00:01:26.540Okay. So I'm joined today by Denny S. Bryce and your newest book is The Other Princess. Denny,
00:01:37.080welcome. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you. I'm very glad to be here today and chatting about
00:01:43.860this book, my third novel, my first with William Morrow. So pretty cool. I'm not mad at anybody.
00:01:53.560um the full title i'm gonna throw in that subtitle because it has uh some fun attached to it uh the
00:02:03.520other princess a novel of queen victoria's goddaughter and the smart marketing people
00:02:11.560at william morrow added that wonderful tag because that puts you right where you need to be
00:02:18.360Mm hmm. It explains right away what we're doing. So explain, explain who who is your novel about?
00:02:24.780Explain. My novel is inspired by the life of Sarah Forbes Veneta, a real person. In fact,
00:02:34.020this is my first biographical historical fiction. And it was an exciting journey. I mean,
00:02:41.400how the book was, came to be and was born. And then the research and writing, it was something
00:02:48.700that I had not had the, it was just a different process, but it was so exciting. And keeping in
00:02:56.380mind that I said, third book and the cover is beautiful, but you can't see the cover. Go look
00:03:01.300for it. I'm going to post the cover. I'll post the cover. It's a beautiful cover. Yes. Yes. I love
00:03:06.100the covers that another some more kudos for the team over there at William Morrow but how Sarah
00:03:11.520Forbes Bonetta was the the sort of script on her the short story if you will is that she was gifted
00:03:19.860and I put that word in quotes always to Queen Victoria by a captain um you know I had to bring
00:03:28.960His name, Frederick Forbes, because her middle name is Forbes. He was a lieutenant commander in the British Navy. Part of his work, his role in the British Navy at the time, I think it was British Royal Navy.
00:03:47.780But anyway, at the time, was to go to Africa and work on behalf of the queen, interacting with the different African tribes and kingdoms and hierarchies to talk about, you know, if some of them were involved in certain types of, I guess the word is agriculture, this, that, and the other, but some were involved in the slave trade.
00:04:15.440And so since the Brits, I believe their law was 1834 in terms of ending in slavery and slavery trafficking, if you will, part of his mission in the 1840s was to go and interact with these different tribal leaders and try to talk to them about changing their model of generating revenue.
00:04:40.460I guess that's a way of putting it, a tragic way of putting it, a way of putting it nonetheless.0.79
00:04:47.340So he's on his mission, hanging out in King Gizo's camp.0.98
00:04:52.340Gizo was the king of the Dahomey tribe.0.98
00:04:56.400And he just, out of all the children and adults and people around him,0.89
00:05:02.780Because part of what King Giso did in, and again, I put this in quotes, celebration and showing his own wealth, if you will.0.83
00:05:14.940He had certain celebrations where there were a lot of deaths and massacres of people to show that he had enough enslaved people that he could sacrifice a certain number and still have more.0.65
00:05:30.220So our dear captain went and saw one child that somehow caught his attention, and he cut a deal.
00:05:42.700Please let me take this child to the queen, who is your equal in England, and show her this gift.
00:05:53.000And the thing that, in terms of source materials that I found amazing, were two journals written by Captain Frederick Forbes, and he described, I mean, part of what he did was, as he journaled constantly about all of his travels, and he had sections not only about the Dahomey, but sections about the vegetation,
00:06:21.000Sections about the animals and things that were a part of the various regions he was visiting.
00:06:29.900So these two volumes were published in 1851.
00:06:35.840And they're on the Internet, by the way.
00:06:38.500You can download the PDFs and just thumb through his words, which is always amazing when you're getting original text.
00:06:48.260So anyway, that's her origin story, if you will, from that perspective. But her true origin story has to do with her family in her village before they were enslaved, before they were murdered.
00:07:04.400He was her father was a king. She had she was a princess. She was one of his children. And as a princess, she had certain privileges within the context of her community recognition, what have you.
00:07:20.020There are special statures and standings. And I used that, just those facts, because, of course, I was not there and did not talk to her or her family.
00:07:31.500But there were certain, I guess, benchmarks, I will call them, in her history that really contributed to my having what I feel felt as I was writing it, a greater connection to the young woman, the little girl, the person that she was.
