00:05:27.780William Rufus didn't have any children.
00:05:29.380He was very possibly, although we cannot, we can't, there's no actual proof,
00:05:33.540but he may have been homosexual, but we don't know for certain.
00:05:37.480But certainly he didn't marry, and the next heir to the throne would either have been young Henry or brother Robert, who was out of operations at the time elsewhere.
00:05:49.800And so tell me more about Nesta, and how did you first come upon the story of this Welsh princess?
00:05:56.960I guess because it comes back to actually Pembroke Castle.
00:06:02.560And I have written later medieval things about William Marshall, a man called William Marshall, who was Lord of Pembroke, and also Richard de Clare the same.
00:06:12.020Pembroke's in South Wales. And I became interested in sort of the origins of what was going on in that area.
00:06:19.660and quite often Princess Nest or Nesta, she has both names, kept coming into it and how she had
00:06:27.220married a Norman warlord and founded a rich dynasty down in the area of South Wales that
00:06:34.500had been her home. And so she comes into the history generally speaking if you actually
00:06:39.480research that area and that period. So she kept coming up on my radar. As well, her children
00:07:14.460he was a bit of a gossipy I suppose you call him a tabloid journalist these days
00:07:19.120he made up all sorts of interesting didn't make up he told all sorts of interesting stories
00:07:23.900and they are still you can still get hold of them today in translation so I knew about him
00:07:28.800and I loved to holiday in that part of the world it's beautiful in Pembrokeshire absolutely
00:07:34.100beautiful and so again I was steeping myself in the history and the surroundings well and I want
00:07:40.420to let people know who haven't read your book yet that you you really do write with a real a very
00:07:46.480um the sense of place is there i i'm not surprised to hear that you have frequently
00:07:51.760visited the areas you're talking about it's it very much comes through in the writing
00:07:55.620thank you yes it's i've been then been to pembroke numerous times normally we hire a
00:08:00.460holiday cottage for a week i've done talks at pembroke castle cardigan castle and i've been
00:08:05.960to Carew, which doesn't look anything like Nesta's, where Nesta was born and brought up, but
00:08:11.940because the castle is a lot later now, but the whole general area. And my son was at university
00:08:18.060in Aberystwyth, which isn't that much further up the coast. And so we were always towing and
00:08:23.460throwing to Wales. So it's like, I'm not Welsh. I don't have any Welsh blood, but I still feel like
00:08:30.160it's a form of home. Well, and that reminds me too, in the book, what we see happen with Nesta
00:08:35.820is, I mean, she's taken away from her land, from her culture, but she really holds strong to her
00:08:43.520language, to her Welsh roots. I thought, again, I've never, I don't think I've ever read a book
00:08:49.660about a Welsh person before. So it was very interesting to me. And I appreciate how much
00:08:56.640I learned about the culture through her and through her determination to give her children
00:09:00.980Welsh names and to retain this sense of identity. I think that was fascinating, actually, because
00:09:06.700she had a Norman husband who, given the way the Normans were, could have named all his children
00:09:12.440with Norman names. And when you read the history books these days, you do see the sons,
00:09:19.120William and Morris, have that thing going on. But David, you could use both ways,
00:09:24.960It's both Welsh and Norman. But the daughter, Angharad, that means beloved. And it's a Welsh name. And Gladys, his youngest. So the girls both had completely Welsh names, which I thought was interesting. I think Gerald himself probably had a thing for Wales.
00:09:45.680Well, and that's the sort of clue I would imagine when you're piecing together to try to turn historical snippets into a novel, you're trying to figure out what was this woman's character like? And was that that's the sort of hint that maybe told you her Welsh heritage remained important, just looking at the names of the children?
00:10:02.400I think so. I think absolutely. You do get that sense of it. And the fact as well that Gerald accepted her brother. She had a brother called Griffith, who went into exile in Ireland as a little boy when she was first captured.
