The Fall of the House of York

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"Juliet Waldron's grasp of time and period history is superb and detailed. Her characters were well developed and sympathetic."

"One of the better Richard III books..."

Crest and Motto of Richard III

On a sunny late summer morning in August, 1485, near Leicester, two armies faced one another. The King of England, Richard III, arose at dawn. Tradition, and Shakespeare, claim that he had had a bad night, although this can never be known now, 537 years later.  The King often traveled with his own bed. One night earlier, he had slept in his royal bed, for he had brought it along with his baggage train from Nottingham Castle. Perhaps too large and bulky to be used in a battlefield tent, the royal bed had been left behind at an Inn in Leicester.  Richard was known as a man who "slept ill in strange beds" and so preferred to maintain regularity in his sleeping arrangements.

Chaplains probably said Mass for the King on that fatal morning, as this too was standard practice on Medieval Battlefields, before he broke his fast with watered wine and bread. His esquires would have begun to armor him. His open crown, set with jewels, was set upon his helm, and then, mounted upon his favorite white charger, Whyte Syrie,* he began to direct the disposition of his army. 

According to John Ashdown-Hill, Historian and member of the Royal Historical Society: ..."When John de Vere, one of Henry Tudors most experienced commanders, saw the royal army advancing to oppose them, he swiftly ordered his men to hold back and maintain close contact with their standard bearers. In consequence the rebel advance ...ground to a halt..." This manuever drew the rebel forces into close formation, with the French mercenary pikemen held in reserve. Ashdown-Hill speculates on why, at this point, the sight of his hated distant cousin sent him charging to destruction. 

"Perhaps out of bravado, or from a sense of noblesse oblige, or possibly because he was suffering from a fever and not in full possession of his faculties, Richard called his men around him and then set off with them at a gallop to settle Henry's fate once and for all." 

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 Ashdown-Hill (The Last Days of Richard III) speculates on why, at this point, the sight of his cousin sent the king charging to destruction. (Certainly, Richard did not know what Henry looked like, but he would have seen his standard and known he surely stood nearby.) 

"Perhaps out of bravado, or from a sense of noblesse oblige, or possibly because he was suffering from a fever and not in full possession of his facaulties, Richard called his men around him and then set off with them at a gallop to settle Henry's fate once and for all."  

It was a risky move. In chess, this would be the same as sending one's king across the board to directly attack the rival king. 

Richard's legendary charge came near to succeeding. Richard himself slew Tudor's imposing standard bearer, William Brandon, but this is the moment when the wily foreign mercenaries Henry had brought with him drew together in a phalanx, protecting Henry and keeping him out of harm's way. Richard's cavalry hurled themselves into the pike wall so created. Many, including Richard, were unhorsed. At the same time, the remainder of the King's cavalry came crashing in behind. The  Yorkist army was now in dissarray.   

John de Vere and Lord Stanley, both still hanging back--de Vere because he was an experienced soldier, Stanley, waiting to see which way the battle would go--now seized their opportunity. Stanley's men fell upon the milling mass of the royal cavalry. They caught the King on foot and he was soon overwhelmed and slain by a pack of enemy soldiers. 

Richard's bravery has never been questioned, even by the Tudor chroniclers. 

"King Richard was slain, fighting manfully in the midst of his enemies." - The Croyland Chronicle.

When Richard fell, de Vere wheeled and attacked the Duke of Norfolk. During the initial clash, Norfolk lost his helmet and caught an arrow in the eye. The Yorkist side had now lost both captains. The leaderless army began to collapse. 

Michael Jones, whose 2016 military history, Bosworth, 1485, believes that Richard's charge, while a throw of the dice, was in fact "the final act of Richard's ritual affirmation of himself as rightful king." Ashdown-Hill says that Richard "acted in full accord with the late medieval literary tradition."  

After his accession, Henry Tudor would soon confirm this first impression, as the kind of man who preferred judicial murder to a face-to-face duel. While there would soon be a host of Yorkist family members executed on various trumped up charges by him, there is no record of Henry VII even lifting his sword at the battle which would establish his famous dynasty. 