00:07:53.980and had to be in order to succeed, in order to survive, in order to retain her own identity
00:08:04.540in a culture, in a time where her identity was defined by others. And so she had to find her
00:08:14.820way to keep who she was the best way she could. Do you remember when you first heard about her,
00:08:22.180Like before this book was even something you were doing.
00:08:25.360There was a show on Netflix or something.
00:08:29.900I can't remember which called Victoria.
00:08:32.500And there's a scene in one of the episodes where Victoria,
00:08:38.000this is the one where the gal who played on Dr.
00:08:52.180So I saw her there and it's just sort of like, oh, I wonder if that's true, you know, to have this African little girl in this episode and have Victoria and her Queen Victoria interact with her.
00:09:05.780So that was a passing search. Just did it and went on about my business.
00:09:12.300And then Tessa Woodward, who is my editor at William Morrow, put up a post on then Twitter, not ex-Twitter, but then Twitter, and her post was, Sarah Forbes Spanetta, I wonder why anyone, has anybody a story or where's this book?
00:09:33.580I want this book. And I'm paraphrasing her tweet, of course. But I was like, hmm. And then another great friend of mine, Vanessa Riley, also mentioned the tweet to me.
00:09:52.280And I was like, oh, so then I went about the business of trying to put my put something together and present to Tessa so that we could get that ball rolling.
00:10:04.860And she liked what I presented. And that was the origin story of how that started, you know.
00:10:12.600And the research was phenomenal, just phenomenal. Not only there were some pieces that I found right away, and one of them might be near me and then again may not.
00:10:27.100i'm looking at my i keep forgetting i'm not necessarily on camera but i am looking around
00:10:33.880at my bookshelf and one of the books was written in 1999 by walter and i'm gonna mess over his last
00:10:43.760name but he was an african-american children's book author walter dean myers thank you so much
00:10:51.040And what he did, he was known, I guess, to always be a big fan of old bookstores. And the story that I read was that a London bookstore found buried in a corner a bunch of letters written by Sarah Forbes Bonetta and called him and said,
00:11:16.260hey, you know, this is something that I think is up your alley. So come on over from America to
00:11:24.760London, I'll hold this stuff for you. And that's where he got that, his origin story, if you will.
00:11:31.760And there was a lot of information there. In addition, one, a resource that I mentioned
00:11:38.620frequently to those interested in historical fiction and what the research is about is
00:11:44.740newspapers, if you're in that time period where there was some printing presses and at least that
00:11:51.220means of communication around. So britishnewspapers.com, newspapers.com, ProQuest. I happen to be a
00:12:00.320adjunct professor at Drexel University in the MFA program, which means I have access to this
00:12:07.700fabulous online community and people the library of congress ask a librarian which is also an
00:12:16.160online feature of the library of congress can be so powerfully useful um the people who man or woman
00:12:25.600those phones um or the that line of um the ask of librarian at the library of congress are very
00:12:34.560responsive and it's really a great tool. So those pieces, it so happened that I visited London on
00:12:44.560several different occasions and during two of them, I think, at least two if not one, I visited
00:12:50.780Windsor Castle and it's a tour but still the feel and the time spent. So I had that experience to
00:12:59.980rely on. A lot of reading was the rest of what I was able to pull and global, you know, like some
00:13:09.060of the online tools that allow you to see different communities up close, even though you're many,
00:13:17.120many thousands of miles away. Lots of information that I found intriguing about the school she went
00:13:26.740to when she was young that the queen insisted she attend and everything from what was purchased
00:13:36.780for her was trapped through almost like an accounting system because I think one of the
00:13:45.420primary people responsible to the queen for her travels and what have you was an account was a
00:13:56.040treasurer if you will so there was a lot of uh financial fact checking back and forth that
00:14:02.040was available from that long ago so those things and there's photography of her and one book that
00:14:10.840i found about her uh eventual mate and i'm not going to sort of like i try to stretch don't want
00:14:19.760give away too much of the story uh but um he this one book written by a medical doctor from
00:14:28.980nigeria who wasn't a historian but was fascinated by this particular man from history and he wrote
00:14:36.800um just a detailed book about this gentleman who was an incredibly wealthy um african businessman
00:14:46.260But his history was quite intriguing and had folded in very nicely to the story of Sarah Forbes Veneta.