00:10:21.640but then he returned and he was you know allowed to like you know he was sat around the family
00:10:25.980table and they helped him when they could and this is with completely with gerald's permission
00:10:30.600so you see here um that nestor must have had some influence over gerald and gerald what must have
00:10:37.620had his own input into this into this story to be to be letting her brother come and stay with them
00:10:42.780when their brother was a bit on that you know a bit ambiguous about normans as well as fellow
00:10:49.080Welsh. The Welsh themselves fought among each other ferociously.
00:10:54.980Well, and that's sort of, that was what was interesting to me as well about this book that
00:10:58.380was set in a time and place where in retrospect, we look back and we know the results of the
00:11:03.780expansion of England into Wales and things like that. But at that time, anything was possible.
00:11:10.420Anyone could have captured anybody. So there's a strong sense of uncertainty, I found.
00:11:15.560Yes, definitely. You never knew who was going to stab you in the back, literally as well as figuratively, because the Welsh Wales was divided into kingdoms or principalities and the rulers were all struggling for power themselves and would raid each other's lands indiscriminately and then make pacts.
00:11:39.880So one minute they'd be friends, the next minute they'd be deadly enemies, and you never knew which way it was going to turn. Literally on a small coin, they would change their minds. And they would capture, take cattle, horses, people, they would capture people and then sell them in Ireland on the Dublin slave blocks.
00:11:59.340and so all this was going on amongst the welsh themselves and then you get the norman element0.92
00:12:04.360coming in and then everybody so it's just like one big brawl and some of the welsh might think
00:12:10.800oh well if we ally with the normans we'll you know we'll get one up on on our neighbors there
00:12:15.860that'll make them weaker which is what nesta's father in fact did he allied with william the
00:12:20.280conqueror until william the conqueror died nesta's father was secure in his lands it was only when
00:12:26.080William Rufus came to the throne and saw all these hungry Normans waiting like vultures
00:12:30.540and said, you know, all right, then go on. You know, that Nesta's father then suffered the
00:12:36.180consequences. I find it also very interesting. And your books, I believe, primarily focus on
00:12:42.060the stories of women from history. So it was really interesting to me also to get into this
00:12:47.940time and place in this warlike history, but from the point of view of a woman who, although she's
00:12:53.100very strong-minded and she does what she can. She's trapped in so many ways. She's not able
00:12:59.820to be involved because she's just tucked away. I think that's absolutely true. Women were strong,
00:13:06.100but they had to be strong in other ways, I think, a lot of the time. And that quite often meant being1.00
00:13:14.000quite cunning and working out, how am I going to do this? And how does this work? And so they
00:13:20.620They stood in their own light, I think, is one of the things.
00:14:45.440And if it's between an eight and a 10, then I'll go with it. And if I think, no, that's not really likely, then I'll find a way around. And I think there's always a way around. There's always a way around. You just have to think harder and let your subconscious work harder, too.
00:15:03.400What research, what sources were you able to find to learn about what facts we know about Nesta and her life?
00:15:09.760Well, there is a raft of resources. I probably had to go to some primary stuff. There's a Welsh chronicle, and my pronunciation of Welsh is terrible. It's the Brutti Twisogion, and any Welsh people listening are probably screaming at me, that's completely the wrong pronunciation.
00:15:26.540but it's a chronicle that was written from the I think 6th century don't quote me on that all the
00:15:33.360way up to the 13th century of the doings in Wales and it's written in Welsh and I've got a Welsh
00:15:39.100one side translation into English the other so that gives you the basics it's got a few things
00:15:44.560wrong sometimes the date lines are a bit dodgy but the story is there and there's also I've got
00:15:50.300a book of welsh laws from the period medieval welsh laws that tell that tell you what what
00:15:57.920rules welsh people lived by called the triads and various other welsh folk tales it's all the
00:16:04.080primary source bits and pieces uh and then i go to second resource academic works so i found a
00:16:11.080couple of biographies of nesta that that i read while going along and then i go and look at if
00:16:18.260anybody who got a university thesis out online get hold of that and a couple of other textbooks
00:16:24.060on Wales so it's all being read as I go along I mean I read enough to get started and then
00:16:30.860while I'm writing that first draft I am deepening that knowledge more and more until by the time I
00:16:37.340get to the fourth or fifth draft I've got I might think all that needs altering all that needs
00:16:41.260altering but generally speaking I've got a good grounding. And now we're just going to take a
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00:21:07.320So then the author's going, right, which one?