What can I make of my own long fascination with this still controversial character, this long dead English King? In many ways, Richard was the last of his kind. His brief reign marked the end of the  Plantagenet Kings, and from this time forward, historians habitually date the beginning of modern times. Richard's pagentory charge was a medieval aristocrat's decision to play the role of king--a leader of his men--in the most heroic fashion possible. 

Henry was indeed a modern man, cut from different cloth, a man who had far less right to the throne than most of the people he exececuted, a man who had been poor and on the run, but who now intended to become rich by taking everything he could take from anyone who opposed him. The personal tale of Henry VII is a classic picture of a paranoid miser. This fruits of this monarch's gold hunger would--as is so often the case--be blown by his equally paranoid and indulged, vainglorious son, Henry VIII.  

I read the Daughter of Time (by popular mystery writer Josephine Tey) when I was eleven. Richard's story as she told it--here was a man "framed" by his enemies and maligned forever after--became an overriding obsession. I can still pick up my tattered Penguin paperback and find the bedraggled white rose I dried between the pages, oh, so many years ago! Today I can still remember all the kids at summer camp whose ears I talked off on a subject most of them had never heard of. Tilting at windmills in my own nerd way, I guess. 

Now, of course, I look at history--especially the kind of western history which I was taught in school--in a very different. In the great scheme of things, the innocence or guilt of an otherwise obscure English king doesn't matter much, but to this day it remains a heck of a great story. 

Roan Rose is my proud contribution to the Richardian genre. Here we hear the tale of the servant Rose, one who was privy to so much, yet still survived to tell it. 

Dear Rose! She is one of my favorite creations. I hope readers love her as much as I do.

~~Juliet Waldron  

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Writing popular historical fiction always leads to a dilemna--how much period detail can you "get away with" without alienating the casual reader? The audience for historical fiction is broad and it's difficult to find the correct niche, the readers you want to reach and entertain.  My own problem as a writer who hoped to make a few dollars from this "hobby" was exactly this.

Who was I writing for? Where was my "market"?

 

In the beginning, I naively hoped to bring more realism into the world of romance--or rather into my imagined new brand of romantic-historical fiction. Much to the dismay of editors, I could not leave out the flies or the fleas or the dirt, or the endless lugging of water, or the everyday sheer drudgery of an ordinary woman's life in the past. Her hair had to be hidden and her head covered, and her mouth must remain closed.

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Escaping into a dreamworld of history, usually with privileged protagonists who have servants (or slaves) laboring in the background over laundry and cooking and child care, did not particularly call to me. Trips to the backhouse in the winter, housekeeping, and women's cultural and gynecological issues--for example, Constanze Mozart's repeated near-death experiences while bearing six babies in nine years- interested me more. 

Relationships are the key to any storytelling success, but if these are not placed in the context of historical period, I, as a reader, can't take a story seriously. I sincerely try to make my own stories as authentic as I am able by doing research, by attending re-enactments and spending time with the experts there. They, like me, truly want to walk back into another time and place, immersing themselves not only with the pleasures, but the pains and discomforts, of the times in which our ancestors lived. 

Beyond the consequences of living in a world ignorant of germ theory or human anatomy, the second class "weaker sex"status of women was established and enforced by religion, by law and by custom. Women had very few legal rights, no contraception, no protection from abuse by spouses or intimate partners. There were strict rules for dress and deportment which applied to every social class and in every culture. China bound aristocratic women's feet so that girls grew up while enduring excruciating pain and became fit for little but sex, smoking opium and perhaps penning poetry. Victorians forced their girls into binding corsets that produced high-fashion "beauty," but deformed internal organs and shortened their lives.

Such battles appear to be still going on for women globally. Even here in the West, where, I'll admit, things are somewhat better in 2022 than in the world of 150 years ago when we couldn't vote and could be committed to life in an asylum on the say-so of a controlling father or bored spouse. We generally still don't get paid or promoted like our brothers.