00:14:59.240And I've talked a lot about Sarah Forbes Veneta, but her original name is spelled A-I-N-A.
00:15:07.140I have been pronouncing it Anya, but, you know, I'm not absolutely sure that's the actual pronunciation.
00:15:16.260But the first, very first thing that she experienced after being rescued was her name was changed by the church, by the missionaries in Africa, which is a strong element of what she experienced.
00:15:34.880Her guardianship, her day-to-day routine was put in the hands of missionaries and or pastors in London when she lived in reverence and those people.
00:15:46.260because that was a very tight community that had a strong connection to the,
00:16:08.980I just want to talk a minute about the princess element.
00:16:12.020So she was a princess as a young girl.
00:16:14.320Like she was the daughter of the King.
00:16:16.260But then when Queen Victoria, when she went to England and again, not to spoil all the different places she goes, but she she's part of high society, like she's hanging out with Queen Victoria's daughter.
00:16:27.280She everyone knows this black girl is a princess. And that's so interesting. Yeah.
00:16:33.480Yeah. And again, I relied on newspaper articles. When she first arrived in Africa, the press, the British press is consistent over centuries in being very intrigued by the royal family's comings and goings and their friends and what have you.
00:16:53.200So there were news articles that were just like, hey, what is Queen Victoria doing with this Black girl from Africa that is always at royal functions and with her children traveling, et cetera, et cetera?
00:17:10.280So that provided me with the idea that there was a connection, a strong relationship between the children and Sarah Forbes Veneta, because the queen was still the queen and she didn't just hang out.
00:17:29.920She didn't hang out with all of her 10 kids or how many of her yet. I had to keep track in a timeline of where are they now? Where are they now?
00:17:40.280And it seemed logical to have Princess Alice be her buddy because they're the same age.
00:17:47.620You know, even Walter, you have his name in your head better than I do.
00:17:53.140He even alluded to that possibility in his 1999 book, and it totally made sense.
00:17:59.060And then I found some letters that her daughter wrote years later, Victoria Randall, Davis Randall.
00:18:08.940But Victoria, her eldest daughter, was Victoria's actual godchild. Delivery of the spoon, they had to ask for permission to name her Victoria, and the whole lineage thing happened there.
00:18:26.600Just because it's in my head, another fun fact that I found was on Ancestry.com, of all places, they have, there's one family called the Schoen family, S-C-H-O-N.
00:18:41.780I can't remember exactly how I spelled it, but they're one of the locations that she lived.
00:18:46.980Their entire census from 1860 is on Ancestry.com.
00:18:53.600But not only do you get the family and who was in the house at that time, you also get their neighbors.
00:19:00.540You also get, you know, it's just this whole book, practically, of how they connected communities and the information being there from the 1860s.
00:19:11.580I know those people who work back in the 1600s are like, what do you mean?
00:19:15.900And that sounds like, you know, easy as pie.
00:19:19.200All you have to know to me after spending.
00:19:21.540So most of my stories are in the early 20th century.
00:19:24.680So I was very excited to find these places, you know, writing and creating and history.
00:19:37.000I think facts and all of that good stuff.
00:19:40.100And for me, go hand in hand because they and I get inspired.
00:19:45.180by that what if that turns out to be gee whiz that happened so how can i make sure my characters
00:19:55.700are strong and pulling through as characters and doing and and doing the job that they're supposed
00:20:02.200to do in terms of emotional arcs and changes but then just sort of just stringing in threading in
00:20:09.760thematically those points from history because otherwise you go down a rabbit hole and I said
00:20:17.640thematically deliberately because you want to stay focused so that if your theme is at you know which
00:20:26.900bits of history work best in terms of your storytelling or hopefully that's the goal
00:20:32.920so i mean just related to that i'm curious to know so you've got all this research done
00:20:40.260and then how do you turn that into a novel i guess it's about the character how did you find
00:20:46.260the character of sarah to really guide the readers through and now we're just going to take a break
00:20:51.440for a word from our sponsors got pc optimum points visit shoppers drug mart for the bonus
00:20:58.340Redemption event and get more for your
00:23:16.960but there's one sequence in her life that was fat1.00
00:23:21.480that gave me, I said, boy, this woman is stubborn. And that gave me, I said, well,0.94
00:23:29.220how do you get stubborn? What is it that feeds into that sense of ownership at a young age?