00:21:11.320So I had to choose where to set this scene.
00:21:14.840And both guidebooks tell me that it was at their castle, which I chose the one that seemed the most obvious to me.
00:21:24.000But it was interesting to see that a bit of competition, even these days, between two tourist attractions to have the scene happen at their particular castle.
00:21:35.140that's so interesting and that kind of speaks to because her story my sense of it is that there are
00:21:42.840factual things we know she lived we know this was her husband but it's it's almost to a level
00:21:48.140of mythology or almost a fairy tale the the story of it yeah there's definitely it's very hard to
00:21:56.040find nesta in the um in in in in history you've really got got to dig for dig for the nuggets of
00:22:02.980it and then and ask questions um about what happened how did how did this happen it's um
00:22:10.620she was known as the helen of wales which meant that well so we so the suggestion is that she was
00:22:15.800very beautiful and we know that gerald was born at windsor castle in in england where his father
00:22:22.600was um in charge of the castle so we know that gerald um had although he was a younger son would
00:22:29.200have had excellent training in everything. How he got to Wales and into the employ of the
00:22:35.700Montgomerys, who knows? You know, those things just aren't told in history. So you just have to
00:22:41.020find a way that seems plausible and feels right. It is very, very difficult.
00:22:48.860Well, and that's what I really admire about the work you've done in this book is to take
00:22:53.060what you're describing, you know, is this an eight out of 10 plausibility? So for you to be
00:22:57.900presented with a list of facts and some of them just on paper you think well how on earth is
00:23:03.120someone how are you going to turn this into a plausible plot twist how are you gonna have your
00:23:08.140character believably do this situation so you're just kind of coloring in the spaces between these
00:23:13.940facts so i think that yeah that's it you have to color in the spaces i mean there are there's some
00:23:18.880some definite set piece scenes i mean the bit the bit there's a siege early on in the in the story
00:23:23.800at Pembroke Castle, where Gerald's enemy, Owen of Powys, we know he was present. We know that
00:23:30.900Gerald played a trick on him to persuade him that the castle was stuffed to the rafters with
00:23:36.300goodies when it wasn't. So that is down in the history books. So you can think,
00:23:41.640well, I can really get a good siege written out of this. But then there are other bits that you
00:23:46.920think, well, there are just gaps where you have to think, look at the wider history and see what
00:23:51.680was happening and who was around and then sometimes you can make deductions well if so and so was there
00:23:57.360and this happened then then so and so must have happened and must have been and it's like like
00:24:02.420this where these these two castles that claim that this isn't the um the escape incident happened
00:24:07.640there you find one's only four miles from um where the enemy lived oh in a palace it was and that he
00:24:15.520was at a feast there within that timeline and then the other other castle is way down south
00:24:21.940hundreds couple of hundred miles in the middle of Gerald's territory rather than on the border
00:24:26.560with Powys so what's more likely which is the eight out of ten of those yeah well and I wonder
00:24:33.140too when we're looking at something that happened so long ago for instance these two these two
00:24:39.340castles and who's to say where anything happened you just explained which is more likely but
00:24:43.740you know at what point in history did the other castles start saying oh actually that happened
00:24:47.840here and that was a way to get people to visit that maybe that happened 500 years ago so there's
00:24:52.380still a history to that claim you know it's yeah it's such a long period of time since this all
00:24:57.360actually happened yeah i suppose yes it's uh this happens i think throughout history wherever you go
00:25:04.520you hear you hear the myths and the legends and then you have to really dig underneath to uh to
00:25:10.000see what to see what what you can find to see what's more likely and sometimes that you know
00:25:15.460there are definite clues there well and that's why I guess also too you're saying you looked at some
00:25:19.840of the the primary sources as well where if you can find well what were people saying as close as
00:25:24.460possible to when these events happened versus what did somebody write about it I don't know
00:25:29.480for instance in the 19th century or something like that you want to find hopefully the most accurate
00:25:35.040Yeah, that's right. And I'm still finding things now. Just to go off to another novel at the moment, if I may mention another novel I'd written, I wrote a trilogy about Eleanor Aquitaine, who's a bit later, not much later, 12th century, Queen of England, wife of Henry II.