 

These and other reflections about the dues paid by creators, brings me to The Northman, a film by Robert Eggers, now exiting movie theaters, a film which I caught just at the end of it's less than glorious run. What happened to this brilliant historical movie at the box office is, in my opinion, a tragedy, but a not unexpected one. (Set this movie beside the 1958 The Vikings and you will see what a long way historical accuracy has come in big-budget Hollywood films.) 

Scholarly research, breath-taking reproductions of weaponry, of clothing, of ships and towns, beautiful photography and settings, an all-star cast who acted their hearts out, a great depiction of Norse/Icelandic magic and an epic love-and-revenge story, it has is a financial "flop." Not even those warrior scenes and buckets and buckets of blood could not attract the same folks who appear to love the two Netflix Vikings series, one I could not watch. 

The reality is there is little that is admirable about Vikings. The Northman showed us why.  Plainly depicted is a society powered by toxic masculinity and a violent proto-Capitalism which involved stealing from everybody else they encountered and either murdering or enslaving the rest.  It is based upon an Icelandic saga, the one which became the inspiration for Hamlet. 

The hero, Amleth, is from a ruling class who are supported by campaigns of murderous ferocity, their wealth and life style supported by robbery and slaving. When his father, a local king, is murdered by his uncle and his mother is (apparently) abducted, Amleth, a mere pre-teen, must run for his life, vowing vengeance as he goes. We have no idea how he survives, but when we next see him, he is grown, a mercenary for Viking slavers in the lands of the Rus. He is now a full-grown berserker warrior, a ripped killing machine who has suppressed every human feeling.  Maybe "anti-hero" is a better designation for this character, although, naturally, that would not be the case for the original hearers of the tale.

I know something about Norse/Icelandic mythology, so I put my--meaningless--stamp of approval   ;)   on the mythic content of the movie. Those many magical episodes made perfect sense in that context. The mix of grim reality and the numinous and terrifying world in which the characters dwell brought the story to life for me. Here, and, and fairly successfully I think, is portrayed the Viking mind-set.  

Women's magic--sorcery was very real and much feared by the people of this time--was also powerfully conveyed. Before the Aesir gods of Asgard, were the mysterious, primordial Vanir gods. Among these survivals of earlier times was Freya, goddess of sex and sorcery, one of the few truly powerful female figures in Norse mythology. 

This same kind of Feminine Power is also exercised in other cultures. Olga of the Birch Trees, a Slavic witch enslaved by Amleth's band of mercenaries during one of those atrocity-filled Viking raids is introduced.  Although I tend to resist love stories in such settings, I got into this character. Amleth on his way to revenge (and given a kick-start by his encounter with another Slavic sorceress) naturally responds to Olga's ferocity and she assists him with her knowledge of potions. Additionally tasty was the addition of Icelandic legends concerning their island's clever Blue Foxes. And who could find fault with the Valkyrie carrying the slain-by-the sword warriors to Valhalla, those ritual markings carved into her teeth, howling like a demonic wolf, riding her winged white horse across the stormy sky?

--Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

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Comfrey, Cat Warfare, and Green Tomato Sauce

The Commoner and her King

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(Crawling out from under the bed to write this.) 

I grew Comfrey in my garden this year and the resulting plants are enormous tall spiky things with leaves that are reminiscent of tobacco. Comfrey was once used in teas, but no more. This is because we've learned that it is toxic when taken orally. Herbalists no longer recommend  it either as tea, or to be used as a wash on an open wound. 

                                                                          Feral Garden

However, the leaves and roots do contain allantonin, a protein that encourages cell division and thus healing. Traditionally, it was used as a wrap for broken limbs and injured joints. The leaves contain a storehouse of other good things --calcium, potassium, phosphorus & vitamins A, C and B12. It sends down a long taproot--sometimes as much as ten feet--to fetch nutrients up to the surface from deep in the soil. 

Why did I plant it? Well, I'd heard that it serves as an activating ingredient for compost piles or simply as a beneficial mulch dug into the garden at the end of the season. Starting it from seed on a windowsill was an early COVID project for me. The seeds must be stratified (chilled) for several weeks before planting in order for them to grow.

