woman’s story. The places where it differs from common ground and from what is currently in fashion historically, I acknowledge the differences. But I stick to my story. Eleanor became Queen of France at 15. She ruled by her husband’s side, against the machinations of the Church, for fifteen years. She loved her uncle Raymond, as the soul mate she never thought to find and who she would never see again. Here now is Eleanor of Aquitaine on Raymond of Poitiers, in her own words, in my novel TO BE QUEEN:

“Our passion spent, he lay beside me until the hour before dawn, when the deep indigo of the sky began to turn gray. Neither of us had slept. We talked, trying to make up for all the years we had been apart, for all the years that would soon divide us.

I think he had some vain hope that I would leave Acre with him. That like some princess in a German fable, I would desert my husband and my lands, and fly with him to an unknown fate. He did not ask it of me, so I did not have to refuse.

He is with me still. That is what fated love means in the end. The hand of fate lies heavy on us, to show us the ones who will never leave us, the ones we will carry for the rest of our lives. And beyond, if the priests are right.

Though I do not believe in words like forever,  I did when I looked into the blue of his eyes. I was grateful for that one night, carved out of the rest of my life. Those hours were worth the pain I paid for them, both before and after.

For nothing in this world comes free.”

Raymond lost his life to a Saracen blade in June, 1149. I dedicate this entry to him. To his valor, his courage and his faith, his belief that the impossible is only impossible until someone lifts his hand to do it.

Tags: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Louis VII of France, Raymond of Antioch, Second Crusade