00:23:35.800I own my own life and I'm going to, so what are those things that, that a character in when you,
00:23:45.000because it's fiction might happen to this character that would help build her up bring her back down
00:23:53.300a little build her back up again build you know so what is that flow that really makes a difference
00:24:00.740another thing i looked into that was very important for me are the sounds of any time period i'm
00:24:08.760working in um so the music is critical the african music at that time i mentioned in the story some
00:24:17.020of the instruments that were a part of that period and then i went and looked and listened
00:24:22.180to those sounds mendelssohn is a huge was i think is victoria's favorite composer and and the wedding
00:24:30.900march was played initially for i believe the royal princess royal under queen victoria
00:24:38.740who was victoria as well victoria you know it's just everywhere and those sounds and exploring
00:24:45.740the music and the dance and as a former you know dancer actress person myself going through those
00:24:54.020arts remembering my history of dance and and the polka and all of these things that were actually
00:25:01.080had their great heyday in royal courts back in that time period. So it gives you a sense
00:25:08.900of the roundness of life. And even in her small village, one of the lines that I use
00:25:16.520is that her mother tells her as a child, people are watching, people are paying attention to our
00:25:24.600family, because we are the king and queen and the princess and princesses, prince and princesses
00:25:33.360that they look up to, or if not look up to, they're watching. So be mindful of who you are publicly.
00:25:40.400And that's, you know, some of those themes, some of that information is something that we all
00:25:47.040experience, I think, on some level or not. That's the, you know, yin and yang of it is like how
00:25:54.280much parental information sticks if you lose your parents at a young age or if you're displaced
00:26:03.260from or an outliner in certain areas. How do you go about fitting in? What do you retain
00:26:11.700of your self-confidence or do you lose it? So those emotional character questions,
00:26:19.500after you get all that history in your head that's where you start writing and i'm just curious do
00:26:26.880you know why tessa had said she wanted this book in the first place do you know why she felt
00:26:32.260this book needed to be in the world at this time why do you think this book connects to the world
00:26:37.440at this time yeah because i because i i don't know the answer to that question i'll be quite honest
00:26:42.580But I think that it, and she and I might share some of this opinion I'm about to throw out there, but hey, it's a heyday of conversation when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, I mean, I'm not a royal family follower, you know, I'm not, that's not my, you know, I'm not sitting there turning the page to see what's happening.
00:27:10.580But you couldn't avoid those stories. You couldn't avoid that news. As an African-American woman, I'm looking at an African-American mixed race or mixed race woman presents herself as African-American is she's she was beautiful.
00:27:27.360she was all of these things and then this whole thing with the press it was just crazy pants and
00:27:33.860then public opinion was so strong and continues to be strong about um them my last time i paid
00:27:42.700attention prior to paid attention to the royal family in a in a on a semi-daily basis was um
00:27:50.820when i was a kid and it was princess diana and and so you always think about that and then i mean
00:27:57.280And my goodness, Princess, I mean, Queen Elizabeth forever was queen, it seemed, you know, lifetimes.
00:38:29.840Folks will be like, what are you doing?
00:38:33.060What I love about that approach, and it really it comes out through through this book as well, is that you really bring you're so excited about the history, obviously.
00:38:41.760and then through a novel you know not everybody is going to sit down and read a biography or a
00:38:46.760history book but a novel so then people are going to learn this story and because you like you've
00:38:51.940done so much research and so many facts i feel comfortable thinking oh now i know the story of
00:38:55.900sarah forbes bonetta because you told it through this fictional way and then people are going to
00:39:01.100know this story of her and that's so great yes that plus there is interpretation there's a lot
00:39:08.240of fiction in fiction yeah yeah there's a lot of fiction you know when i start having dialogue
00:39:14.340of a five-year-old it's uh it's it's not necessarily i wasn't there but again uh recently
00:39:22.320taught something and we talked about history as a jumping off point it's an inspiration
00:39:29.560if you it's sort of like muscle memory and dance uh back in the day when i used to do that
00:39:35.780professionally, once that is ingrained in your body, you have the freedom to be creative. You
00:39:42.660have the freedom to move any way you want to move because your body knows what's the right way.