Comfrey has pretty purple flowers which I'm enjoying here at the end of the season. The late season pollinators are big fans too and for that reason alone I'm glad I planted it. I will chop it and dig it into both compost and garden after the first frost and and then hope for a flourishing garden next year. 

Right now, I’m typing around a gray love-sucker of a cat, our two year old gray neutered tom, Tony. He was named after Anthony Bourdain, so I should not be surprised at his over the top behavior. He's  charismatic and cuddly, but, sometimes, he's a wicked jealous cat bully.

The villain of the piece

After a few minutes of my typing away, Tony jumps down and slinks away, heading to the other side of the living room in order to mess with Kimi who was enjoying a sunbeam and minding her own business. Inspiring a PTSD attack in one of your emotionally vulnerable housemates and initiating a running battle is a sure-fire way to get my attention away from the keyboard and back to him—the place where it clearly ought to be. 

This is negative attention-getting, according to a long ago child psych course. A decade ago after this kind of inter-pussy cat escalation, I would have put Tony outside so he could test himself against the semi-urban jungle for a few hours daily. That can tone down the rambunctions of a boy cat, but I don’t want to risk losing him. 

                                                     Let's stare at Kimi until she freaks 

Moreover, I no longer want to be an accomplice to a cat's (quite normal) serial killer proclivities. If outdoor cats stuck to mice and voles--and, dare I suggest, maybe even a few of those bulb nabbing chipmunks--I wouldn’t mind so much, but my last outdoor cat--the legendary B0B--bagged way over the limit of native songbirds. My toleration of this will (no doubt) negatively affect my Karma.  

So, these days, my cats stay inside.

With three cats, I could write buckets on the hausfrau trials with multiple cat boxes, but I will spare you the gory details. 

What we house-bound humans are learning is that we must continuously work on integrating this three cat family. These particular cat-onalities continue to evolve and change, just as do the behaviors of the COVID-bound humans who reside here with them.   

And, last but not least: Green tomato pasta sauce!  Yes, this is delicious. I'd never seen a recipe before, but decided I'd try when it stopped raining here about five weeks ago. I was sick of lugging water to the large tomato pots at the end of tour lot and decided to quit. (A week after I took the plants down, it rained--naturally.) 

But as I stripped the vines I knew that some of these fine large green tomatoes would ripen but others would never get there. I used the smaller fruits in the following eyeball-it-as-you go sauce recipe. 

Green tomatoes chopped--the recipe I based this upon used 4 lbs. 

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

garlic cloves--I used 5, but we like garlic

one medium finely chopped onion

red pepper flakes or red pepper to give it a bit of heat

basil--I would say 20 leaves because it's another seasoning we like

You may bake it at 400 degrees in the oven until it reduces--about an hour--or d0 as I did, and throw it all in the crock pot and let it cook down together. 

Serve with pasta (linguini is a nice base) topped with 

pecorino romano cheese

More basil leaves 

and, if you are independently wealthy--a handful of pine nuts.  

We ate ours without the pine nuts and it was still delicious. This was one of those "plan-over" concoctions, where there was plenty left over for the next day.

~~Juliet Waldron

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Sympathy for the Devil

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From childhood on I have been fascinated by myths. I wasn't selective; I began with the Greek and Roman ones, like any European American kid, but soon discovered a book in my mother's hand-me-down library called "Fairy Tales of All Lands" which was a thousand pages of stories from all over the globe. I read this during a long, long recovery from the German measles when I was not supposed to be reading at all because of “the strain on the eyes,” but of course books were my habitual refuge and it was just too hard not to sneak in a few pages during long lonely hours in my sick room.  In those days the world was black and white--the good guys and the bad guys--and the divisions were clear. 

In college, I read translations of the Icelandic Eddas. These stories have none of Wagner's Ring Cycle Victorian romantic overlay and many more god/demon characters. From these, I learned more about Loki, one of those ambiguous, powerful trickster figures that inhabit mythology world-wide. Loki, it seems, could be male or female at will. Sometimes, in the stories, he's helpful, usually pulling the wool over some antagonist's eyes to help out a more obviously central figure, like the Father God, Odin.

