Book Two -- Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman

Here Be Dragons
Sharon Kay Penman
Historical Fiction
700 pages

After reading crappy historical fiction, I wanted to read the good stuff, so I went for the first of Sharon Kay Penman's Welsh Trilogy, because I love her book The Sunne In Splendour which is about Richard III and the War of the Roses. Here Be Dragons is about an even more obscure period of British history--the end of the 12th, beginning of the 13th centuries. Yup...it's the Robin Hood era and this book is partly about Evil Prince John.

Actually, it's is about two very different rulers, John in England and Llewelyn in Wales, and--yes, I know this sounds like a movie ad--the woman who was forced to choose between them. John inherited the extensive Angevin Empire--all of England and half of medieval France--created by his father Henry II. Llewelyn inherited one third of Wales in a time when the Welsh princes had to swear fealty to the English crown. Quite the power imbalance and yet, an ambitious Welsh Prince could still make quite a lot of trouble for the English. So John looked for a way to get Llewelyn on his side and found it in an arranged marriage between Llewelyn and Joanna, one of John's many illegitimate children.

This is pure history, all these people existed. However because all we know of Joanna is that she was John's bastard daughter, that she married Llewelyn, had children with him, that there was a scandal and when she died, Penman has a great chance to invent a fascinating character and she makes the most of it. John only learns about Joanna after Joanna's mother dies and he rescues the young girl from poverty and obscurity. At that point in his life, she's his only daughter and whatever else history has to say about Bad King John, it tells us he was a devoted father to both his legitimate and illegitimate children. Of course, Joanna learns to love her father; she knows little of his personal flaws or the mistakes he's making as king of a kingdom beset with money issues and French enemies.

When John marries Joanna off to Llewelyn, who is 32 years old to her 14, she's understandably terrified. She finds herself in a country where very few people speak her language and most of her husband's subjects, including his son from an earlier liaison, resent her presence, both because she's English (although she rightfully points out that that's an insult; she's Norman) and because she's her father's daughter.

Penman could have gone the easy route and had Joanna and Llewelyn fall for one another immediately, but, although eventually they learn to love each other passionately, it takes them a while to get there. And even afterwards, it's hardly an easy marriage, particularly as Llewelyn's ambitions for Wales puts him more and more at odds with John. John for his part, is struggling and making bad decision after bad decision; he is, after all, the king who was forced to sign the Magna Carta.

And yes, it sounds kind of dry, but in spite of her habit to indulge in the occasional info-dump, Penman brings these people to life enough, makes them real enough, that you really do want to know what happens to them. That you learn things--like the fact that the Magna Carta went too far and took too much power from the Church, and so John had the Pope's backing in his war on the barons--along the way is cool, but you never lose sight that in the middle of all this history is a woman who is torn between her father and her husband. Joanna's not a passive character; she's got the family temper and she's intelligent. Watching as she faces the facts about her father is painful but it feels very real to anyone who's ever loved someone only to realize that they're not a good person.

And really, that's where historical fiction can shine and a good writer can keep their readers hooked. By making history about real people with motives and concerns we can understand, the novelist can take us past the dry facts and show us that, in the end, history isn't about forces we can't understand, but about sons whose parents didn't love them, daughters who have to make hard decisions and mothers who want the best for their children.

Next up? To Serve and Submit which is some kind of fantasy novel that promises to be both soft-core porn and a fascinating story about one girl's epic journey. It better deliver.

What?! A girl's gotta take a break from the weighty stuff and have a little fluffy fun.