00:39:48.560And so absorbing the history that matters because you don't want to go down rabbit holes
00:39:53.560and that can take you 10 years to write a book if you get, you know, and then your story goes
00:40:00.500this way and that way as well um it's really satisfying to have it in your head and and then
00:40:09.180you just go with it then you just go with the story and that's really challenging i think any
00:40:16.460writer will tell you every book is a new challenge uh no matter how many books even the vanessa
00:40:22.580riley's of the world who have more than 25 versus denny who has written five but three are in the
00:40:28.660marketplace, you still are there with character, character, character, and starting each book is
00:40:36.780a new adventure. Well, Denny, thank you so much for talking with me today about this book. Sarah
00:40:42.880Forbes Bonetta is someone, I'm just excited there's a book about her as well. It's, you know,
00:40:47.820I follow different Instagram accounts that just sort of show old photographs of people.
00:40:53.960And then they just show a picture and then they say, this is who this is. And Sarah Forbes Bonetta
00:40:56.980it comes up every now and then and I'm just like I want to know more about her who is this person
00:41:00.700so I was so happy to know that this book exists well I'm so glad you had a chance to read it and
00:41:06.560I'm so glad you invited me to join your program your podcast because I listen to it and as you
00:41:13.040say you you talk to people I know and it's fun it's fun to um have um to hear more people talking
00:41:21.620about historical fiction it's um it's a genre that continues to excite people and i'm thrilled
00:41:29.400to be a part of it well thank you so much for joining me and best of luck when with your book
00:41:34.440launch which is coming october 3rd yeah yeah just when this podcast comes out yeah yay thank you so
00:41:42.780much so again this book which is so good it's called the other princess a novel of queen
00:41:53.820victoria's goddaughter and you can learn more about denny including links to all for social
00:41:58.220media her newsletter and stuff it's all at denny s bryce.com and this is vulgar history and if you
00:42:04.820want to keep up with me and this show so i have a website which is vulgar history.com and if you go
00:42:11.180there are transcripts for the most recent episodes available. They're done by Aveline Malek from The
00:42:16.520Wordery. Thank you so much, Aveline, for making this podcast available to people who like to read
00:42:21.060podcasts. You can also get in touch with me there. There's a contact form at vulgarhistory.com. You
00:42:25.680could also get in touch with me at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com. I'm on Instagram at vulgarhistorypod.
00:42:31.800I'm on TikTok at vulgarhistory. Who knows what's happening right now with social media, but if you
00:42:36.000go to a social media place and look for Vulgar History, chances are I'm going to be there.
00:42:39.380vulgar history merchandise is available if you go to vulgarhistory.com store that is the best
00:42:44.880shipping for within the u.s it takes you to a t public store there's also if you're outside the
00:42:49.320u.s there's a red bubble store which is vulgarhistory.redbubble.com where you can get
00:42:53.800all the same products i also have a patreon so you can support this podcast i'm on patreon at
00:42:58.860patreon.com and foster writer and that's where you donate a small monthly amount of money and
00:43:05.400then in return you get some stuff so if you donate at least one dollar a month you get early
00:43:09.600ad free access to all episodes of vulgar history podcast if you pledge five dollars or more a month
00:43:15.220you get access to the early ad free episodes but also bonus episodes i do there so vulgar peace
00:43:20.420theater where we talk about costume dramas from history as well as a series that i call so this1.00
00:43:26.760asshole sometimes it's just so these messy bitches just talking about people they're shorter episodes1.00
00:43:31.760than the regular vulgar history and often i just talk about kind of shitty men frankly anyway and1.00
00:43:36.920you can get access to all of those for five dollars or more a month and then also if you're
00:43:40.540at the five dollars or more a month level you get access to the vulgar history discord which is like
00:43:45.320a group chat for people who are fans of this podcast to just like talk shit about john knox
00:43:50.460and whatever we want to do anyway so that's all at patreon.com such ann foster writer anyway thank
00:43:55.780you so much for joining me i hope you all run out to get denny's book it's so good if you live
00:44:01.000anywhere near where she's going to be touring go go see her and until next time my friends keep0.94
00:44:06.240your pants on and your tits out vulgar history is hosted written and researched by ann foster0.98