00:25:56.500And it's mentioned, and all her biographers mention it, that this is modern biographers, not way back, that she had a half-brother called Jocelyn.
00:26:07.520And I thought, well, if I'm going to put this Jocelyn in a story, I need to find out a bit more about him.
00:26:12.540So I went to where he's supposedly mentioned in this documentation, his primary source, it's a thing called a pipe roll, which is like a list of expenses for the court.
00:26:23.660and uh here it was written in the english or translated it from from latin i read latin
00:26:30.700badly but i didn't get an idea and there it was jocelyn brother of the queen and i thought oh
00:26:36.640there he is and he's been given this land in petworth in sussex right and then you find out
00:26:42.080that actually brother of the queen doesn't mean queen eleanor it means another queen who lived
00:26:47.740earlier and that Jocelyn is her half-brother oh but historians and biographers haven't picked up
00:26:54.440on it so you read a biography of Eleanor Aquitaine say by well by Alison Weir and there there she's
00:27:00.020talking about this this this person who isn't actually the half-brother of Eleanor Aquitaine
00:27:05.000and I find that out for myself just by research reading and I thought do I put it so I don't put
00:27:11.060him in my book because he doesn't belong there you know if I hadn't read read had gone and backed
00:27:17.000myself up I'd have probably given him lots of scenes in the book given him shoes he didn't own
00:27:23.120yeah so I like to dig like that's such a perfect example and that's so interesting that
00:27:29.700one person interprets a fact in a certain way and then the next several biographies use that
00:27:34.300person as their source and then suddenly it becomes accepted truth exactly that's it and
00:27:39.780once it's in the mainstream it's very very hard to get it out of the mainstream I find myself on
00:27:45.820history forums sometimes typing it and thinking why are you doing this you know um because it's
00:27:53.680such a big wave of once it hits mainstream but i like to feel that i don't get everything right
00:27:59.980i don't get everything right and i would never claim to claim to be that and i don't say i'm
00:28:05.580accurate i just say i try for authenticity which is a different thing but i do my best well and i
00:28:11.100mean how many historical fiction books you have 30 at this point clearly your best is i think so i
00:28:16.920need to count them on my fingers um it's getting getting up that way um since 1990 but i wrote my
00:28:24.300first one when i was 15 because i don't but i'd always told myself stories verbally and i finally
00:28:30.340wrote something down when i was 15 and thought oh i want to do this for a living but you know when
00:28:36.840you're 15 I needed to grow up really to start with so I got published when I was 31 so it took
00:28:43.660me 16 years to actually find a publisher but I was learning my trade and at the same time I was
00:28:49.320becoming more and more interested in what I was writing well and that just brings me to to another
00:28:54.500question which would be so finding a figure like Nesta I feel to you as a writer I would imagine
00:29:00.940it's such a gift to have a story with so many built in these, I think you call them set pieces,
00:29:07.040these major events that happen. So I thought, when I read the book, I thought, why isn't this
00:29:12.520story as well known as Elizabeth Woodville? You know, there's just, it's such a good story. So
00:29:17.480how I would imagine as a historical author, you're never going to run out of new people to discover
00:29:23.560new stories to write? Oh, absolutely not. No, I usually, if I'm for my next person,
00:29:31.760you know, next person I'm going to write about, I'll sort of look up biographies and I'll look
00:29:35.660at a mention that interests me, you know, and then I will ask, that's when I start asking questions
00:29:40.880like, who are you? Why should I write about you? What can you tell me? Every time I look a bit
00:29:46.980further or read a bit further, then that question gets answered and I think, yes, you know, so that's