Loki, in different forms, had a whole series of monster children. As a mare, he conceived Odin’s horse, the eight legged Sleipner, but let’s not get bogged down in the fascinating details of that story. J The ones I’d like to discuss are Fenrir, a kind of wolf on steroids, Jormungandr, a serpent—also on steroids—and a little girl, Hel. Hel would be beautiful, if half of her face were not a skull. Hel gave her name to our Christian Hell.  

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Odin, after hearing a prophecy that Loki’s children will destroy him, Asgard, and all his god-kin, decides to kidnap them. This is a serious breach of Norse morality well beyond the kidnapping, because earlier Odin had sworn an oath of eternal brotherhood with Loki.  “Oathbreaker” was the most serious charge that could be leveled against anyone. (And it probably still should be!) Neverthless, Odin figures his first duty is to save himself and his kingdom, so he steals the children anyway. His first move is to co-opt the terrifying Hel with the gift of a kingdom of her own, Helheim. Hel is now ruler of the dead--the ordinary souls--not the few chosen warriors who will feast eternally in Odin’s royal hall of Asgard.

Fenrir is just a puppy when he is taken. He longs for his mother and he longs for someone to love him, as puppies do. The gods are all afraid of him, however, because of the prophecy. Only the God Tyr is brave enough to feed him and be kind to him, and so Tyr becomes the only god poor Fenrir trusts.  The snake, Jormungandr, Odin tosses into the ocean, but this doesn’t get rid of him or his propensity to grow. Jormungandr goes on growing until, hidden beneath the sea, he encircles the entire earth. Earth becomes his adoptive Mother, and he becomes her secret protector and friend.

Meanwhile, Fenrir goes on growing. More and more afraid of him, the gods go to the Dark Elves for a special magical chain capable of holding him. When they return, they pretend to play a game with Fenrir, putting on different chains and encouraging him to demonstrate how strong he is by snapping them. Every time he does do, they clap exclaim at his strength and power. At last, they bring out the Elven chain, but Fenrir senses their duplicity. He refuses to allow them to put this one on until Tyr puts his sword hand in Fenrir’s mouth as a show of good faith. “If you cannot break this chain, you may do with me as you will.” Such a heart-breaking story! Tyr has sworn loyalty to his master Odin but he’s also bonded with the wolf and he knows full well when he puts his hand in that hot mouth, what is about to happen.

The great wolf, trusting Tyr, allows the gods to “try out” the strength of their new chain. This one, so full of magic, cannot be broken. Tyr loses both his sword hand and his monstrous friend, while the hatred of Fenrir for the gods who have so abused him will now grow ever stronger. This is one of the saddest tales in the long string of the broken oaths and broken friendships which litter the ancient story.

Actions have consequences, although it seems the gods have so far believed these could be avoided. Too many rules have been broken, too many laws disregarded, and the finely balanced harmony of the universe goes spinning out of control. The time comes when Fenrir, as foretold, at last breaks even that magical chain. Then, he will kill the oath-breaker Odin and finish his vengeance by swallowing the sun. Jormungandr will arise, carrying the ocean over the land. Hel will unleash her army of the dead and the world-wide apocalypse the Norse called Ragnorak will bring utter ruin to gods and men.

When I was younger, I remember only being afraid of Fenrir,  Jormungandr and Hel, those black monstrous terrors, that break down of order. The rationalizations presented for Odin’s actions: “the ends justifies the means” seemed an inevitable part of the cruel, cynical "realism" that was part of adulthood.

Now, re-visiting the story, I have had the dizzying experience of seeing the old black and white change places. My heart breaks for Fenrir and the other stolen children; I can better understand the natural forces they represent. With a shock of recognition, I see Odin’s lies, his self-service, his delusion of total control, and also have a spine-tingling vision of how some forces are too huge for gods—or men—to imagine they can command.

  

 ~~Juliet Waldron

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