00:29:52.600something speaks to me medieval period is my period been doing it since i was i was a teenager
00:29:58.840i suppose and um so 1066 on onwards i've gone a bit later recently but that sort of area
00:30:06.6401300 you know absolutely fascinates me and i'm i'm quite at home in it and i guess just as sort
00:30:14.100of a one final question related to what you were just saying you know finding the stories that
00:30:19.100speak to you. Do you find in writing about the past, does it make you see things in modern day
00:30:25.560differently or do you see connections between the experiences of people in the medieval time
00:30:30.040and the experiences of people today? I think so. I think it does tell you that technology changes,
00:30:36.400but people don't. And technology might just change people slightly, but we're still wired to do
00:30:43.360exactly the same things and i see exactly the same things going on then as happened now except
00:30:49.660we're on a global scale with different technology but it's exactly the same behaviors um so to me
00:30:55.640nothing changes i do think writers are i would say a bridge um you build a bridge uh if you're
00:31:04.320writing historical fiction between now and then and then you invite readers to cross your bridge
00:31:09.880not every reader is going to like what they see on the other side or want to cross your bridge
00:31:14.440and and some are going to use it use it as their um their preferred bridge you don't know which
00:31:20.220but that's that's my job to provide a bridge for people to walk into the past and i think you did
00:31:25.480such a lovely job of that in this book and thank you so much for for talking to me about your book
00:31:31.240today thank you very much for asking me it's been lovely thank you so i just want to clarify
00:31:38.360when Elizabeth mentioned that Nesta is the ancestor of the Fitzgerald Kennedy family,
00:31:44.660like that means like JFK, like John Fitzgerald Kennedy, like the Kennedys, that dynasty had
00:31:50.640their roots. I mean, from from Nesta. So which is fascinating to me to see how far back that
00:31:57.280family dynasty goes, but also just a connection between a story that feels so long ago to a
00:32:02.800dynasty that's still around today. So again, this book is called The King's Jewel by Elizabeth
00:32:07.880Chadwick. It should be available anywhere, anywhere you get your books from. And if you
00:32:12.680like that, I mean, Elizabeth has got quite a back catalog of other books of historical people,
00:32:19.340men and women, as she explained. And you can also find more out about her. She has a website,
00:32:24.160just elizabethchadwick.com. And so this show that you're listening to right now is Vulgar
00:32:29.380History. My name is Anne Foster. And you can keep up with this show. And also if you're like,
00:32:33.560what are the, I've been doing more and more of these author conversations, which is so
00:32:37.860fun for me and so fascinating. And I hope you enjoy learning from people who have done the
00:32:43.620research, hearing them explain how they put these stories together. I've got a whole list of all of
00:32:49.260the authors who I've spoken to and who I will be speaking to on this podcast at my bookshop link.
00:32:54.880And that is the, there's a link to that in the show notes of this episode. If you want to just
00:32:59.300go back through and see all the books that we've talked about on this podcast, they're all there
00:33:03.040in various lists. And if you want to keep up with this podcast and with me, I'm on Instagram
00:33:07.360at vulgarhistorypod. I'm on TikTok at vulgarhistory. You can reach out to me. There's a
00:33:12.740form at vulgarhistory.com or you can also email me at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com. I also have
00:33:18.300a Patreon where if you support this podcast for at least $1 a month, you get early ad-free access
00:33:24.500to all episodes of this podcast. And if you pledge at least $5 a month, you get bonus episodes as
00:33:30.900well. So until next time, my friends, keep your pants on and your tits out.0.99
00:33:37.360Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Anne Foster and edited by Christina Lumagi.0.97
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